Two-sided marketplace development. Buyers, sellers, and the platform in between.
Marketplaces are harder than single-sided products. Two user types with different UX needs, trust mechanisms between strangers, payment escrow, and the cold start problem. Getting the architecture right from the start matters.
Need to build a two-sided marketplace — connecting buyers and sellers, service providers and clients, or creators and audiences
Marketplace architecture has specific patterns that differ from standard web applications:
Stripe Connect: Marketplaces can't process payments like a standard Stripe integration. Stripe Connect handles: onboarding sellers as sub-accounts, holding funds in escrow, splitting payments between platform and seller, issuing payouts. This is the technical foundation of every legitimate marketplace.
Dual-role UX: The same person might be both a buyer and a seller. The account model and navigation need to handle role-switching gracefully.
Trust mechanisms: Buyers don't know sellers. The features that build trust: verified seller profiles, review and rating systems, seller response tracking, dispute resolution. Each is a product surface with real complexity.
Search and discovery: How buyers find what they need. Faceted search (filter by price, location, category, rating), sorting, and recommendation systems.
Cold start: A marketplace with no sellers has no buyers. A marketplace with no buyers has no sellers. The initial seeding strategy affects the technical architecture (supply-side onboarding tools, manual curation).
Marketplace platform with seller onboarding, buyer search/discovery, Stripe Connect payment flow, and review system
Stripe Connect
seller onboarding, payment splitting, payouts
Dual-role accounts
buyer/seller switching in one account
Listing management
seller creates, edits, and manages listings
Search and filters
buyer discovery with faceted search
Review system
both-way reviews after transaction
One honest number to start.
Fixed-scope, fixed-price. The number below is the starting point — final scope is built from your brief.
Marketplace platform with seller onboarding, buyer search/discovery, Stripe Connect payment flow, and review system
Three steps, every time.
The same repeatable engagement on every project. No surprises, no mystery, no billable ambiguity.
Brief & discovery.
We send you questions, then get on a call. Output: a written scope with every step, feature, and integration listed.
Build & ship.
Fixed schedule, weekly reviews. No scope creep unless you change the scope — and if you do, we reprice it transparently.
Warranty & retainer.
30-day warranty on every launch. Most clients stay on a monthly retainer for ongoing features and maintenance.
Why Fixed-Price Matters Here
Marketplace scope is the core transaction flow, search, and onboarding. Fixed-price for the defined feature set.
Related engagements.
Questions, answered.
At MVP: manual dispute resolution (contact support, Ryel reviews). At scale: automated dispute workflow. Don't build the automated system until you know what the disputes actually look like in practice.
Tell Ryel about your project.
Describe what you’re building and what outcome you need. You’ll have a written, fixed-price scope within the week.