Which platform do I need to choose for building a multivendor marketplace?

There is always a kind of discussion and as we are the largest suppliers of multi-vendor marketplace systems in the world right now, many times our customers ask for the same.

Thankfully due to the e-commerce boom, there are various e-commerce solutions/platforms that exist and customers may choose any platform as per their choice.

Choosing a platform depends on various topics including product stock ( SKU’s ), traffic, visitors, category, industry & most important community or developer support & platform roadmap itself.

Primarily there are two kinds of the platform that exist currently in the market now for e-commerce store setup

1 – Open Source Platforms

2 – Closed Source / SAAS Platforms

Open Source Platforms

There are a couple of commerce platforms including Magento, Opencart, Prestashop, Woocommerce, Virtuemart, and many more which you can easily find by searching over google .

The above platforms are primarily based on PHP as a server-side language. There are still open source solutions that exist for other languages as well.

I will discuss more on PHP-based open-source Commerce platforms during this section. Also, we will discuss more on between open source commerce solutions for creating a multi-vendor marketplace.

Closed / SAAS Source Platforms

There are a couple of closed source / SAAS-based platforms as well like Shopify, volusion, big commerce, and many more.

Here you will not get the source code of the platform like you can easily get by downloading the platform in open source platforms like Magento community edition or Prestashop / opencart.

I hope now you are aware of what choices we do have if are planning to start and commerce webshop or multi-vendor marketplace based on it.

There is another option we have to start everything from scratch i.e instead of using the above two start developing your commerce or multi-vendor system.

Ok let’s start our first discussion about the close source commerce system VS open source commerce system

As per my very personal opinion, IT DEPENDS 🙂 sorry for not answering straight. There is a reason I will explain one by one

Imagine if we are comparing  Magento vs Shopify which is somehow the most asked question and we are answering every day.

Both of those platforms are quite mature, good, and scalable but which one do I need to choose?

Magento Multivendor Extension for 1.x.x

Magento Multivendor Extension for 2.x.x

Shopify Multivendor Extension

Let’s start with Shopify first, as Shopify is a cloud-based SAAS-based system that means you will not get the source code of the complete platform but they provide robust API to customize and developers can build applications on top of it.

So as per my choice if you want to start your online business without any hassle you can start with Shopify but is it enough? Well, it’s very subjective. Although Shopify provides a robust API still there is various section where customization is extremely hard.

Example – As we have built cart split addons in almost all the open-source platforms including Magento, Prestashop, Opencart, Joomla, and others. Please find the link below

https://store.webkul.com/Magento-Marketplace-Split-Cart.html

https://store.webkul.com/Prestashop-Marketplace-Cart-And-Order-Split.html

https://store.webkul.com/Opencart-Marketplace-Split-Cart.html

But such kinds of customization are extremely hard to do in Shopify, As per my understanding Marketplaces are complex to build and it does require a lot of customization as we believe that every business is unique and many times customizations are required.

Another part is all the databases and data will be at your server if you are using open source commerce solutions. As in this case you need to host the complete application and platform at your end unlike Shopify as Shopify manages the hosting as well.

Shopify most of the time provides wonderful API support but still, there are some lacks is in there. Well then do I need to use Shopify or not?

Well For sure you should use Shopify are extremely easy to set up and everything like hosting, speed and various other factors like security will be managed by Shopify.

On the other hand, Magento is an open-source solution and is widely adopted among merchants and developers. As the Magento community edition offers full source so any kind of high-end customization is possible. because you have the complete source code.

But using Magento, there are some other challenges like Managing hosting, security, and speed performance. There are couples of services like cloudkul, which offer full Magento hosting on the AWS platform including server security and support.

Gosh, After reading this I am more confused. What is the conclusion?

If you are in a hurry and want to start an e-commerce marketplace without any technical knowledge for support regarding security and hosting but not that end-to-end customization for the marketplace also comfortable to have your commerce data then for sure you should go ahead with Shopify.

Shopify will surely help you a lot and one more thing is PAID service that means you need to pay a fee every month.

If you are looking for highly complex and end-to-end customization then Magento is by far the best choice and it’s FREE. But at the same time, you need to manage the hosting, server & security support .

If you are using any kind of customization is supported and there is HUGE community support for developers and merchants including http://magento.stackexchange.com/

That’s all for Multivendor marketplace Platform – Shopify Vs Magento still have any issues feel free to add a ticket and let us know your views to make the module better contact us.