Etsy Message to Buyers: 11 Examples You Can Paste

TL;DR: Your Message to Buyers is a shop-wide note Etsy adds to the receipt page and the order confirmation email, set under Shop Manager, Settings, Info and Appearance. Digital shops get a second field that shows on the Downloads page. Use it for production time, what happens next and how to reach you, and keep review incentives and off-Etsy promotion out. Eleven templates below, grouped by shop type.

Your shop settings are open, the box is empty, and you would rather not spend forty minutes on four sentences. Paste one of these and change two words.

First, the context that decides what yours should say. This is the one thing a buyer is close to guaranteed to read, and it lands at the moment they are wondering when the thing arrives. A good one quietly kills most of your "where is my order" messages.

Where the field lives and when the message goes out

Etsy's help page puts the field at Shop Manager, Settings, Info and Appearance, Message to Buyers, then Save Changes. It is one message for the whole shop. There is no per-listing version, so it has to be true for everything you sell.

Etsy describes it as a short note included on the receipt page and the order confirmation email after purchase. It is not a chat message and never lands in their inbox.

If you sell digital items, Etsy gives you a second field, Message to Buyers for Digital Items, which appears on the Downloads page and applies to every digital listing in your shop. Sell both? Fill in both and write them differently. The buyer of a printable has a different next step than the buyer of a hoodie.

Etsy does not publish a character limit on that help page, so I will not invent one. Keep it short by choice anyway. Five or six lines is the sweet spot.

What belongs in it, and what has to stay out

The message has one job: remove uncertainty. Three things do it.

• When. Production time and shipping time as two separate numbers, because buyers merge them and then get annoyed.
• What happens next. A tracking email, a proof to approve, a file to download.
• How to reach you. One line telling them to reply through Etsy.

Now the part that gets shops in trouble.

Do not beg for reviews, and never attach a reward to one. Etsy's anti-shilling policy prohibits compensating anyone with free or reduced items, samples, cash or other compensation for a biased or untruthful positive review, and the extortion policy names offering goods, services or compensation in exchange for a positive review as a violation. "Reviews help a small shop a lot" is a different animal from "leave five stars and get 10% off". The second one costs you the shop.

Do not use the message as an ad for your other channels. Etsy's rules say Messages may not be used for unsolicited advertising, promotions or spam, and that buyer information may only be used for Etsy-related communications or Etsy-facilitated transactions. Pointing an Etsy buyer at your own website is the thing that rule exists to stop.

Do not promise a date you do not control. If your supplier needs three to five business days, your message says three to five business days, not "ships tomorrow". This message repeats on every order, so one optimistic sentence becomes a hundred disappointed buyers.

Do not mention a discount code that has expired. More on that at the end.

The templates

Pick the group that matches your shop and change the bracketed bits. Each is written in a different voice, so take the one that sounds like you.

Print on demand and made to order

Production time is the entire message here. Your buyer is used to two-day shipping and you are about to take a week. Say so plainly and you will rarely hear about it. The Etsy print-on-demand guide covers the fulfilment side.

1. Plain and direct

Thanks for your order.

Your item is printed after you order it rather than pulled off a shelf, so
there are two waiting periods, not one. Printing and packing take [2 to 5
business days]. Shipping time starts after that, and your estimated delivery
window is on your order page.

If the size or the address is wrong, reply here within 12 hours and I can
still change it. After that it is already in production.

2. The maker voice

Hi [Name], thank you for picking my shop out of all the others.

Your piece is in the print queue now. Everything here is made one at a time,
which is slower than a warehouse, but it also means nothing sat in a box for
a year waiting for you. Expect [3 to 6 business days] before it ships, then
a tracking email the moment it does.

Anything at all, reply to this order. I read every message myself.

Digital downloads and printables

The only question here is where the file is. Answer it in the first line, then handle the "it did not arrive" case before they ask. Pair it with a proper look at Etsy printables.

3. Instructional

Your files are ready now. No waiting and nothing ships.

To get them: go to Etsy.com, open You, then Purchases and reviews, find this
order and select Download Files. On the app, tap You, then Purchases.

If you checked out as a guest, the download link is in your Etsy
confirmation email instead.

Downloaded it and something looks wrong, or a file will not open? Reply here
with your device and I will sort it out the same day.

4. Friendly and short

Thank you, and welcome. Your download is waiting in Purchases and reviews on
your Etsy account, available straight away.

Two quick notes. Print at 100% scale rather than Fit to page, or the sizing
drifts. And the files are for your own personal use.

Anything not opening properly, message me and I will send it over in another
format.

Handmade and personalised

Cover the timeline and the proof step. A proof nobody warned them about turns into a case.

5. Proof approval first

Thank you for your order.

Here is the order of events. I will send you a digital proof within [1 to 2
business days]. Nothing is made until you reply to approve it, so check the
spelling and the dates carefully. Once you say yes, production takes [3 to 5
business days], then it ships.

If I do not hear back from you, I will follow up rather than guess.

6. Timeline first

Hi [Name], your order is in.

Current turnaround is [7 to 10 business days] from today, plus shipping.
I work through orders in the order they arrive and I do not skip the queue,
so that estimate is real rather than hopeful.

If you sent me a name, a date or a photo at checkout, I have it. If you meant
to and forgot, reply here now and I will add it before I start.

Vintage and supplies

Condition matters more than speed here. Say what the buyer is actually receiving.

7. Vintage

Thank you for giving this piece a second home.

It is a one-of-a-kind vintage item, so what you saw in the photos is
literally the item you are getting, marks, patina and all. I re-check every
piece before it goes out and I wrap it for the post rather than for looks.

