How to Build an Online Marketplace Like Amazon?
Ever wondered what it takes to build a website like Amazon? This guide covers key features, seller and buyer workflows, payments, shipping, and multi-language support for creating a scalable online marketplace.
Why Build a Marketplace?
While many potential entrepreneurs are digging into AI trying to come up with an idea for how to apply it to their unique and intelligent startup, there are practical people who just want to run their businesses and make money using online platforms. These people often take inspiration from big online businesses they use every day.
Marketplace and eCommerce platforms are very popular and are likely to remain popular for decades. People look at Amazon, AliExpress, or Wildberries and see an opportunity in selling products online.
Industry Insight
- Amazon ranks as the world’s #2 largest company by revenue and #5 by market value , according to CompaniesMarketCap.com.
- It is also the most popular online marketplace globally, based on total gross merchandise value (GMV), according to Statista.
- In addition, Amazon is the most visited eCommerce website worldwide, as reported by Forbes.
👉 These figures show how influential Amazon remains in global eCommerce and why it’s often used as a reference point for entrepreneurs aiming to build their own online marketplaces.
It’s no secret that the platforms like Amazon are massive and complex. You cannot just copy Amazon. It is an enormous business with highly sophisticated software. But it is possible to build a smaller, niche marketplace or to expand an existing specialized platform into a broader market.
For example, a company that delivers linen from a manufacturer to multiple stores and consumers could create a web application to accept orders and track deliveries. Once the process proves reliable, they could open their application to other sellers providing them with the same streamlined workflow.
In another scenario, entrepreneurs who have business relationships with potential sellers might start their online business straight from developing a marketplace that will connect those sellers with yet-unknown consumers.
Achieving that goal requires careful planning of software design, features, and technical requirements.
What Features Should a Marketplace Website Have?
A marketplace typically serves three types of users:
- Sellers: Companies, manufacturers, or individuals who list and ship products.
- Buyers: Individuals who browse, purchase, and track products.
- Admins: Platform managers who can oversee accounts, orders, and transactions.
The marketplace website should provide each user type with a dedicated set of features:
- Seller features: Should be allowed to post products, receive orders, and ship them.
- Buyer features: Should be able to find desired products, order, pay, and track shipping.
- Admin features: Need a transparent process to track all user actions and step in when necessary.
That is the surface of a marketplace, but every user role requires a separate flow.
What Are the Seller Features on a Marketplace Website?
A marketplace should allow sellers to sign up and post products. Here is an example of seller onboarding and simplified daily flow:
- Sellers can click a ‘Sign up as a seller’ button and complete a registration form.
- Admin can see all seller requests and approve them.
- Approved sellers can log in using email and password.
- Sellers can manage their profile (image, description).
- Sellers can post products.
- Sellers can upload images of the products.
- Sellers can see questions and comments about their products and reply to them.
- Sellers can receive orders.
- Sellers can process orders, ship them, and attach tracking numbers.
- Sellers can see notifications about received orders.
- Sellers can receive a buyer’s feedback.
Onboarding (Items 1–3) can be automated or admin-controlled. When building a new marketplace website where everything needs to be controlled, manual approval is a preferred option.
Payment gateway integration: Sellers need to receive payments.
Therefore, they need to set it up and get approved by the payment gateway at the time of filling in the profile.
Stripe Connect is a natural fit for marketplace platforms. It provides a certain procedure for merchant account approval. The procedure requires filling in the profile.
The great thing about Stripe Connect is that after filling in the profile and getting a merchant account approved, sellers can log in to Stripe Connect and see their transactions and reports without any additional development.
Seller-buyer collaboration (Items 7-11): Many seller features (receiving orders, replying to questions, processing shipments) require actions from buyers.
What Are the Buyer Features on a Marketplace Website?
Marketplace features for buyers usually form a traditional online store. Here is what buyers can do:
- Visit the website and see a list of products.
- Browse the products, scroll them, and use pagination.
- Use search to find a desired product.
- Click on a product and view product details.
- Scroll through product images.
- Add products to the cart.
- Specify their address and choose a pick-up point.
- See the total amount to be paid.
- Pay for the products and see the receipt.
- See statuses of their orders in their accounts and be notified when the order reaches the pick-up point.
