Choosing a platform

Marketplace platform vs custom build: how to choose.

Launching a multi-vendor marketplace, you have three ways to get the commerce engine: a hosted marketplace SaaS, a custom build, or a platform run for you by the team that built it. Each is right for a different operation. This page says which, plainly, including when the answer is not us.

Side by side

The three options

Dimension	Hosted marketplace SaaS	Custom build	Traide's platform
Time to first order	Weeks	Months	Weeks, on the platform; your storefront on top at its own pace
Multi-vendor checkout: one order and one payment across many sellers	Usually built in, within the product's model	Built from scratch	Built in, in production since 2022
Vendor payouts	Often a payment-processor split; the accounting is yours	Yours to design	A double-entry ledger with a monthly payout run, every vendor paid its share
Seller onboarding and catalogue tools	The product's portal, as it is	Yours to build	A seller portal, a bulk catalogue API and master products, extended per client
Your own storefront and brand	Templates and themes, within limits	Total freedom	Total freedom: headless, your storefront on our commerce API
Trade terms, invoicing, credit	Varies by product; often thin for B2B	Yours to build	Built for wholesale and B2B buyers
Who runs it	You, in the product's admin	You, with the team that built it	Your team, in the operator dashboard; we run the platform
Cost shape	A subscription plus transaction fees	A project, then a team to keep it	Scoped per contract: a build, then a retainer that includes the next build

Hosted marketplace SaaS

Choose hosted SaaS when

Your catalogue is simple, your vendors are few, your storefront can live inside a theme, and you want to test the idea before investing in it. If it works, you will know what to build next.

Custom build

Choose a custom build when

The marketplace is the product and its domain model is genuinely unlike anyone else's, you already have an engineering team to carry it, and the time to first order can be months.

Traide's platform

Choose Traide's platform when

You sell wholesale or B2B, your buyers fill an order from many vendors at once, your storefront must be your own design, and the money has to be right: vendor payouts from a ledger, not a spreadsheet. That is what we run in production for a wholesale specialty-food marketplace with over 2,000 items and for a B2B hospitality-equipment marketplace, and where our two-week Diagnose sprint starts.

The first move

Either way, start with a Diagnose sprint

Two weeks, a prioritized opportunity map, one costed proposal. It will say which of the three fits, and it is the same sprint whether the answer is our platform, your stack, or neither.

Strategy call · 30 minutes

Not sure which fits?

You'll talk to a senior engineer, not a sales rep, and leave with a clear first move — whether or not we work together.

Discuss your project