Most small business owners buy insurance because they decided they should. Amazon sellers buy it because a contract says they have to, and that changes the whole problem.
You are not weighing a risk against a premium. You are meeting a specification set by a company that can suspend your account, and the specification includes a coverage type, a minimum limit, and a requirement to name Amazon itself on the policy. Get the shape wrong and the certificate bounces. Get the limits wrong and it bounces. Get the wrong coverage line entirely and it bounces after you have already paid for a year.
This post covers what that requirement actually is, what we could and could not verify about it, which carriers are worth quoting for the job, and how to avoid buying three times more insurance than the requirement asks for.
Disclosure: the Hiscox links in this post are affiliate links and we get paid when a reader buys through one. Every other insurance company here, including Next Insurance, biBERK, Simply Business, Thimble, Assureful, Coverdash, Insureon and The Hartford, is linked through our own click tracker to their own website with no affiliate tracking attached, so none of them pay us anything. The Shopify and Bizee links in the closing section are affiliate links too and they pay us. Two of the unpaid options are better fits than Hiscox for a large chunk of Amazon sellers and we have said so below.
This is general information rather than insurance advice. What your business actually needs depends on what you sell, where you sell it and what your platform and supplier contracts require you to carry.
Amazon Does Not Ask, It Requires
Amazon’s insurance requirement sits inside its Business Solutions Agreement and its seller policy documentation. The structure is consistent and well known to anyone who has crossed the threshold: once your sales pass a set level for a set number of months, you must carry commercial general liability coverage with product liability included, at a minimum limit Amazon specifies, and you must name Amazon as an additional insured on the policy. You then upload the certificate through Seller Central and Amazon reviews it.
That is a compliance task with a deadline, not a risk management exercise. It is also enforced, which is why the question “do I really need this” has a shorter answer for Amazon sellers than for almost any other kind of online business.
What We Could and Could Not Verify
We are going to be unusually blunt here because the alternative is publishing a number we cannot stand behind.
Amazon’s own insurance requirement pages inside Seller Central sit behind a seller login and render only inside an authenticated application. We do not sign in to accounts to research posts, so we could not read Amazon’s current threshold, its current minimum limits, or its exact additional insured wording from Amazon’s own documentation in this session. Every attempt returned a sign in wall rather than the policy text.
So here is what we will say. The requirement exists. It is triggered by a monthly sales threshold. It specifies a minimum per occurrence limit and Amazon named as an additional insured. You must read the current numbers in Seller Central yourself before you buy anything, because Amazon changes them, and a post that prints last year’s figure as this year’s fact is worse than a post that prints none.
For context rather than as a substitute, one carrier built specifically for this compliance job publishes its own reading of the trigger. Assureful connects to seller accounts to price Amazon policies, and states on its own site that Amazon requires product liability policies for “all sellers generating more than $10,000 in monthly revenue”. That wording sits on its homepage at assureful.com. It is Assureful’s characterisation of Amazon’s rule, published by a company whose entire product depends on getting it right, and it is not Amazon’s own wording. Treat it as a signpost and go read the real thing.
Why Product Liability Is the Line That Matters
A lot of sellers buy a general liability policy, upload it, and get rejected. The usual reason is that the policy on the certificate does not clearly include products and completed operations coverage, which is the part that responds when something you sold injures someone or damages their property.
For a physical goods seller this is the entire exposure. You do not have a shop floor for a customer to slip on. Your risk is a private label supplement, a lithium battery, a step ladder or a child’s toy doing something it should not have done in somebody’s house, months after you shipped it.
The good news is that products and completed operations is normally included inside a standard commercial general liability form rather than sold separately. biBERK, for example, states that its general liability coverage includes “product liability” alongside property damage and bodily injury (biberk.com/general-liability-insurance). The important thing is that it appears on the certificate in a form the reviewer recognises, which is a documentation problem more than a coverage problem.