It is easy to see that these features are mostly about the user interface. It means, the marketplace in question should get various views for products, a search input, a shopping cart, and orders in the profile.
For developers, it sounds like intense but straightforward and predictable work. However, the backend of this flow will require several tricky aspects to be engineered.
For example, if a buyer should be able to choose a pick-up point, all pick-up points should be placed in the database. Management of these points needs to be ready to process packages shipped by the marketplace, especially in case the packages require a non-standard processing.
Many other features — including visualization — may also contain certain challenges. One can face challenges while engineering such features as:
- Shipping: Will the marketplace allow for international shipping? How?
- Translations: If the marketplace is available in multiple countries, what is the best way to allow the users to switch the language?
- Currencies: Is it possible to pay in your currency for products which have cost set in another currency?
How to Implement Shipping in a Marketplace?
When sellers fulfill orders, they perform some actions outside of the platform: take the products, put them in a package, and hand the package over to one of the shipping services.
The first question that we need to ask is, do we want to limit the sellers in what shipping service to use? Let’s rephrase that: will the marketplace be tied to specific service providers or can a seller decide whose services to use?
- Restricted shipping: If the marketplace owner decides, it limits the sellers, but opens doors for automation. Shipping services can have APIs. This way, if the list of shipping services is defined, it is possible to integrate third-party APIs that will notify the buyer about the package and show the tracking right in the buyer’s profile.
- Flexible shipping: If sellers can use any shipping services, it can really help them to do business. But automation or package processing customization will not be possible.
For new marketplaces, we recommend starting with zero shipping automation and applying manual solutions where possible. It will help the platform to grow.
In this case, sellers will be able to use any shipping services. The only thing they will need to do to serve the platform is to enter a link with tracking into the shipped order. The buyer will see the shipping number, click on it, and be redirected to the delivery service website.
Another benefit of skipping automation for shipping is that you will also skip challenges related to international purchases.
That brings us to the next question.
Are International Marketplaces More Complex?
Yes, they are. Building an international marketplace introduces complexity:
- International shipping: Different carriers may handle shipments in different regions.
- Multi-language support: Users need a platform in their native language.
- Multi-currency support: Buyers may want to pay in currencies different from sellers’ listing currencies.
Example: Some time ago we participated in an analysis and a starting phase of a marketplace that was to operate in the European market. There was an idea behind that marketplace. The project owner saw the project as a web application that would allow EU manufacturers to sell their products in all countries in the EU.
This was supposed to give manufacturers better access to the European market. Also, buyers would have the ability to buy European products.
We developers usually like it when potential customers have established ideas. Ideas make their projects more real.
However, this idea introduced all the challenges described above. The countries the customer wanted to start with (let it be France, Poland, Finland, and Lithuania) did not have a common language.
Neither did they have a single currency: we had to think about having Euros and Polish Zloty.
What Is the Best Way to Implement Multi-Language Support?
The following approach is our know-how, it has proven itself well in several projects including projects with right-to-left scripts (Arabic language). We are happy to share this implementation with anyone who is ready to adopt it. Let’s make the world better together!
In the example above, we have four languages. Let’s add English to these languages and call it the primary language. All views will use English by default.
In the data model, there will be a table called “translations”. It will contain 5 columns named “en”, “fr”, “pl”, “fn”, “lt”.
There will also be an endpoint “/translations” and a wrapper function called “t”. Function “t” will accept the language code (“en”, “fr”, “pl”, “fn”, or “lt”) as a parameter.
If the language parameter is “en” or blank, the function will return the same string that was passed to it.
If the language parameter is different from “en”, the function will look up for a translation in the translations table. If the translation is found, the translation is returned. If the translation is not found, a new empty entry in the translations table will be created.
The admin can see and edit the translations table. If there is a new entry with blank columns for secondary languages, the translations should be filled out, so the translation would be found next time it is called.
The advantages of this approach:
- Translations are data, not code. The admin can add new translations without asking the developer to make changes in the code. All translations appear to be in full control of the admin.
- There is a common database-driven approach towards multiple languages. It’s possible to translate the data filled by the sellers as well as the platform interface.
- Adding a new language is as simple as adding a new column to the translations table.
- There is a possibility to automate translations via AI and keep it editable by the admin.
This approach has been successfully applied in several projects.
