From “all things handmade”
to “unique gifts for everyone”.

The oldest capture we use is from June 25, 2005, the earliest after the launch that we found. How many days after the launch it was, we can’t tell: Etsy’s IPO prospectus says only that the company was founded in Brooklyn in June 2005.^[1] The page is mostly text in an orange and grey frame: Buy, Sell and Search tabs, a white Etsy with a small beta on an orange block, and four product photos beside Your place to buy & sell all things handmade.

The welcome note reads like the founders typing. This is a site by crafters for crafters, made by the creators of GetCrafty.com with help from Leah of Craftster.org. It admits that the site looks a bit empty at the moment and asks people to sign up and start listing. Etsy would promote itself at two craft fairs, the Indy Craft Experience in Atlanta and the Renegade Craft Fair in Brooklyn. It was also throwing a party in Brooklyn on June 25th, the day of this capture, and the free listings ran Until July 31st, 2005.

Small print at the bottom left: Popular Tags are cute, crochet, earrings and silver. The footer says brought to you by iospace.

On January 1, 2006, the welcome note is gone and a left rail offers four ways to browse: Sampler, Shop By Color, Geolocator with a small world map, and Time Machine. Under the search box a link says Locate a seller New!. These are ways to wander more than ways to find one thing, and versions of them stay on the homepage in our captures through June 2013.

The middle of the page is Featured Items, picked by Rob from Brooklyn. Many of the photos are blank in this replay, so the grid is mostly empty frames, but the text is all there: a Mix Tape iPod Cozy Case for 10.00, an Afternoon Kitty print for 10.00 and a Purity Rainstick Necklace for 265.00. The featured seller, theblackapple, names the films of David Lynch, Jean Jeunet, Godard, Jim Jarmusch and Tim Burton as inspiration.

The category list has grown to 31 and dropped its counts. It already includes Vintage, and supplies come in two kinds, Supplies (commercial) and Supplies (handmade).

By June 2007 the rail has a heading, Ways to shop, and seven entries above the categories, from Colors and Treasury to Time Machine 2 and Connections. The tagline has picked up a ™. Treasury was the social one. Etsy later wrote that when Treasuries launched in 2006, they were one of the first ways Etsy sellers celebrated and promoted each other's work.^[2] In 2009 the homepage describes them as Handpicked by members.

The best small print of 2007 is a recruiting ad near the top: $250 shopping spree! Find an engineer for Etsy and we’ll fill your cart, illustrated with a striped engineer’s cap. The top menu has an item called Alchemy. By 2009 the same slot reads Custom.

July 2008 adds Gift Guides, Shop Local and Pounce to the rail, plus a pet-themed banner, and the search box can now look through handmade items, supplies or vintage separately. In June 2009 the tools sit in a section called Explore, each with a short line under it: Pounce is Discovered, undiscovered and Shop Local is Buy handmade near you. Geolocator is gone. That month’s gift guide is Americana Folk.

The January 1, 2010 capture is the one to scroll. It renders with incomplete styling, so the page runs as one long column, but near the bottom sits a grid of twelve Handpicked Items, Found browsing Etsy's categories, with every price intact.

Cassette Earrings, $23.00 USD. A Charlie’s Angels metal lunchbox, $100.00. A LEGO brick ring in a capsule, $4.80. Periodic Table Barrettes, $13.50. A Dozen Pacman Cookies, $18.99.

And a red crocheted cover for a single apple, with a green leaf, for $7.75. Its image description is a small poem of search words: handmade crocheted apple cozy, apple coozy, or apple sweater in beautiful true red with green leaf eco friendly.

The rail keeps the Explore section, including Editors' Picks, Featured on our blog. The gift guide is The Bibliophile, and its code lists bookends, bookplates and an I HATE CURSIVE button. The featured seller, mudpuppy, makes ceramic bird houses and says the best part is going to bed exhausted at night feeling like I've created something wonderful.