The Carriers and Marketplaces Worth Quoting
Everything in this table is quoted from each company’s own live pages. None of it is a quote for your business.
| Provider | What it is | Published figure | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hiscox | Carrier, NAIC# 10200, A rated by A.M. Best | General liability from $30 per month, illustrative | Sellers who also need professional liability or cyber on the same renewal |
| Next Insurance | Digital carrier | General liability starts at $19 per month | Fast binding and instant certificates at no extra cost |
| biBERK | Berkshire Hathaway direct writer | General liability as low as $27.50 per month | Price led buyers who want A++ rated paper |
| Assureful | Usage based provider with delegated underwriting authority | From $99 per month, priced on actual monthly sales | Seasonal or volatile sales where a fixed annual premium overcharges |
| Simply Business | Licensed producer with a sixteen carrier panel | General liability from $20.75 per month | Finding a carrier that wants an unusual product category |
| Coverdash | Agency shopping more than forty insurers | No starting price published | Multi channel sellers on Amazon, eBay, Etsy and Walmart at once |
| Thimble | Broker arranging Markel and National Specialty paper | Policies start at $17 per month | Very small sellers, though annual coverage is what Amazon wants |
Two notes on that table. Coverdash names Amazon, eBay, Etsy, Walmart and Target explicitly on its own site and lists a panel including Chubb, CNA, Travelers, Markel, Liberty Mutual, Nationwide and Hiscox (coverdash.com). Thimble states that claims on its policies “are handled on behalf of Markel Insurance Company or National Specialty Insurance Company” (thimble.com/general-liability-insurance), which is worth knowing before you buy the cheapest line on the page.
Quote the Carrier That Issues Its Own ACORD
Hiscox states it provides a certificate of insurance and can issue an ACORD for an additional insured from inside policy management, covers 49 states, and publishes an illustrative general liability starting figure of $30 a month. It does not publish a turnaround time, so test the workflow before you promise Amazon a date.
Pay As You Sell Against a Fixed Annual Premium
This is the one structural choice that is genuinely specific to marketplace sellers, and most general insurance advice never mentions it.
A conventional general liability policy asks you to estimate next year’s revenue, prices the year on that estimate, and audits you at the end. Estimate high and you overpaid all year. Estimate low and you get an audit bill.
Assureful sells the other model. Its site describes connecting directly to your Amazon or Shopify seller account and calculating your premium each month based on actual sales volume, and states plainly: “No annual forecasts, no guesswork, no surprise audits. If your sales go down, your premium goes down automatically.” It publishes a starting figure of $99 a month and claims average savings of 42 percent against traditional insurance.
Whether that is the right structure depends entirely on the shape of your year. A seller whose Q4 is four times their Q2 is being badly served by a flat annual premium built on an average. A seller with steady monthly volume gains nothing from usage pricing and will usually find a fixed premium cheaper, since $99 a month is well above the general liability floors the fixed price carriers publish.
The honest comparison is your own sales curve against those two structures. Nobody else can run that for you.
What This Actually Costs
Since Amazon sets a minimum limit rather than a maximum, the practical cost question is what a general liability policy at that sort of limit costs a small product seller. Published data gives you a band.
Insureon reports an average of $45 a month for general liability across its small business customers, with annual premiums running from a low of $265 to a high of $3,030. It describes that customer base as mostly under five employees with revenue from around $50,000 to more than $200,000, on its published general liability cost page.
The Hartford reports that “on average, our customers pay about $810 a year, or about $68 a month” for general liability. That figure is published on its own general liability cost page and was last updated in May 2026.
Those two figures describe different books of business, which is why they differ by $23 a month. The full explanation of that gap is in our breakdown of what small business insurance actually costs across every published source.
What none of those figures account for is product category. A seller of phone cases and a seller of ladders will not be quoted the same rate at the same revenue, and if your catalogue includes anything ingestible, anything with a lithium cell, anything for children or anything that bears weight, expect to sit in the upper half of that range or to be declined by the fast digital carriers entirely.
The Certificate Amazon Will Accept
The deliverable is not the policy. It is the ACORD certificate, and reviewers check specific fields.
The named insured must exactly match the legal entity on your Amazon seller account. Not the trading name, not a close variant. If the account is in your LLC’s name, the certificate must be too.
The coverage shown must be commercial general liability including products and completed operations, with the limits at or above what Amazon specifies, and the policy period must be current with enough runway that it does not expire next month.
