7 Best Multi Vendor Ecommerce Platforms To Build Your Marketplace
Ecommerce marketplaces like Amazon, Flipkart, Alibaba have taken the online world by storm. Aren’t you inspired by them and want to build your online store on the same model?
If yes, your first step is to decide the best ecommerce platform to get your online marketplace up and capture the growing ecommerce market.
There is no better time to start your multi vendor marketplace. Did you know that more than half of the online sales come through marketplace channels across the world? Don’t let this staggering business opportunity go in vain and let nothing stop you to start your online business and make it a huge success story.
Why does your business need a marketplace website?
With more than 57% of the global ecommerce sales taking place on multi vendor marketplaces, it is impossible to skip the idea of building one. After all, a business needs to be where the customers are. With the amazing growth numbers, ecommerce business shows no signs of slowing down.
Catch the wave of digital transformation with the best ecommerce platforms. Now we already know that it is a good idea to start an online marketplace. So, the first step towards this idea is to choose the best platform.
Top 7 marketplace platforms to build your ecommerce marketplace
1. StoreHippo
StoreHippo is the leading ecommerce platform that offers a comprehensive solution to build a variety of multi vendor marketplaces like B2B, B2C and B2B2C. The cherry on the top is that this turnkey solution allows you to build your online marketplace by using the simple drag and drop tools.
It comes handy with 300+ inbuilt features, a variety of business modules and tools to make it easy to setup your marketplace, register multiple vendors, manage the products, orders, and payments, earn and manage commissions, and a lot more. The adaptive payment feature makes it super easy to split payment between multiple vendors and ease your administrative processes.
The best part is yet to come. You need not buy or subscribe to any additional apps, plugins, or extensions with StoreHippo. It offers you a complete one-stop solution for all your ecommerce marketplace. The inbuilt features and modules handle everything, from onboarding vendors, product listings, order placements, delivery, payment, marketing, returns, refunds, commissions. The advanced features of marketing automation also help you to offer personalized discounts and follow-up on lost orders.
On top of that, you get pre-integrated domestic and international payment gateways to offer multiple payment options to your customers. The seamless logistics integration of StoreHippo can be proved as a major boon for your multi vendor marketplace as shipping remains the top priority for multi vendor marketplaces.
StoreHippo is not only made for domestic but your global success. It’s go-global features like multilingual support, multi-currency support helps you to reach global markets without any hassles. The robust tax engine allows you to set multi-tier taxes depending upon the product categories and locations of the vendors.
2. BigCommerce
BigCommerce is another platform to build a multi vendor marketplace. It offers an application to convert any online store into a multi-seller portal. Once it is converted, you can add vendors, get the products uploaded and start selling on the marketplace.
The admin dashboard of the platform is easy to use and provides an overview of the business like products, orders, sellers, and other key information. You can control the product and vendor information from the dashboard itself. Along with that, the comprehensive features help you to manage the everyday business smoothly.
However, BigCommerce is comparatively expensive as the subscription price for regular online store and ecommerce marketplace apps have to be paid separately. Also, the free design templates for multi vendor marketplaces are very limited. It also places a limit on the annual online sales that forces the marketplace owners to upgrade the subscription plan as they grow over the time.
3. Magento
It is one of the most common names when you plan to build a marketplace website and a lot of businesses are choosing the multi vendor features of this platform. Let us clarify that you need to set up the multi vendor part in Magento through its marketplace extension as it is not an inbuilt solution offering.
With this extension, you can onboard vendors, add products, and sell through the website. The vendors also get their dashboard to manage their business including products, wish lists, customer reviews etc. You can also setup flexible commission rate of multiple sellers within the multi vendor marketplace extension
While Magento is free and probably, this is what has made it so popular. But the marketplace extension is paid. And you need to be a coding expert if you want to customize your website on Magento. This is one of the primary reasons why businesses are moving to turnkey ecommerce solutions.
4. Shopify
Shopify is one of the most popular multi vendor marketplace platforms and offers support to a diverse range of online business models. Starting your online store with Shopify is easy but you have to pick a lot of paid plugins to make it according to your business requirements. Like, it does not have a native multi-seller feature and offers it through Webkul plugin.
There is no choice other than buying the additional apps and plugins to make your ecommerce marketplace fully functional. Once you get the right apps in place, you can add any number of products, vendors and get going with your online business. Also, Shopify requires you to hire a developer if you are not a coding expert because a lot of app syncing processes are required to run your multi vendor marketplace.
5. 3DCart
3Dcart allows you to set up your multi seller website quickly and have a well-organized dashboard to manage your business. It offers a pre-designed set of free and premium website themes for your online storefront.
The platform also offers an inbuilt SEO solution with inventory tracking and advanced reporting to help you manage the wide range of products. The shipping tools, accounting tools, and third-party integrations help you to manage the marketplace well and good. However, 3DCart is more expensive as you need a few necessary add-ons with the inbuilt solution features.
6. Yo!Kart
Yo!Kart multi vendor marketplace platform is also a very popular choice to build multi vendor marketplace. Along with the multi seller functionality, it also offers a great interface, email marketing tools, easy to use dashboard, 15+ payment gateways, social media integration, etc. It also offers free technical support to the users for the first year.
However, you will require a team of developers once the free technical support period ends because even the smallest of changes in the platform require coding modifications.
7. X-Cart
X-Cart offers an open-source ecommerce software to get started with your multi vendor marketplace. The software comes either in the license-based downloadable version or the cloud-based solution. You can choose any option based on your business requirements. It helps you to run your online marketplace with multiple features and also offers hosting, design and development work, SSL certificates, paid technical support, and more.
However, launching a multi seller portal with X-cart requires you to hire developers that may add to your business cost and need additional time to launch your online marketplace. In addition, some of the users are not very satisfied with the offered design templates and lack of mobile-friendly features.
Final words
Choose the best multi vendor marketplace platform
The list of top 7 marketplace platforms has given an idea about the features and functionalities required to build your marketplace website. Now, it is the time to choose the best platform that is the most suitable for your unique business requirements.
To make the most of the growing ecommerce industry, you need an ideal multi vendor marketplace builder that has inbuilt features and modules to manage your business. Start evaluating every platform mentioned above according to your business mode, required customizations, budget, business model, and ease of use. Eventually, you will end up making the best business decision.
Hope we have contributed our part to help you make an informed choice. Before you make the final choice, make sure that you have a through understanding of features, scalability, and subscriptions. Book your free trial with these platforms to explore the full-fledged platform on your own.