June 2011 brings a lighter, white layout, and the browser title grows to handmade, vintage, and supplies. The rail is now Categories, then Ways to Shop, and the labels have been rewritten. Treasury is Curated lists, Pounce is Fresh shops, Shop Local is Buy nearby and Time Machine is Just listed. The sign-up form hidden in the code warns about one choice: the username will be the name of your shop, if you sell. It cannot be changed later.

October 2012 opens with a big promotion, Accessorize Your iPhone 5, and the footer adds iPhone and iPad are trademarks of Apple Inc. Farther down is a row the earlier pages never had, Recently Viewed by You: four dresses from one shop, $130 to $300. The code explains it in a warning. Clear your browsing history and we will no longer make recommendations based on previously visited items. The capture doesn’t say whose browsing produced that row.

In June 2013 the banner is for Father’s Day, Dad Loves a Good Discovery, and the menu has a new entry, Prototypes, to Explore new ideas. Four months later, in October 2013, Etsy began letting sellers apply to work with outside manufacturers.^[3]

On January 1, 2014 the left rail is gone, and none of the old tools appears on this homepage: no Colors, no Treasury, no Pounce, no Shop Local, no Time Machine. A row of category links runs across the top instead, from Art to Weddings and a More menu, and a wide carousel opens on Give one-of-a-kind. and a gift-card button. The logo loses its orange block here and becomes a plain orange wordmark. Some of the other slides in the code introduce sellers.

Lower down, Recent Favorites gives every item a place: crochet baby booties from Antwerp, Belgium, a hand-woven rug sold from Nogaro, France, and a knitted dog cowl from West Virginia. Then Community Tastemakers, members’ lists of favorites, and a seller’s quote below a photo of a desk: I love the thought of my products traveling to homes around the world and starting their new life.

A capture from earlier the same day has a different seller in that spot, Katie Geppert of HarvestHaversack in Melbourne, Australia, and a heavier line: Every purchasing decision implies some moral choice. (capture ↗). That is the 2014 homepage in one sentence: you are buying from a person, and the choice counts. Ten years later Etsy would call the same idea a mission.

Etsy also built a signed-in homepage with a personal activity feed, launched in September 2014. Its engineers reported that the personalization made the page slower, while business and engagement numbers went up.^[4]

June 2015 puts a person in the hero: Shop directly from people around the world. in a hero credited to Carly and Aubree Ng of HunterPassLeather. Trending Items run from a $1,600.00 vintage Moroccan rug, listed from Salé, Morocco, to a $27.00 ring from HomegrownSilverStone, whose shop panel shows 4296 reviews. Etsy had gone public two months earlier, pricing its shares at $16 on April 15, 2015.^[5]

On May 4, 2016 Etsy launched a redesigned homepage for desktop and mobile web.^[6] The June capture shows it: a cream page with one big line, Whoever you are, find whatever you're into, a search box that asks What are you shopping for? and a hero area, blank in this replay, credited From the shop CountryCoutureCo. Three icons explain the site to a newcomer, ending with Buy safely and securely, and an orange band lower down says Etsy keeps you safe.

Treasury’s last trace in our captures is a footer link in June 2016. By June 2017 it is gone. An undated Etsy post explains the end: from October 5, members could no longer create or edit Treasuries, and the homepage links would be removed, because few buyers view Treasuries, and even fewer purchase from them.^[2]

In 2017 the headline stays, now over a photo of rings. The browser title is the bigger change. In June 2016 it had gone back to the 2007 wording, Etsy :: Your place to buy and sell all things handmade. In June 2017 handmade leaves it: Etsy.com | Shop for anything from creative people everywhere.

June 2018 splits the top into tiles. A yellow one says Gift ideas as original as your dad. (the carousel’s code also holds a gardening slide, Hand-crafted by green thumbs.), and another offers One-of-a-kind picks from every corner of the globe. The three promises return in a chattier voice: We have millions of one-of-a-kind items, so you can find whatever you need (or really, really want). The code holds a shorter twin of that line, We’ve got millons of one-of-a-kind items., typo included, and it stays in the HTML through 2020.

Then a row that sounds like Treasury’s successor: Discover lists by creative people, A new way to explore, with Patches by Ginger, Cats by Valerie and Ocean in Summer by Jennifer.

