Our marketplace development services cover the parts that make or break a marketplace: vendor onboarding, orders split across sellers, commissions, payouts and refunds. We advise, build and support, for B2C and B2B.
Supply and demand both exist and cannot find each other efficiently. You need liquidity before you need features.
Customers or suppliers, and opening the platform to third parties would widen the catalogue without widening your operation.
The product is somebody's time and a calendar, so booking, dispatch, cancellation and payment are the platform.
It works, it is stuck, and every change costs more than the last one.
A marketplace app worked with ten sellers. With fifty, payouts take a day of spreadsheet work, shipping rates per vendor are wrong, and every refund needs a manual fix.
We do custom marketplace development for B2C, B2B, services and rentals. The type decides the architecture, so we settle it first.
Many sellers, one catalogue, one checkout, split payouts, shipping and returns per seller.
Providers, availability, booking, dispatch, cancellation rules, payment held and released after delivery.
Inventory that comes back, deposits, damage, overlapping bookings.
B2B marketplace development has its own rules. Buyers work in company accounts with several users and approval limits. Prices are negotiated, so buyers request quotes instead of adding to cart. Payment may come on terms, weeks after delivery. We build for those flows from the start instead of adding them to a retail template.
Supply pulled from many sources and normalised into one catalogue a buyer can compare.
None of them is a feature, and all four have cost our clients more thought than the technology did.
An empty marketplace has nothing to show either side. Version one has to let you seed supply by hand, onboard sellers in bulk instead of one at a time, and look credible with ten sellers rather than a thousand.
Different sellers describe the same thing differently, filters return nothing, and the platform looks empty when it is not. A shared vocabulary your team maintains without a developer is core work, not admin.
Verification before a seller can trade, moderation, reviews only from buyers who actually bought, and a way to handle disputes. In most markets this is what makes a stranger transact.
Both sides can meet on your platform and do the deal somewhere else. Keeping the transaction inside touches identity, messaging, quoting and payment, and it decides whether you have a business or a directory.
Listings and search are the visible part. The hard part is what happens to an order after the buyer pays. Before we build, we walk through the ugliest transactions your marketplace will see:
If the system handles these cleanly, the rest is easier. Payouts usually run through a provider such as Stripe Connect, and every movement of money has a record finance can check.
A marketplace is three products sharing one database, and the third one is the one people underestimate.
Search across every seller, profiles and reviews, booking or cart and checkout, order and delivery tracking, saved lists and repeat orders, and messaging.
Onboarding with verification, catalogue or availability management including bulk upload with a review step before anything goes live, order handling, payouts and balances, and a view of how they are performing.
The console that makes the business runnable: approvals and moderation queues, commission settings, the shared vocabulary, money movement and reporting, dispute handling, and the ability to edit content and translations without a release.
Across all of it: several currencies and languages, payments and payouts, notifications, reporting, and mobile apps where the market is mobile first.
| Criteria | Marketplace SaaS or a store app | Custom marketplace |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | Testing an idea, a small number of vendors, standard retail orders | A proven model with dozens of vendors or more, B2B rules, unusual money flows |
| Payouts and commissions | The tool's rules | Your rules, including tiers, adjustments and terms |
| Vendor onboarding | Standard forms | Your checks, documents and approval steps |
| Data and exit | Tied to the tool; switching later is painful | Your code, your data, your history |
| Cost | Monthly fees that grow with sales | Build cost plus support, no per-transaction fee to a platform |
If you're still testing demand, start on a SaaS tool. We'll help you pick one. Move to custom when the tool starts deciding how your business works.
Most marketplaces fail on liquidity, not on features. So we start with a minimum viable marketplace: listings, search and filters, buyer and vendor accounts, checkout, commissions and payouts. You launch with real buyers and sellers, learn what they use, and grow the marketplace platform development from there. Nothing in the MVP gets thrown away when you scale.
We connect your marketplace to payment providers (Stripe Connect, PayPal), tax and shipping services, vendor ERPs and inventory feeds, CRM and email tools, analytics, and identity checks for vendor onboarding (KYC) where you need them. Vendors can sync products by API, feed or spreadsheet.
Buyers browse on the web and on phones; vendors manage orders on the go. We develop responsive web apps plus iOS and Android apps when the marketplace needs them, with a vendor dashboard and an operator admin panel.
We add AI where it saves your team time: catalog cleanup and categorization of vendor listings, search that understands buyer intent, recommendations, review moderation and fraud signals. Each feature starts with a clear task and measurable result.
We build on common technologies another team could maintain: React and Next.js, Node.js, Python or PHP/Laravel, PostgreSQL, and AWS or Google Cloud. Payments run through certified providers, so card data never touches your servers. Access is set by role for buyers, vendors and operators, and every money movement is logged for audits and disputes.