Amazon must appear as an additional insured, not merely as a certificate holder. Those are two different boxes on the form and they do two different things, which is the single most common reason a certificate gets bounced back.
Hiscox references the ability to issue an ACORD for an additional insured inside policy management on its general liability page (hiscox.com/small-business-insurance/general-liability-insurance). Next Insurance states that “your certificate of insurance can be accessed immediately and shared at no extra cost” (nextinsurance.com). Neither publishes a turnaround time for an additional insured endorsement specifically, so test it rather than trusting it.
Additional Insured Is the Step That Trips People Up
A certificate holder is somebody who receives a copy of the certificate. An additional insured is somebody who gets the benefit of your policy if they are dragged into a claim arising from your products.
Amazon wants the second one, because the scenario it is protecting against is a customer suing both you and Amazon over something you sold. That is a real endorsement to the policy, sometimes with a small charge, and it is issued by the carrier rather than typed onto the certificate by you.
If you have already been through this with a supplier, the workflow is identical and you know it. If you have not, our full walkthrough of the document, the fields and the rejection reasons is in the guide to getting a certificate of insurance your suppliers will accept.
One Policy, Every Channel
Hiscox insures over 600,000 small businesses, covers 49 states, and publishes illustrative starting figures of $30 a month for general liability and $42 for a business owner’s policy. If Amazon is one of several places you sell and several suppliers also want naming, one carrier and one renewal date is worth real money in admin alone.
Amazon Is Rarely the Only One Asking
If you sell on more than one marketplace, or you buy from wholesale suppliers as well as manufacturing your own line, you are going to be asked for this document repeatedly by parties who each want their own name on it.
Buy for the hardest requirement you face rather than for Amazon alone. If a supplier agreement demands higher limits than Amazon does, buy the supplier’s number and Amazon is satisfied automatically. Buying Amazon’s minimum and then discovering a dealer application needs more is how people end up paying two premiums in one year.
Coverdash is worth a quote specifically here because it names the major marketplaces on its own site and shops a panel of more than forty insurers, which is the right shape of tool when several counterparties each have their own specification.
Buying Order for a New Amazon Business
Form the entity first. A certificate that names you personally will not match a seller account held by an LLC, and no carrier can fix that after the fact.
Get the EIN, open the business bank account, then read Amazon’s current requirement in Seller Central and write down the exact limits and wording it asks for. Only then open a quote form, and enter identical inputs everywhere so the quotes are comparable.
Run three: a direct writer for the floor, a specialist for the class opinion, and a marketplace or agency for appetite discovery. Compare exclusions, then limits, then price, in that order. Bind, download the certificate, request the additional insured endorsement, and upload.
The full version of that sequence, with the entity and EIN steps expanded, is in our guide to getting business insurance for your ecommerce store in the right order. If you want the carrier by carrier view rather than the process view, start with our comparison of the seven best general liability providers for online sellers.
Mistakes That Get a Certificate Rejected
Naming the wrong entity. The certificate must match the seller account exactly. Trading names and abbreviations fail.
Certificate holder instead of additional insured. The most common failure by a wide margin, and it requires a real endorsement to fix.
Limits below the specification. Read the current number in Seller Central rather than copying one from a blog post, including this one.
A policy that excludes your category. Supplements, children’s products, anything with a battery and anything load bearing are frequently excluded or surcharged. Find out before you bind, not when the claim arrives.
A policy expiring inside the review window. Upload something with runway on it, or you will be doing this again in six weeks.
Assuming the claim will be easy. It will not be, and the process is unforgiving about notice timing. Our walkthrough of how to file a business insurance claim without handing the adjuster a reason to deny it is worth reading before you need it.
Running the Business Behind the Store
The insurance requirement is downstream of what you chose to sell, and product category moves your premium more than any other single input. If that decision is still open, work from the list of high ticket niches worth building a store around.
If you are weighing marketplace selling against running your own storefront, our primer on what high ticket dropshipping is and how the margins compare explains why the paperwork looks different on each side.
Supplier relationships bring their own certificate demands, often stricter than a marketplace’s, and the process for opening them is in the complete step by step guide to finding suppliers for high ticket products.
