A multi-vendor marketplace is like a mall that has an ‘n’ number of small shops run by individual vendors. It is an online platform where multiple vendors come together to sell their products in one place.
To build such a marketplace, you need to choose an eCommerce platform that can handle multiple vendors simultaneously and process many transactions smoothly.
In this article, I will show you some of the best eCommerce platforms that enable you to build a powerful multi-vendor eCommerce platform and help you grow it with in-built sales and marketing tools.
Top Multi-vendor Ecommerce Platforms
While choosing a multi-vendor eCommerce platform, here are a few important factors that you should consider –
- Robust Admin Control Panel
- Easy-to-use Vendor dashboard
- Smooth Product Management
- Advanced Analytics Reporting
- Powerful Security measures
- Seamless 3rd-party tool integrations
Keeping this in mind, I have ranked these top multi-vendor eCommerce platforms that you can choose from.
Ready to dive in? Let’s get started.
1. BigCommerce
If you already have experience with BigCommerce, you can build your marketplace using the Multi-Vendor Marketplace extension by Webkul. It enables you to add multiple sellers, monitor their orders, and manage their listings in the front end.
To make the best out of it, you can create a seller membership plan that enables the sellers to purchase during the registration. In this way, you’ll get a commission fee from each seller based on the subscription plan they choose. If you want to learn about BigCommerce, you should read our in-depth review of it.
Benefits for Admins –
Admins can use the intuitive panel to add products, view different categories, and manage orders and sales. To make it more convenient, there’s an option to add multiple sellers from the admin account and assign any product to them.
Benefits for Vendors –
Vendors have an actionable panel to manage their products and panel settings. They can add products directly from the backend and change the order status. The sellers can also withdraw the request to become the store’s admin.
Key Features of BigCommerce –
- Admin can sync products from the ‘BigCommerce store’ to the ‘marketplace’.
- Store owners can earn per-sale commission from sellers.
- Auto-approval of the product.
- Create a flexible payout process for sellers.
Pricing Plans – BigCommerce multi-vendor marketplace offers a 10-day free trial. It charges a recurring fee of $10/month and comes with zero upfront fees.
2. Shopify
Shopify is a popular eCommerce platform and if you have experience with Shopify, you can build a multi-vendor marketplace using the Multi-Vendor Marketplace app. It gives more flexibility by syncing your seller products directly from their eCommerce stores like Prestashop, Shopify, Etsy, and WooCommerce.
A visually interactive homepage is designed that deliver the latest updates and current activities of your marketplace. To boost your profit levels, you can set global commissions for all sellers and enable separate commissions for individual sellers.
Want to learn more about the platform? Read our in-depth Shopify review to know everything about its features & functionalities.
Benefits for Admins –
As an admin, you can select which product type your vendor will sell. You can also assign the existing product to your vendor and enable/disable tax options on their products. For the comfort of managing your store, you can add staff members to handle the operations.
Benefits for Vendors –
A well-designed and informative profile page is displayed for all the registered vendors on the marketplace. To build credibility, customers can rate the vendor directly on the sellers’ page. As a result, your marketplace will have authentic vendors that help in winning customers’ trust.
Key Features of Shopify –
- Multilingual and multi-location capability
- Admins can send reminder emails to sellers for order fulfillment.
- Multivendor API to improve functionality
- Assigning badges to sellers
- Option to add booking with the products
- 0% transaction fees
Pricing Plans – Shopify marketplace by Webkul offers a 15-day free trial, and the plans vary based on the number of active sellers and storage limit.
The Basic Plan starts at $10/month and allows up to 3 active sellers and a 3GB storage limit. It goes up to the Pro Plan, allowing up to unlimited sellers and a 15GB storage limit costing $45/month.
With all these plans, you can send 10,000 emails/month, and 24×7 support is also available. However, if you wish to create an expandable marketplace, choosing the Pro plan will be the best choice.
3. Dokan
Dokan is a popular WooCommerce multi-vendor plugin that lets you create any type of marketplace and boosts functionality by offering lots of premium modules.
You can start building your marketplace by choosing any WooCommerce-compatible theme. It supports hundreds of payment gateways and attracts customers worldwide by supporting more than 20 languages.
Benefits for Admins –
It provides a robust multi-vendor control system, allowing you to manage access to vendors and control their selling rights on the platform. You can also broadcast important announcements for all the vendors or specific vendors, which will be displayed on their dashboards.
Benefits for Vendors –
Vendors get a rich dashboard to manage their day-to-day activities. They can view the store sales reports, handle discounts, shipping tasks, and much more. Vendors have the full rights to configure their store by including additional information from the front end.
Key Features of Dokan –
- Free plan available
- Product bulk edit
- Access to powerful reports.
- Order management and seller verification
- Vendor withdrawal system.
- WC Booking integration.
- PayPal Marketplace.
