{"id":4053,"date":"2019-07-09T20:05:19","date_gmt":"2019-07-09T20:05:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/spreecommerce.org\/?p=4053"},"modified":"2026-03-13T09:49:47","modified_gmt":"2026-03-13T09:49:47","slug":"which-marketplace-platform-should-you-choose-for-your-online-marketplace-business","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/spreecommerce.org\/which-marketplace-platform-should-you-choose-for-your-online-marketplace-business\/","title":{"rendered":"Which marketplace platform should you choose for your online marketplace business?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So you have 10-15 years of experience in your industry, know all about its potential, have contacts to the sellers, know how to reach the buyers, have read books such as &#8220;Platform scale&#8221; and plenty of blog posts, want to <a href=\"https:\/\/spreecommerce.org\/marketplace-ecommerce\/\">launch your own marketplace already<\/a>, hope for the first-mover advantage and the last missing piece of the puzzle is the marketplace E-commerce software. Now, you&#8217;re wondering which marketplace platform would be a good fit for your marketplace business. Here&#8217;s a quick walkthrough.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<h3>Basically, there are two types of marketplace platforms:<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>open-source, free to use, self-hosted<\/strong> &#8211; Spree Commerce Marketplace is a good example\n<ul>\n<li><strong>best fit:<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>lets you start small (on a budget MVP) and then scale up as the business takes off<\/li>\n<li>customize marketplace platform functionality to perfectly fit your business and its processes<\/li>\n<li>keep iterating, innovating and adding features to follow your business model evolution<\/li>\n<li>build your market position and a competitive advantage also through unique technology reflecting your business model<\/li>\n<li>own your tech intellectual property (IP)<\/li>\n<li>you can switch external dev teams relatively easily or hire an in-house dev team<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>things to remember and trade-offs:<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>you need a software development team and your own hosting<\/li>\n<li>the software framework is free but development time and hosting services are not<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>Software as a Service, subscription-based, cloud-hosted<\/strong> &#8211; there are 2-3 examples out there\n<ul>\n<li><strong>best fit:<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>you need a mostly generic, off-the-shelf solution<\/li>\n<li>time to market is of the essence<\/li>\n<li>you don&#8217;t care about the budget so much<\/li>\n<li>market share and a new revenue stream are a priority over IP ownership and project valuation<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li><strong>things to remember and trade-offs:<\/strong>\n<ul>\n<li>it&#8217;s going to cost you &#8211; some sources say that the minimal budget is $300k for the first year plus a revenue-sharing deal on top of it<\/li>\n<li>you&#8217;re locked in with that particular SaaS vendor forever<\/li>\n<li>you don&#8217;t own your marketplace platform technology IP<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>So which online marketplace platform should you choose for your marketplace project? It&#8217;s a question about your priorities and the kind of business you are building.<\/p>\n<h3>Are you a\u00a0<strong>marketplace startup<\/strong>\u00a0or a <strong>unique business model project<\/strong> which needs to:<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>watch your spending and maximize your ROI<\/li>\n<li>enable custom, industry-specific:\n<ul>\n<li>product category tree and product attribute matching between vendors and the marketplace<\/li>\n<li>product catalog and inventory sync for sellers<\/li>\n<li>product discovery for buyers<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>build advanced integrations with\n<ul>\n<li>all kinds of vendors \/ sellers\n<ul>\n<li>small vendors &#8211; no in-house dev team, manual data entry or CSV product catalog &amp; inventory sync<\/li>\n<li>bigger vendors &#8211; automated product catalog &amp; inventory sync:\n<ul>\n<li>FTP-based several times a day<\/li>\n<li>API-based in real time<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>3rd party service providers\n<ul>\n<li>payments streamlining checkout\n<ul>\n<li>pay-ins: credit card, PayPal and other payment methods<\/li>\n<li>pay-outs: manual or self-service<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>taxation as a\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.avalara.com\/us\/en\/blog\/2019\/02\/more-than-20-states-to-make-marketplace-facilitators-collect-sales-tax-for-sellers.html\">marketplace facilitator<\/a><\/li>\n<li>varied shipping and warehousing solutions depending on vendor capabilities and preferences<\/li>\n<li>marketing automation for up-selling and cross-selling<\/li>\n<li>advanced systems monitoring and analytics for making informed decisions<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>3rd party data sources\n<ul>\n<li>central product data warehouse<\/li>\n<li>vendor credit screening services<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>ensure scalability &#8211; start small and scale up without any platform related limitations<\/li>\n<li>own your tech platform and IP to increase your business valuation for the purposes of:\n<ul>\n<li>fundraising<\/li>\n<li>exit strategy<\/li>\n<li>credit application purposes (in the B2B space)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<li>operate and grow despite a high-risk merchant status and\/or a strict regulatory environment, eg.\n<ul>\n<li>alcohol<\/li>\n<li>tobacco<\/li>\n<li>CBD<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h3>Or are you a\u00a0<strong>corporate marketplace project<\/strong>\u00a0which needs to:<\/h3>\n<ul>\n<li>use a mostly generic marketplace platform functionality<\/li>\n<li>upload and update an unsophisticated product catalog<\/li>\n<li>achieve a short time to market<\/li>\n<li>mitigate software development risks (by avoiding any development)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Long story short, a simplified recommendation would be that SaaS solutions are optimal for corporate projects with significant financial and human resources available which aim to rent a marketplace platform, launch a marketplace project quickly, set up operations, onboard vendors, test the market, run with it or shut it down and never look back.<\/p>\n<p>On the other hand, using an open-source solution, such as\u00a0Spree Commerce Marketplace, makes sense for building an online marketplace business relying on its technology to build a competitive advantage, having industry-specific requirements, planning to raise some funding and one day be acquired or go public.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a rent vs. Own decision.<\/p>\n<p>Feel free to <a href=\"https:\/\/spreecommerce.org\/get-started\/\">drop us a line<\/a> and discuss your marketplace requirements.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So you have 10-15 years of experience in your industry, know all about its potential, have contacts to the sellers, know how to reach the buyers, have read books such as &#8220;Platform scale&#8221; and plenty of blog posts, want to launch your own marketplace already, hope for the first-mover advantage and the last missing piece [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":87,"featured_media":4104,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[327,146],"tags":[217,261,301],"class_list":["post-4053","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-marketplace","category-open-source-ecommerce","tag-marketplace","tag-open-source","tag-saas"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/spreecommerce.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4053","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/spreecommerce.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/spreecommerce.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spreecommerce.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/87"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spreecommerce.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4053"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/spreecommerce.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4053\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spreecommerce.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4104"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/spreecommerce.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4053"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spreecommerce.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4053"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/spreecommerce.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4053"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}