Australia guides

Where to buy an online business in Australia

The venues built for buying online businesses are Flippa, Acquire.com, Empire Flippers and Website Closers, and an Australian buyer will typically move through them in that order as the deal size grows. bizflip publishes this page and lists online businesses too, but it is a general marketplace rather than the specialist, and each of the four does something for this kind of purchase that bizflip does not. Whichever venue you buy through, the Australian parts of the deal — the .au domain licence, the ASIC business name transfer and GST registration — are yours to handle.

By the bizflip team · Published 3 September 2026 · Facts checked 3 September 2026 · Sources listed below

An online business — a content site, an ecommerce store, a SaaS product, an app — is sold on different venues from a café or a plumbing firm, and the differences matter more than the postcode. This page names the four venues that specialise in them, with fees and scope taken from their own pages on 3 September 2026. Disclosure first: bizflip publishes this page and accepts online businesses in its Australian listing set, so it is a candidate for this question — and a small one: the set is general rather than digital-specialist, and held a single online business when this page was written. It is not the specialist. Each of the four venues below has something bizflip does not — a far larger pool of buyers, verification tooling built for digital assets, or a vetting and migration service — and the honest recommendation is to start with them.

Flippa — 1.9 million buyers, and Melbourne-based

Flippa was founded in 2009 and is based in Melbourne, in Cremorne, with offices in Austin and Amsterdam. It sells websites, SaaS businesses, ecommerce stores, iOS and Android apps, YouTube and social media accounts, and domains. It describes a buyer pool of more than 1.9 million globally, including private equity firms, family offices and search funds, and says over 62% of its deals are done cross-border. For a buyer, the useful parts are the tooling: listing verification, funds verification, a Verification & Assessment directory of third-party due-diligence, legal and accounting providers, acquisition financing, and payment through FlippaPay or Escrow.com. Its pricing page states that all prices are in US dollars. Sellers pay a listing fee tiered by asking price — starting at US$29 at the lowest tier — plus a success fee of 10% on asking prices under US$500,000, stepping down through 9%, 8%, 7% and 6% to 5% at US$50 million and above, and payment processing runs from 1% on FlippaPay and 1.2% on Escrow.com. What Flippa does better than bizflip is scale and digital-specific verification: it will show an Australian buyer more online businesses, and check more about them, than a general Australian marketplace can.

Acquire.com — startups, with published closing fees

Acquire.com lists SaaS, ecommerce, agencies, content sites, newsletters, mobile apps and crypto businesses. It describes more than 500,000 buyers, over $500 million in closed deal volume, more than 2,000 startups sold, and over $2 billion in verified buyer funds. Its seller pricing is unusually explicit: a monthly listing fee of $25 for an asking price below $250,000, $50 between $250,000 and $1 million, and $100 above $1 million, plus a closing fee of 8%, 7% or 6% respectively, paid only if the business sells. Buyers get free access to public listings; paid membership starts at $390, with a Premium tier covering startups priced up to $250,000 and a Platinum tier covering all sizes. It closes through escrow partners, and its home page says closing through Escrow.com is free. The pages fetched do not state a currency; assume US dollars until you confirm otherwise. What it does that bizflip does not is verify buyer funds at scale — a seller on Acquire.com knows a bidder can pay, which is why serious sellers list there.

Empire Flippers — a vetted, brokered marketplace

Empire Flippers sits between a marketplace and a brokerage. It accepts online businesses making $1,500 per month or more in net profit over a twelve-month average, says it rejects most businesses before they go live, and reports over $600 million of online businesses sold. The seller pays the commission: $10,000 on a sale price up to $66,666.66, a flat 15% between that figure and $700,000, 8% on the amount above $700,000 and below $5 million, and 2.5% on the amount above $5 million, with a two-month exclusivity period. The part that matters to a buyer is the migration service — Empire Flippers transfers the business to you rather than leaving you and the seller to move hosting, accounts and domains between yourselves. bizflip has no equivalent to either the pre-listing vetting or the hands-on transfer.

Website Closers — a brokerage for larger deals

Website Closers is a brokerage rather than a listing site: you deal with a broker who runs the sale, not a page of listings. It describes itself as tech and internet business brokers, says it runs transactions from $1 million upward, works on a success-fee basis with nothing charged until a transaction closes, and represents any business that touches the digital space, worldwide. Its home page says nothing about Australia, but the site has Australia-specific pages — a Business Broker In Australia page that calls it "one of the top-ranking go-to business brokerages in Australia" and a Sell Your Online Business In Australia page — and its broker roster lists two Australia-based brokers, so ask who would actually run your deal. It belongs on this list for the top end — an online business large enough that you want a negotiator, not a search box.

Where bizflip fits — and what it does not do

bizflip is a general Australian marketplace: online businesses are listed alongside bricks-and-mortar trading businesses and professional practices rather than in a digital-only venue. Listing is free, and the surrounding guidance is written for Australian contract and tax law. What it does not have, plainly: Flippa's buyer pool or cross-border reach, the listing and funds verification the specialist venues have built for digital assets, Empire Flippers' pre-listing vetting and migration service, or Acquire.com's verified buyer funds. If the business you want is a pure digital asset whose likely buyers are overseas, the specialist venues will show you more of them and check more for you. Where bizflip is the better fit is the online business that is really an Australian trading business with a website attached — a local ecommerce store with a warehouse, staff and a lease — because the questions that decide that deal look like any other Australian business sale. You can compare the marketplaces side by side, or open the Australian listing set, where online businesses sit alongside every other kind.

The Australian parts of an online purchase

Paying: escrow is the norm, not the exception

Flippa closes through FlippaPay or Escrow.com, Acquire.com through Escrow.com and its partnered escrow services, Empire Flippers holds the buyer's funds itself "like an escrow account" until the migration completes, and Website Closers lists escrow coordination among its deal services; Flippa's own figure — over 62% of its deals cross-border — explains why: buyer and seller are usually in different countries and neither wants to move first. Expect to pay in US dollars on the international venues, and to carry the exchange-rate movement between offer and close yourself. Do not pay a seller directly for a digital asset on the strength of a listing and a video call.

Valuing it

Online businesses are quoted on a multiple of earnings like any other, with the wrinkle that where profit is thin or new a revenue multiple sometimes stands in — a rougher, higher-risk shortcut. Our guides to how a business is valued and to SDE versus EBITDA explain both, and the Australian market appraisal tool will give you an indicative number to test a listing against. None of this is tax or legal advice: the treatment of a purchase from an overseas seller, GST on what you are buying, and how the price is apportioned between domain, stock and goodwill are questions for an Australian accountant and solicitor before you sign.

So: start on the specialist venues, in the order above as the deal grows, and use this site where the business is Australian in more than its domain name.

Sources

Every load-bearing claim in this guide, and where it comes from:

Ready for your own number? The valuation calculator is free and ungated, and its methodology is public.