We build your MVP or a defined feature set.
A team that keeps developing the marketplace after launch.
Our developers join your in-house team.
We pick up a live marketplace another vendor built, audit it and keep it running.
Curbside Kitchen matches food trucks with offices and venues in the United States. We built it and then developed it with the client from September 2017 to November 2024. Seven years, in a category where plenty of platforms never see a second one.
Read the case study →
SportHub is a sports and lifestyle booking platform in Qatar that combines venue discovery, packages, events and payments across web and mobile.
Read the case study →
Marvellous is an on-demand nanny booking marketplace in the UK, with profiles, chat, reviews, matching and admin tooling for parents and certified caregivers.
Read the case study →
Marcel is a marketplace app for artists, where creators manage profiles, listings, messaging with buyers and payments in one place.
Read the case study →Projects start with us from $10,000 for discovery and a defined model.
| Engagement | Range | Duration |
|---|---|---|
| Discovery and model definition | from $10,000 | 2 to 3 weeks |
| First working version | $30,000 to $70,000 | 3 to 4 months |
| Marketplace with negotiated pricing, wallets or tenders | $120,000 to $250,000+ | 6 to 12 months |
| Continuous development | from $4,000 per month | ongoing |
What moves the number: how many sides and roles, whether money moves through the platform and how payouts split, booking and availability rules, mobile apps or web only, how many external systems have to agree, and how much your team moderates.
Deciding what to build should cost less than building it, which is why the first number is small.
The model on paper, the vocabulary, the money flow, a scope for version one and an agreed scope and cost for it
A working platform with both sides and the operator console, enough to run real transactions
Onboarding at volume, moderation tooling, reporting
Roadmap work at an agreed monthly capacity
As a marketplace software development company, we start with discovery and an MVP. Version one leaves things out on purpose. We tell you which, and why, before you sign.
CLIENT REVIEWS
“Attract Group has deployed top-notch professionals who manage the project efficiently and ensure timely delivery of outputs. They also impress us with their transparency in their technical skills and business consulting values.”
“Attract Group delivered a high-quality product on a tight deadline. They continue to impress with their knowledge on all things related to development. They're very professional and easy to communicate with.”
“Attract Group's efforts resulted in a bug-free app that beta users could easily navigate. The team provided frequent updates on their progress and was highly accommodating throughout the engagement. Attract Group was organized and responsive.”
01–03 / 03 CURATED · 39 TOTAL ON CLUTCH
Two to three weeks, a fixed price, and a document that says what the model is, what version one contains and what it costs. Useful even if you build it with someone else.
Prefer to read first? Our guide to the aggregator and marketplace business model.
From $10,000 for discovery and a defined model. A first working version usually runs $30,000 to $70,000 over three to four months. Negotiated pricing, wallets or complex payout splits push it higher.
Version one is built so you can seed supply yourself, onboard sellers in bulk, and look credible with a handful of them. Liquidity is a commercial problem, but the platform makes it either easier or much harder.
Only if your market is mobile first. On-demand and booking marketplaces usually are. Procurement marketplaces usually are not. Responsive web first, apps when usage justifies them, is the cheaper order.
A take rate per transaction, balances held in the platform with cash-outs your team approves, or direct payouts against each seller's share. Split payments across several sellers in one order are normal and we have shipped them.
Yes, and most of our long engagements started that way. We begin with an audit that says plainly whether to extend it or replace it in stages.
By design rather than by policy. Messaging, quoting and payment run inside the platform, and the transaction record carries enough value in documents, history, ratings and dispute cover that leaving costs both sides something.
For a bespoke build, our marketplace and commerce work runs on Laravel or Django with a React or Vue front end, PostgreSQL or MySQL, and a separate service for anything real time. If a platform fits your model better, we will say so on the first call.
Yes. Code, repository, documentation, environments, and a defined exit, from day one.
Usually a payment provider such as Stripe Connect holds and splits funds, so you don't hold vendor money yourself. We set up the flow, the fees and the reporting around it.
The system reverses or adjusts the commission automatically when an order is refunded or partly cancelled, and records the change for both sides.
Yes. Commission rates, payout schedules, shipping rules and approval steps can be set per vendor or per vendor group.
Ask them to walk through a split order with a partial refund, and show how payouts and commissions handle it. Ask who owns the code and the transaction history.
Yes, and it's the approach we recommend. The MVP is built on the same foundation you'll scale on, so growth doesn't mean a rebuild.
You own the code, the data and the transaction history. The marketplace runs on standard technologies and your own cloud account, so you can move to another team at any time.
Tell us which sides you already have, how money should move, and whether the market is mobile first. We will reply with a clear next step and a fixed-price discovery scope.
