Multi-vendor online shops, aka marketplaces, are gold mines when done right. The big dogs are Etsy and eBay, but you can find popular niche multi-vendor sites such as ThemeForest.
The idea behind multi-vendor sites is to allow people, or companies, to create profiles and post their products for sale.
When customers come to your multi-vendor site they can pick one item from John Q web designer and another from Company XYZ and it is all processed through the same shopping cart.
Top 6 Multi Vendor Marketplace Platforms
- Shopify + Multivendor Marketplace
- CS.Cart Multi-Vendor
- Yo!Kart
- Sharetribe
- X-Cart Marketplace
- IXXO Cart Multi-vendor
- Top 6 Multi Vendor Marketplace Platforms
- What is a Multi Vendor Marketplace Platform?
- Best Multi Vendor Marketplace Platforms
- Any Questions?
What is a Multi Vendor Marketplace Platform?
A multi vendor ecommerce marketplace platform is an online system that allows multiple sellers to create their own stores within one larger platform to sell their products or services.
This type of marketplace is similar to a virtual shopping mall, where each store has its own brand presence but is housed under the umbrella of the marketplace.
Key features of multi-vendor ecommerce marketplace platforms:
- Individual Seller Stores: Each vendor can set up their own storefront within the platform, where they can list their products, manage inventory, and customize their shop's appearance.
- Centralized Marketplace: While vendors manage their individual stores, the marketplace owner maintains the overall platform, ensuring that everything runs smoothly, from search functionality to payment processing.
- Shared Shopping Cart: Customers can often add products from multiple vendors to a single shopping cart and check out once, even though they're buying from different sellers.
- Payment Processing: The platform handles all payments, which are then distributed to the vendors according to the terms set by the marketplace.
- Order Management and Fulfillment: Vendors are responsible for managing orders and shipping their products, although some marketplaces may offer fulfillment services.
- Commission Structure: The marketplace owner typically earns a commission on sales made by vendors on the platform.
- Customer Service: The marketplace may provide customer service on behalf of the vendors, although responsibilities can vary.
The multi-vendor payment processing system divides the payments behind the two vendors and everyone goes home happy.
This ecosystem of people creating and selling in one place helps the customer find a more diverse set of products, and you, the site owner can make some big bucks through fees.
Unfortunately, some of the more popular ecommerce platforms such as Shopify and Squarespace are not able to provide multi-vendor interfaces for you.
So, this time we put together the ultimate list of multi-vendor online shops for you to create a wonderful community and potentially make some big bucks. Let’s have a look.
Best Multi Vendor Marketplace Platforms
1. Shopify + Multivendor Marketplace
When you download and use the Multivendor Marketplace app, Shopify users can add an unlimited number of sellers to their marketplace.
This gives you the capability to transform your Shopify store into another multivendor marketplace. Who knows?
Perhaps you'll rival the likes of Amazon and eBay someday?
Not to mention, each of your sellers has the opportunity to upload and sell an unlimited number of products to sell to your customers.
You'll also be able to sync your products with stores you have with all the following platforms:
- Shopify Store
- WordPress
- Prestasop Store
- Magento Store
How awesome is that?!
Pricing
On top of your regular Shopify subscription (see our Shopify review here), the Multivendor marketplace app will set you back $10 per month. However, you can get started with a 15-day free trial.
2. CS.Cart Multi-Vendor
CS.Cart is a popular and powerful ecommerce software that allows you to run your site off of your own server, improving security and giving you complete control over your content and maintenance procedures.
The standard packages from CS.Cart doesn't let you make a multi-vendor site, but luckily the company provides a completely separate package for making this happen.
This is wonderful news since you don’t have to integrate a separate plugin – it’s all packaged into one nice platform.
It’s a little more costly compared to the Magento add-on, but it tends to even out when you start thinking about the Magento licensing fees.
Overall, the CS.Cart Multi-Vendor platform provides a sleek, single storefront for vendors to make profiles and sell products.