Pricing Plans – Dokan offers a free plan that lets you develop a simple marketplace with a good set of features. With Dokan’s free plan, you get a frontend vendor dashboard, add unlimited vendors, access store widgets, and get WordPress.org support.
It also offers a 14-day money-back guarantee for paid plans that starts at $127/year. The paid plans give you access to advanced features and premium modules to build a full-fledged marketplace.
4. X-Cart – Popular Multi-vendor Ecommerce Software
If you’re looking for a multi-vendor marketplace platform that can handle unlimited vendors and an extensive product catalog, then X-Cart is my best choice. It offers unparalleled flexibility such that you can design your marketplace precisely as per your needs.
You can let your vendors sell products instantly or manually approve them by setting pre-moderation rules. In addition to this, you’ll have the right to adjust your vendor’s access to customer information, catalog, orders, and shipping settings.
Benefits for Admins –
With admin rights, you can control the store, set up, and monitor the entire shopping process. Updating vendor profiles, defining commission percentages, and configuring taxes and payments is hassle-free and can be done smoothly.
Benefits for Vendors –
Vendors can easily manage their inventory by adding products, setting coupons, and managing discounts. They can also chat with customers, update global product options, and access a separate convenient dashboard for efficient store management.
Key Features of X-Cart –
- Over 140+ payment methods like PayPal, Apple Pay, Amazon Pay, Stripe, Skrill, and much more
- Ability to search products by brand
- Integration with Google Analytics and MixPanel for in-depth tracking
- Use sales-tax automation tools
- Extensive filtering options to minimize friction
Pricing Plans – You’ll have to contact their multI-vendor expert or schedule a call to discuss the pricing plans.
5. CS-Cart – Power-packed Multi-Vendor Platform
With over 35,000 virtual malls built on CS-Cart, it is another popular and award-winning multi-vendor eCommerce software packed with 500+ rich features. It is easy enough for anyone to successfully build and grow your eCommerce business.
Benefits for Admins –
As an admin, you can configure your marketplace with advanced features – automate payouts, create category-based commissions, approve products easily, build customizable one-page checkout, and manage all the storefronts from a single admin panel.
Benefits for Vendors –
Vendors can mass-edit their products by 45 parameters and create a unique design for their micro-stores. To strengthen the vendor-customer relationship, customers can communicate with the vendors directly from the product page. This aspect is crucial as it helps convert first-time visitors into paid customers.
Key Features of CS-Cart –
- Create configurable vendor plans
- Advanced order management system
- Built-in sales analysis tool
- Multicurrency and multilingual support
- 70 integrated payment methods – PayPal, 2Checkout, Authorize.net, SagePay, and much more
- 8 real-time + manual shipping methods
- Feedback and review system with an interactive star rating for vendors
- Advanced promotional and cross-selling tools
Pricing Plans – CS-Cart offers a 15-day free demo and allows for selling unlimited products at zero transaction fees. The Standard Plan costs $1450 with 1 year of free updates and goes up to $7500 with multiple storefronts, warehouses, themes, and access to mobile app source code for customization.
For more advanced and custom features they also have an Enterprise plan that gives access to features like SLA, NDA, high-load infrastructure, priority support, and access to the repository.
6. ZielCommerce – Enterprise-Grade Multi-Vendor Platform
ZielCommerce is a feature-rich and enterprise-grade platform that creates a scalable multi-vendor marketplace. It is a headless eCommerce platform that offers high-level revenue models, secured payment gateways, and lifetime ownership for your marketplace growth.
A standout aspect is that it loads at lightning speed levels, contributing to a joyful shopping experience. Moreover, with its intelligent automation capabilities, you can effortlessly get rid of tiring admin tasks that suck your precious time.
Benefits for Admins –
Admins get full control over their vendors, view complete vendor transactions, reject vendors, credit transactions, and run custom reports. To avoid a complex and time-consuming process, admins can assign taxes via ZielCommerce’s built-in tax module.
Benefits for Vendors –
Vendors can view order summaries, sales reports, best-selling products, and revenue details in their dashboards. To garner potential buyers, vendors can display banner advertisements in their allotted space to increase visibility, traffic, and profits.
Key Features of ZielCommerce –
- Single-click checkout page
- Hassle-free user group management
- Advanced product listing management
- Location-based product sorting
- In-built marketing tools like Google shopping API, affiliate module, banners, automated email marketing, and much more
- Custom SSL certificates
- Secured wallet management
Pricing Plans – You’ll have to contact the sales team to discuss the pricing plans.
7. Kreezalid – No Code Multi-Vendor Ecommerce Platform
Kreezalid is a cost-effective multi-vendor eCommerce platform that lets you launch your custom marketplace with zero coding. It provides a quick, easy-setup, modular, and responsive design that escalates your business to the next amazing level.