June 2019 states the range in one sentence: If it’s handcrafted, vintage, custom, or unique, it’s on Etsy. The browser title follows, and it stays the same through our 2026 capture. A Recently viewed row shows six blank product frames with prices underneath, from $129.98 to $599.00. The capture doesn’t say whose browsing produced it.

Near the bottom a panel asks What is Etsy? and answers that there is no Etsy warehouse, just millions of people selling the things they love.

The June 2020 homepage sells Father’s Day and face masks side by side. Send Dad love from any distance. sits next to a tile with a fabric mask: Everyday supplies. Made with extra love. The headline above them reads Find things you'll love. Support independent sellers. Only on Etsy., and a strip under the tiles links to Support Black-owned shops, today and always.

The category menu in the code has an entry called Face Masks & Coverings, and Etsy’s quarterly report puts a number on it. Masks brought in about $346 million of gross merchandise sales from April to June 2020. To meet demand, Etsy called on sellers, retrained its search algorithms and created on-site banners and automated filters.^[7] The first item under Popular right now is a calligraphy starter kit with 9,263 reviews.

September 2021 sets a shape the 2021–2023 captures share: a colored band with a headline, a row of round category photos, then Popular gifts right now. The band says Handcrafted creations, made in the US. The circles say Signs, Linen Clothing, Jewelry, Wedding Gifts, Kids Table & Chairs and On Sale. The first popular gift is a personalized wallet at $28.99, (60% off), with 15,448 reviews. The capture doesn’t record where the crawler connected from, so the US band is simply the version this visit got.

From this year on, the code carries a block called What is Etsy? with a sentence that stays the same: Your purchases on Etsy in 2020 generated nearly $4 billion in income for small businesses. It appears in all six of our captures from 2021 to 2026. In 2021 the same block adds Etsy is powered by 100% renewable electricity.

The June bands of 2022 and 2023 are for Father’s Day: Celebrate your extra-special Dad with extra-special gifts from small businesses., then Delight them with extra-special gifts. Under them, popular gifts still carry star ratings and crossed-out prices. Lower down in 2022, The 2022 Etsy Design Awards Finalists include a mug with a pretzel for a handle; the code names it Handmade Ceramic Pretzel Mug / 250ml at $81.91.

September 2024 is the loudest capture. A bright green banner says Back-to-school savings and Classroom deals under $50, and a strip above the logo promises UP TO 60% OFF: Shop Labor Day deals in the app! The header gets a Categories button and a gift icon, which the code labels Gift Mode. The trend circles read Kids' Costumes, Pinkoween Decor, Wreaths, Signet Rings, Vintage Jackets and Lumbar Throw Pillows.

In July 2024 Etsy published new Creativity Standards. Every item has to be made, designed, handpicked or sourced by its seller, and the announcement put GenAI tools next to chisels, paintbrushes and 3D printing as ways to bring human ideas into visual form.^[8][9] The announcement framed it as the company’s mission to keep commerce human.

June 2025 is a Father’s Day page again, It’s not too late, and the photo’s description in the code reads like a guess: A man is wearing a denim apron, seemingly ready to grill.

The newest capture, from September 1, 2026, opens on Fall feels more special with these picks and The happiest housewarmings start here. Jump into featured interests suggests Leo Essentials, Astrological finds, and Postmodern Home Ideas, Decor that dares. Below the first rows the archive saved only grey loading placeholders. The code fills them in: the 2020 income figure is still there, and the footer now says We’re on a mission to keep commerce human.

2005 · We just opened!2005 · Then2026 · Fall feels more special2026 · Now

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The 2005 page counted its stock out loud: 78 pieces of jewelry, no furniture. The 2026 page shows no category counts. It suggests Top 100 Virgo Gifts. And by Etsy’s rule that vintage means 20 years or older,^[9] anything made in June 2005 has qualified as vintage since June 2025.

In 2005 the homepage’s category counts added up to 404. In 2026 it suggests Top 100 Virgo Gifts.Etsy, June 2005 → September 2026