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Why Are My Etsy Products Not Successfully Exporting from CustomCat?

Quick Answer 🚀

If your product isn’t exporting to Etsy, it’s usually because of title, tag, product description, product variation, language settings, or Etsy API rate limit issues. Double-check these first:

  • Title: Under 140 characters, no forbidden symbols, max 3 words in ALL CAPS.

  • Tags: 13 or fewer, unique, ≤ 20 characters each.

  • Product Description: Required, plain text only (no HTML).

  • Product Variations: Only 2 types (size + color), max 100 total options.

  • Store connection: Make sure the CustomCat store connection is authorized with Etsy.

  • Language: Shop’s default language must be English.

  • Rate limits: Etsy’s API only allows a certain number of requests at a time. If the limit is hit, you’ll need to wait until it resets.

👉 Fixing one of these almost always resolves the issue.

Overview

If your product isn’t exporting successfully to Etsy, don’t worry, this is one of the most common issues sellers face when connecting CustomCat to Etsy. Etsy enforces specific rules for product listings, and even a small violation can cause your export to fail.

This guide covers the most frequent causes and provides a checklist so you can correct the issue quickly.

1. Title Limitations

  • Maximum 140 characters allowed.

  • Title must start with a letter or number (not a symbol or space).

  • Certain characters are restricted (such as $, ^, `, °).

  • Characters like %, :, & can only appear once per title.

  • No more than three fully uppercase words.

  • Avoid keyword stuffing—Etsy considers categories and attributes when ranking listings, so repeating phrases excessively can cause issues.

2. Tag Limitations

  • You can only have up to 13 tags per listing.

  • Each tag can be a maximum of 20 characters.

  • Tags must be unique—duplicate tags will cause export errors.

  • Allowed characters: letters, numbers, hyphens, spaces, underscores, and apostrophes.

  • Don’t repeat attributes (like size or color) in your tags—Etsy treats attributes as tags automatically.

3. Description Limitations

  • Description cannot be blank.

  • Maximum of 102,400 characters.

  • Do not include HTML tags or unusual encodings—plain text only.

  • Stick to standard UTF-8 characters (no special symbols outside the basic keyboard set).

4. Variations & Attributes

  • Etsy supports only two variation types per product (for example: size + color).

  • Total variations per listing are limited to 100.

  • If you group and export multiple products (> two variation types) into one listing the export may error or you may need to correct the variation types in Etsy.  See guide on how to combine multiple products into one Etsy listing: Here. 

  • If you want to group multiple products into one listing, you will need to utilize just two variation types 

5. Images

  • Etsy requires at least one image for every listing.

  • Maximum of 10 images per listing.

  • If product image appears broken in CustomCat, the export will fail.

6. Store Connection & Permissions

  • Make sure your Etsy store is properly connected and showing Active in CustomCat → Store Settings.

  • Occasionally, Etsy requires reauthorization. If you haven't created product or received orders in awhile or exports suddenly stop, reconnect your store to CustomCat by following this guide.

7. Pricing & Inventory

  • Every product must have a valid price greater than $0.00. 

8. Default Language Settings

  • Etsy requires all listings created through integrations like CustomCat to use the shop’s default language.

  • If your shop was originally created with a default language other than English, exports may fail even if everything else is correct.

  • Etsy does not allow merchants to change their default language once the shop is created.

Workarounds:

  • Create a new Etsy shop with English as the default language and connect it to CustomCat.

  • Or manually create products in Etsy in your preferred language, then use CustomCat’s manual product sync feature to link them.

9. API Rate Limits

  • Etsy enforces API rate limits for all integrations, including CustomCat.

  • If too many export requests are sent in a short period of time, Etsy may temporarily block new requests.

  • When this happens, your product export may fail without a clear error.

  • Solution: Wait until the rate limit resets (usually within a few minutes) and try again. If possible, stagger exports instead of sending many at once.

Quick Pre-Export Checklist

✅ Title < 140 characters, no forbidden symbols, max 3 all-caps words
✅ 13 unique tags or fewer, ≤ 20 characters each
✅ Description filled in (plain text, no HTML)
✅ ≤ 2 variation types, ≤ 100 total variations
✅ Price set for each variation
✅ At least 1 product image uploaded
✅ Etsy store connection authorized
✅ Shop’s default language is English
✅ You’re not hitting Etsy’s API rate limit

Key Takeaway

Most Etsy export failures happen because of small formatting issues with titles, tags, descriptions, shop settings, or temporary API limits. By following this checklist you’ll ensure your CustomCat products publish smoothly to Etsy.