It ships within [1 to 3 business days] with tracking. If anything arrives
different to the description, tell me before you do anything else.

8. Supplies

Order received, thank you.

Cut and packed within [1 to 2 business days]. Yardage is cut continuously
unless you asked otherwise, and colour can shift slightly between dye lots,
so if you think you will need more later it is worth ordering it now.

Need a specific cut, a combined shipment or a rush? Reply here before it
goes out and I will do what I can.

The short warm one

If long messages make you cringe, use this one. It still does the job.

9. Minimal

Thank you, genuinely. Small shops feel every single order, and this one
landed on a good day.

Made and shipped within [3 business days]. Tracking goes to you by email the
moment it leaves, and everything else is on your order page.

Need anything at all, reply right here and I will answer.

Holiday and peak season

Swap this in before the rush and swap it back after. Cutoff dates belong here, not buried in a listing description. Christmas print on demand covers seasonal timing properly.

10. Peak season cutoffs

Thank you for your order, and thanks for ordering early.

Two dates to know. Order by [December 12] for standard delivery before the
holiday, and by [December 17] with express at checkout. Those dates come
from the carrier, not from me, so I cannot stretch them.

Production is running at [4 to 7 business days] right now because volume is
high. I would rather tell you that than quote you my quiet-season number.

Vacation mode or a long lead time

If you are away, Etsy's Vacation Mode gives you a vacation announcement and a Messages auto-reply, which is where "we are closed" belongs. Your Message to Buyers still fires for orders placed before you switched over.

11. Longer wait, stated up front

Thanks for your order, and thank you for your patience in advance.

My current lead time is [3 to 4 weeks] before your order ships. That is
longer than most shops and it is on the listing for a reason, so if you
needed it sooner than that, reply now and I will cancel and refund with no
hard feelings.

Otherwise I will message you with tracking the day it leaves.

What each shop type has to cover

The follow-up message after delivery

The Message to Buyers is automatic. The follow-up is not. Etsy's help page has you send it by hand from Orders and Shipping, opening the order and selecting Message, and Etsy's own advice is to reach out around the time the item should have arrived and ask whether everything turned up as expected.

That timing is the trick. You are not chasing a review, you are catching a problem while it is fixable.

Hi [Name], your order should have landed by now. Did it arrive in one piece
and look the way you expected?

If anything is off, tell me here and I will fix it rather than argue about
it. If it is all good, that is genuinely all I wanted to know.

And a version that mentions reviews without paying for them:

Hi [Name], just checking your [item] arrived safely.

If there is any problem, reply here first and give me a chance to sort it.
If you are happy with it, a short review helps a small shop more than you
would guess. Either way, thanks for the order.

The honest version wins for a boring reason: buyers can tell the difference between being asked and being worked. Opening with a question gets unhappy customers to reply, and one who replies is worth far more than one who stays quiet and leaves a one-star review you find a week later. Etsy Support will not remove a review because you asked, so catching it early is the only real lever you have.

The three mistakes that turn into bad reviews

Promising a date your supplier cannot hold. "Ships in 24 hours" reads great until your fulfiller has a backlog, and the over-promise repeats on every order until you notice. Pull your real number from your last twenty orders, not your supplier's marketing page, and add a day.

Going silent when something is late. Late is survivable. Late plus silence is what people write reviews about. If an order slips, message the buyer first with what happened and a new date. Have your Etsy return policy settled before you need it, not during.

Leaving a dead discount code in the message. You add "use SPRING10 on your next order", the code expires, and for eight months buyers try it, fail and message you. You have built an automated complaint generator. Use an offer you never expire, or keep codes in the manual follow-up where you control the timing.

One note on who wrote this

I build Trendlytic, a niche research tool for print-on-demand sellers. It has nothing to do with messaging, so there is no tie-in coming. The only reason to mention it: if the real problem is not the wording but that there are few orders to confirm, that sits one step upstream, at Trendlytic.

FAQ

What should I write in my message to buyers on Etsy?

How long production takes, how long shipping takes after that, and how to reach you. Add the detail specific to your shop, such as the proof step or the download path. Five or six lines is plenty.

Does Etsy send my message to buyers automatically?

Yes. Once you save it under Shop Manager, Settings, Info and Appearance, Etsy includes it on the receipt page and the order confirmation email, with no action from you. The follow-up after delivery is the opposite, you send that by hand.

Can I ask for a review in my message to buyers?

You can ask politely. What you cannot do is attach a reward. Etsy's anti-shilling policy prohibits compensating someone with free or reduced items, samples, cash or other compensation for a biased or untruthful positive review, and offering goods or compensation in exchange for a positive review falls under the extortion policy. Asking is fine, trading is not.

Is there a character limit for the Etsy message to buyers?

Etsy's help page for the feature does not publish one, so I will not quote a number I cannot verify. It makes little practical difference: a confirmation email past six or seven lines stops being read regardless.

Can I set a different message to buyers for each listing?

Not for physical listings. It is one message for the whole shop. The only split Etsy gives you is the digital field, which shows on the Downloads page and applies to all digital listings. Anything listing-specific belongs in that listing's description or in a manual message.

Should I put a discount code in my message to buyers?

Only if it never expires, and even then it sits better in the follow-up. A shop-wide message keeps sending long after you have forgotten it, and a dead code in there produces confused buyers for months.

Go read what is sitting in that box right now. For most shops it is empty, or a thank-you line that answers nothing. Which of the eleven above is closest to your shop, and what question do your buyers keep asking that your message should already have answered?