Customers can place products from multiple vendors in their shopping carts, and you can have an unlimited number of vendor accounts.
Not to mention, the vendor admin area allows vendor-specific shipping methods, payout recording, and powerful product display tools.
Pricing
$1450 (lifetime)
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3. Yo!Kart
Yo!Kart is one of the leading eCommerce multi-vendor platforms to launch a B2C, B2B, or P2P marketplace.
It is a standalone platform where you don’t need to rely on third-party plugins or extensions to create a multi-vendor store.
With Yo!Kart multi-vendor platform, you can onboard unlimited vendors to your online marketplace. There are separate dashboards for the admin and seller to streamline marketplace operations. Also, there are individual vendor storefronts for sellers to personalize the shop as per their brand name.
The multivendor platform allows buyers to add/buy products from multiple vendors in the same cart. The marketplace owner can manage shipping at the order level or item level. Also, to automate Shipping, the platform has been pre-integrated with ShipStation API.
The ecommerce solution is highly flexible, scalable, and fully customizable to cater to individual business requirements. Yo!Kart has essential eCommerce features like product inventory management, real-time split payment, automated tax management, and more in-built.
The platform is pre-integrated with 20+ payment methods, robust CMS, native buyer apps, and popular third-party APIs. The multi-vendor platform is tested to handle over 1 million products and 250+ concurrent users successfully.
Overall, Yo!Kart is a great choice to create a successful online marketplace. You can contact their team and ask for a demo before taking the final decision.
Pricing
Its B2C version pricing starts at $999 (lifetime), whereas the B2B version costs $1999 (lifetime).
Sharetribe is intriguing because the system is built solely to help people create marketplace (multi-vendor) websites.
They don’t mess around with standard ecommerce sites, so you can rest easy knowing they focus on this one area.
The initial starter package lets you have up to 300 members, and if you pay for the highest package you can manage up to 100,000 members.
What’s cool is that you don’t have to stick to the normal sales strategy. Rather, Sharetribe allows rentals, services and more.
The setup only takes a few minutes, and the global payments are good for accepting just about any credit card or online payment system like PayPal.
Users create listings and manage their own profiles, with features for including photos, pricing, location and product information.
The white label design is nice for attracting vendors, since they can upload their own logos, and the messaging and order management system is perfect for vendors to keep in contact with customers.
Pricing
$39 per month to $239 per month
Don't forget to check out our Sharetribe review.
5. X-Cart Marketplace
X-cart delivers tools to small and large businesses that require an ecommerce platform. The package we’re focusing on today is called Multi-vendor, and it allows vendors to sell multiple products through your one storefront.
All customers are able to place products from multiple vendors in a single shopping cart, and the vendors can view orders, change shipping methods and assign products to different categories.
The website admin can set up shipping protocols, modify any product in the marketplace and register new vendors. the idea behind the admin interface is to give you full control over everything that goes on in your shop.
It’s a rather powerful platform, and I can see businesses of any size using this with success.
Pricing
$1495
6. IXXO Cart Multi-vendor
The IXXO Multi-Vendor tool ranges drastically in price, depending on which features you want, but it’s important to know that this system works well on open source platforms like WordPress and Joomla.
The system seems fairly powerful, but I wouldn’t go as far as to say that it’s an out-of-the-box solution.
You have to host the multi-vendor site on your own servers, which is nice for ownership and security reasons, but it requires some tech knowledge.
The cool thing is that you can run the system as a standalone store or integrate it with something like WordPress.
Users can buy products from multiple vendors in a single order, and the vendors have tons of cool features such as choosing shipping methods, picking from product templates and creating tax rules based on product classes and location.
Pricing
From $295 to $1495
Any Questions?
If you have any questions about the best multi-vendor sites we just outlined above, drop a line in the comments section below.
Websites that find a solid niche, and allow artists and business people in that niche to reach customers, is the next big thing in online commerce. Share your stories if you’ve successfully implemented a multi-vendor shop.
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