None of it works without the entity, because the name on the policy has to match the name on the account. That sequence is covered in business formation for high ticket dropshipping.
The stack behind all of this stays deliberately small. The storefront runs on Shopify. The entity filing and registered agent service goes through Bizee.
The policy goes to Hiscox when the appetite and the lines fit, and to a usage based or panel option when they do not.
If you would rather have the entity, the store and the supplier applications handled together as one job, that is what our done for you high ticket dropshipping build and launch service exists for.
Frequently Asked Questions
What sales level triggers Amazon’s insurance requirement? There is a monthly sales threshold and Amazon publishes the current figure in Seller Central. We could not read it from Amazon’s own documentation because those pages require a seller login, so go and read it there rather than trusting any blog, including ours.
What limits does Amazon require? Amazon specifies a minimum per occurrence limit and an aggregate. The current numbers are in Seller Central and you should buy to the highest requirement across Amazon and all your suppliers, not to the lowest.
Do I need a separate product liability policy? Usually no. Products and completed operations coverage is normally part of a standard commercial general liability form, and biBERK for example lists product liability inside its general liability coverage.
Does Amazon need to be an additional insured or a certificate holder? An additional insured. They are different boxes and getting them confused is the most common reason a certificate is rejected.
How much should I expect to pay? Insureon publishes an average of $45 a month for general liability with an annual range from $265 to $3,030 across its small business customers, and The Hartford publishes about $68 a month across its own. Your category matters more than your revenue.
Is usage based insurance worth it? If your sales swing hard across the year, possibly. Assureful publishes a starting figure of $99 a month, which is above the fixed price floors, so the case rests entirely on whether a flat annual premium would have overcharged you.
Can I use a per job or short term policy? No. Amazon wants continuous annual coverage with a policy period that does not lapse, which is why episodic products are a poor fit for this requirement.
Buy for the Hardest Requirement You Have
Hiscox is rated A (Excellent) by A.M. Best with a financial size category of XV, covers 49 states, and displays example general liability limits of $1,000,000 per occurrence against a $2,000,000 aggregate. Check Amazon’s current specification in Seller Central first, then quote to the highest number any counterparty demands.
Bottom Line
Amazon’s requirement is a specification, not a suggestion, and the winning move is to satisfy it precisely rather than generously. Read the current threshold, limits and additional insured wording in Seller Central, because it is the only source that is authoritative and it is the one source we could not read for you.
Then buy to the highest limit any of your counterparties demands. For most sellers that means one annual commercial general liability policy including products and completed operations, from a carrier that will issue an additional insured endorsement quickly through a portal you can reach at midnight.
Quote a direct writer for the floor, a specialist for the opinion on your product category, and a panel or agency if your catalogue is unusual enough that carriers keep declining it. If your sales curve is violently seasonal, price a usage based option against the fixed alternatives and let your own numbers decide. What you should not do is buy the cheapest line on a comparison page and find out at upload time that it was the wrong shape of policy.
Related Articles
How Much Does Small Business Insurance Cost in 2026?
Hiscox vs Simply Business: Buying From a Carrier or Buying From a Marketplace
How to Get a Certificate of Insurance Your Suppliers Will Accept
Best Business Insurance for Ecommerce: 10 Providers Compared
Hiscox Review 2026: Business Insurance for Ecommerce Stores
Trevor Fenner is an ecommerce entrepreneur and the founder of Ecommerce Paradise, a platform focused on helping entrepreneurs build and scale profitable high-ticket ecommerce and dropshipping businesses. With over a decade of hands-on experience, Trevor specializes in high-ticket dropshipping strategy, niche and product selection, supplier recruiting and onboarding, Google & Bing Shopping ads, ecommerce SEO, and systems-driven automation and scaling. Through Ecommerce Paradise, he provides free education via in-depth guides like How to Start High-Ticket Dropshipping, advanced training through the High-Ticket Dropshipping Masterclass, and fully done-for-you turnkey ecommerce services for entrepreneurs who want a faster, more hands-off path to growth. Trevor is known for emphasizing sustainable, real-world ecommerce models over hype-driven tactics, helping store owners build scalable, sellable, and location-independent brands.
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