Customers visiting your marketplace can order physical goods, book services, rent goods, and download digital assets. Besides, the platform allows setting up escrow and commission fee management (fixed, variable, hybrid) that diversifies your revenue portfolio.
Benefits for Admins –
From the admin panel, it becomes easy to moderate, update, and edit the listings that your vendors publish. It provides flexibility to organize listings in different categories based on the product type.
It’s also possible to allow vendors to set a minimum quantity per order. With this option, vendors can increase their profits by selling their products quickly.
Benefits for Vendors –
Vendors can have their own dedicated front store to showcase all their offerings in a single place. They can specify the available stock/quantity for their product/service and effectively manage variants which helps customers easily select the best version of the product.
Key Features of Kreezalid –
- Collection of premium themes for your project
- Connect your custom domain name
- Access to HTTP-based API
- Display Google map on the listings
- Native integration with Stripe and MangoPay
Pricing Plans – Kreezalid offers a 14-day free trial and a single plan costing $299/month. You can add up to 25000 users (vendor or customer), 50,000 listings, multiple order types, API access, and much more. It also comes with email support.
By paying an extra $95/month, you can enjoy premium customer support to resolve your issues quickly.
8. Sharetribe – Multi-vendor Ecommerce Software
Sharetribe is an advanced cloud-based multi-vendor eCommerce platform designed to maintain and scale your business. It offers two products – Sharetribe Go and Sharetribe Flex. With Sharetribe Go, you can develop a marketplace without coding, and Sharetribe Flex lets you build a customized marketplace with powerful APIs.
It supports unlimited transactions, listings, and traffic to outgrow your marketplace revenue. The best part is that you can modify your user experience, serve a specific audience, and visually communicate with your brand’s mesmerizing look and feel.
Benefits for Admins –
The admin panel gives a complete picture of all the undergoing activities in your marketplace. As an admin, you access transactions, listings, reviews, and messages. You can make your marketplace secure by banning users if they violate your terms and conditions.
Benefits for Vendors –
Vendors can create their own listings and customize product information, pricing, images, and much more. The platform also provides personalized profile pages for all vendors that display their listings, bios, and reviews from buyers.
Key Features of Sharetribe –
- Advanced filtering and categorization tools
- Accept payments from 200+ countries and in 25+ currencies
- Multiple signup options – Facebook, Linkedin, Google accounts, or signup form
- Enables easy transition to Flex to unlock more advanced features.
- Multiple order flows for different types of purchases.
Pricing Plans – Sharetribe Go offers a 30-day free trial and comes with 4 major pricing plans. The Paid plan starts at $99/month and goes up to $299/month, allowing up to 1,00,000 users. You can enjoy zero hidden charges and lock-in for the paid plans.
Sharetribe Flex lets you develop the marketplace for free. But it charges monthly fees when you start inviting users. The monthly fee is the sum of the subscription and transaction fees. The transaction fee is calculated based on your monthly transactional volume.
9. Shuup – Powerful Multivendor Ecommerce Platform
Shuup is an open-source multi-vendor eCommerce platform that helps launch horizontal and vertical marketplaces. It has ready-to-go and powerful built-in multi-vendor features that outgrow your marketplace potential to an unmatchable level.
To make shopping convenient, you can assign particular attributes to specific products and product groups. In this way, customers can view only the attributes and filter them to find their favorite products quickly.
Benefits for Admins –
Admins can approve all the products from verified buyers only. With the vendor subscription plan, it’s possible to charge vendors monthly for advanced features. The welcome message on the dashboard guides them in a step-by-step manner to complete the registration process.
Overall, Shuup makes the process smooth and easy for admins to manage unlimited vendors and millions of product listings.
Benefits for Vendors –
Vendors can create or upload their products and sell digital downloads, service bookings, video streaming, and much more. They can also create their own basket promotions, including free shipping, discounts, rewards, and coupon codes. Moreover, settings for automated holidays and timed sales can also be enabled to boost sales.
Key Features of Shuup –
- A full-fledged content management system
- Add even more functionalities by upgrading to Shuup Next
- Access built-in logic to develop complex automated enterprise solutions
- Set numerous shipping methods based on different factors
- Seamless UX for all device types
- Streamlined order management
Pricing Plans – Shuup charges $299/month, including multi-vendor eCommerce features, email support, developing multiple marketplace types, and setting up within a few hours. However, it incurs an additional $100/month if you add more admins.
Wrapping Up
As discussed above, selecting the best platform to build a multi-vendor marketplace entirely depends on the kind of product you want to sell, catalog size, technical skills, and other factors.
So, first, determine your requirements and budget, then pick the one that matches your needs. Rest assured, all the above-listed multi-vendor eCommerce platforms are the best in the category.
I hope this article helped you determine the best eCommerce platform to build a multi-vendor store. If you want to explore more options, you should check our best eCommerce platforms to build online stores.
