Is a marketplace the right option for you?
Compare e-commerce vs true 3-sided marketplaces.
260+ digital marketplaces in 170 countries with 1m+ products
Do you need a marketplace?
A marketplace has three key elements: a buyer, a seller, and an admin portal. Each has a unique set of roles and responsibilities that ensure the marketplace works properly.
If you are looking to have multiple merchants sell their products or services through your website, with the ability to have buyers purchase from several merchants at one time, then creating a custom marketplace is your best option.
The level of control you have over the marketplace will be much more beneficial for your operations and sales than just having an online shop.
Buy vs build your marketplace
While many companies opt to build their marketplace in-house, this approach often brings about challenges such as high costs, longer time-to-market, and inevitable hurdles and delays. With over 11 years of experience and 500K development hours invested in perfecting marketplaces, we've conducted extensive research to understand the best solutions for each marketplace use case.
Rapid deployment
Powerful out-of-the-box functionality
Marketplace-ready API codes
Long deployment time building from scratch
Requires extensive project assessment (and tech stack selection, developers etc)
Less expensive to go-to-market
Less expensive to scale-up
Extremely expensive labour cost to hire planning and development resources
Extensive developer resources and support
Software maintenance included
Post-launch support available
Far less flexibility to change development partner once locked-in
Software maintenance and post-launch support additional to project cost
Flexible security and hosting options
Secure cloud-hosting included
Self-hosting options available
Hosting cost additional to project cost
High flexibility by using APIs for customisations and integrations
Some control but incomparable flexibility to scale and easily adapt
E-commerce platform vs
3-sided marketplaces
While some e-commerce platforms offer marketplace functionality, it often requires additional work and plugins, tying you to their ecosystem. In contrast, building a true 3-sided marketplace with buyer, seller, and admin portals grants you full control over the entire experience. Customise it to your exact needs, avoiding the limitations of a rigid platform.
Templated solutions
Pre-built template marketplaces to get you up and running quickly.
True 3-sided marketplace
Central hub connecting admins, sellers and buyers.
Lean architecture
Simplify the marketplace building process for speedy deployment.
All in one marketplace
Multi-merchant enterprise-level marketplace with open APIs.
Flexible hosting & security
Bank grade security to safeguard your information.
Customer reviews
Ready to build
your marketplace?
Discover the power of our API-based technology and launch your fully customisable and flexible marketplace faster. Contact the Arcadier team for more information.