A marketplace looks like a store with more products. It is really two customers at once: shoppers who want to buy, and sellers who want to sell. You have to serve both, and the sellers are the harder half.
Start curated, not open
The most common mistake is opening the doors to anyone. An open marketplace needs moderation, dispute handling and fraud controls before it has a single happy buyer. A curated one starts with a small set of sellers you have personally vetted, so quality is high from day one and you can grow deliberately.
That is the shape we build: a vendor application and approval flow, so only sellers you have approved go live.
What a vendor marketplace needs
Vendor accounts and dashboards
Each seller logs in to their own area to manage their products, orders and payouts. They should never see another seller's data, and you should see everything.
One cart, many sellers
Shoppers should not have to check out separately with each seller. A single cart and a single checkout across vendors is what makes a marketplace feel like one store.
Commission and payouts
You earn by taking a commission on each sale. The platform needs to record the commission rate, track what each vendor is owed, and keep payout records so the books balance. Settle this model before you build: flat percentage, tiered, or per category.
Curated onboarding
Application, review, approval. Decide what you ask sellers for, who reviews them and how quickly.
Our Pro package includes all four in its Marketplace build, with a live demo to explore from both the shopper's and the seller's side.
Decisions to make before you build
- Commission rate and who pays fees. Are payment processing costs yours or the vendor's?
- Who handles shipping and returns? Usually the seller, but your shoppers will blame you, so set standards.
- Payout timing. Weekly, monthly, or after a hold period to cover refunds.
- Quality rules. Photo standards, description requirements, prohibited items.
- Support. Where does a buyer go when a seller disappears?
Write these down as marketplace terms. They are a legal and commercial matter, so get proper advice for your market. Payout handling can also involve regulation depending on how money moves, which is one more reason to take advice early.
Solve the cold start
A marketplace with no products repels buyers, and with no buyers repels sellers. The usual answer is to pick a narrow niche and recruit the first ten to twenty sellers yourself. A niche marketplace for one kind of maker or one kind of product beats a general one you cannot fill.
Own it, do not rent it
A marketplace is your business model, so the platform underneath matters more than for a normal store. Hosted retail platforms are not designed around vendor payouts, and bolting it on tends to be fragile. Owning the code means you can adapt commission rules and workflows as the business learns. We cover why in what owning your platform means.
Sell digital goods from many creators?
If your sellers deliver downloads or licences, combine the marketplace with the delivery infrastructure described in selling digital products.
Next step
Look at the Pro package, open the marketplace demo, and sketch your commission model on one page. If that page is easy to write, you are ready to brief us. Our done-for-you approach takes it from there.