How to Support Multiple Currencies in a Marketplace?
Challenges in multi-currency marketplaces include:
- Sellers set products in their preferred currency.
- Buyers may want to see prices in a different currency.
- The amount charged to a buyer’s card may differ from the amount displayed in the UI.
The good news is that payment gateways like Stripe Connect support multiple currencies.
Below is an approximate payment flow in a marketplace app:
- While adding products, sellers can specify prices in their currency.
- While viewing products, buyers can see the product prices in the currency specified in their profile. If the buyer’s currency is different from the product currency, the price is converted using the effective exchange rate returned by the payment gateway.
- Buyers can see the total amount to be paid in the cart – the amount should include the platform fee.
- Buyers can proceed to checkout and pay for the products through the payment gateway.
- Buyers can pay in their currency while the payment gateway should convert the amount according to its exchange rate.
- The amount should be split and get to the master merchant account and the seller account.
To sum it up, the payment flow with multiple currencies is more or less straightforward, but contains a number of subtle details that need to be handled with care.
What is the Best Technology for a Marketplace?
A marketplace requires a solid backend with a relational database because it will contain the core logic wrapped around a substantial data model. The data model will refer to entities like sellers, products, orders, and payments.
Very likely, the frontend will require fast rendering for products because the sellers will want their products to be easy to find in Google.
When sellers add products, they will want them to appear in Google search results within a day or so. This way, the frontend technology should provide an ability to implement technical SEO practices.
Apart from that, we recommend using mainstream technologies that are easy to support and easy to cover by automated tests.
Timeline & Roadmap
You may have noted that this article consists of a number of questions about marketplaces. However, answers to these questions form a solid roadmap for a marketplace software development.
It suggests a plan that can cover a few variations to the main flow and even can be simplified if your marketplace is not that sophisticated.
Depending on the complexity of your flow, building the first version of the software will require 4-6 months. But it is possible to see the first results much faster!
If the plan starts from the seller flow, the sellers can start adding products even before the buyers will have their first page released. In the same manner, local buyers can start buying products from local sellers before the platform gets multiple currencies.
This way, the timeline will be much shorter and depend on your ability to encourage your sellers to add their products and start selling them.
And if you believe in your ability to run this business, we would be happy to help.
Check out our infographic for a quick look at how to create an online marketplace.
FAQs about How to Build a Marketplace Website
How much does it cost to build a marketplace website?
The cost to build a marketplace website varies depending on its complexity. A basic MVP (minimum viable product) with seller onboarding, product listings, and payment integration typically costs between $50,000 and $150,000. Adding features like multi-language, multi-currency, or automated shipping can raise the budget. Working with an experienced marketplace development team helps optimize costs and speed up delivery.
How long does it take to build a marketplace website?
Developing the first version of the marketplace website takes about 4–6 months. However, you can shorten this timeline by launching the seller flow first, allowing vendors to start adding products before the buyer interface and advanced features are complete. This approach lets your marketplace gain traction early.
What technology stack is best for a marketplace website?
A robust backend framework (such as Node.js, Django, or Ruby on Rails) paired with a relational database (like PostgreSQL or MySQL) works best for marketplace logic and data management. On the frontend, use SEO-friendly frameworks such as React or Next.js. Integrate Stripe Connect for secure payments and AWS or Google Cloud for reliable hosting and scalability.
Should I focus on a niche or a general marketplace?
It’s best to start with a niche marketplace website. Focusing on a specific product type or customer segment helps validate your idea faster, reduces competition, and allows you to refine workflows before scaling into broader markets.
How do I handle payments when building a marketplace website?
When you build a marketplace website, use a payment solution designed for multi-vendor platforms. Stripe Connect and PayPal for Marketplaces are excellent options — they handle split payments, multiple currencies, compliance, and transaction reporting automatically.
What are the main challenges in building a marketplace website?
The biggest challenges include:
- Balancing seller and buyer needs.
- Managing payments and transaction security.
- Supporting multi-language and multi-currency features.
- Handling logistics and international shipping.
- Building trust and ensuring smooth UX.
A well-planned structure and scalable technology stack make these challenges manageable.
Vadim Kondratiev, team lead and customer liaison at Krononsoft, specializes in guiding complex software initiatives and aligning technology with business growth.
