A marketplace without trust infrastructure isn't a marketplace. It's a directory.
We build SaaS platforms for marketplace startups — two-sided matching, payments with split settlement, review systems, and the operational tools that make your market liquid and trustworthy. Fixed scope, fixed price.
Your marketplace idea has clear supply and demand. The gap is the infrastructure: identity verification, escrow, dispute resolution, and the seller quality controls that make buyers trust the platform enough to transact.
Marketplace startups underestimate the trust infrastructure problem. Building the listing and search interface is relatively straightforward. Building the trust infrastructure — the identity verification that proves sellers are who they say they are, the escrow that protects buyers from paying before work is done, the dispute resolution that handles the transaction that goes wrong, the review system with enough integrity that buyers actually trust it — is the hard part.
These features aren't differentiators. They're table stakes. A marketplace where buyers aren't confident in seller identity doesn't get repeat transactions. A marketplace without payment escrow for high-value transactions doesn't close deals above a certain price point. A marketplace where reviews can be gamed isn't trusted.
The second common mistake is underinvesting in the operations layer. Marketplace supply quality degrades over time without curation — if any seller can list, the low-quality sellers crowd out the high-quality ones and buyer satisfaction falls. The tools that let your ops team manage supply quality (seller flags, account holds, listing review, fraud pattern detection) determine whether the marketplace stays healthy at scale.
A marketplace SaaS with the matching, payment escrow, identity verification, and review architecture that makes both sides of your market willing to transact — and keeps the platform the trusted third party.
Seller onboarding with identity verification
Stripe Identity or a dedicated IDV provider for document verification, business verification via EIN lookup, and a multi-step onboarding that gates listing capability until verification is complete.
Listing management and discovery
Seller listing creation with structured attributes, photos, pricing, and availability. Buyer-facing search with Algolia or Postgres full-text, category filters, and map view where relevant.
Payment escrow with release triggers
Stripe Connect for split settlement. Buyer payment held in escrow, released to seller on delivery confirmation, completion, or after a dispute window expires.
Review and rating system
Double-blind reviews — both buyer and seller submit reviews before either is revealed, preventing retaliation bias. Verified-transaction badge on reviews. Abuse reporting and review flagging.
Marketplace operations console
Your ops team's tools: listing review queue, seller account management, dispute queue, fraud pattern flagging, and the ability to hold or suspend seller accounts. Built on Next.js, Postgres, Algolia for search, Stripe Connect, and Stripe Identity for verification.
One honest number to start.
Fixed-scope, fixed-price. The number below is the starting point — final scope is built from your brief.
A marketplace SaaS with the matching, payment escrow, identity verification, and review architecture that makes both sides of your market willing to transact — and keeps the platform the trusted third party.
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 startups are managing supply acquisition, demand marketing, and investor expectations simultaneously. The platform build needs to be a defined cost that fits in a defined fundraising runway. Fixed scope and fixed price means the platform launches on schedule, and you spend your capital on liquidity growth rather than engineering overruns.
Related engagements.
Questions, answered.
The dispute system captures the buyer's claim, gives the seller the opportunity to respond, and routes unresolved disputes to your ops team for adjudication. The escrow release is gated on dispute resolution — funds are not released while a dispute is open.
The buyer payment goes to a Stripe Connect platform account. At the settlement trigger, the platform takes its commission (configurable per listing type or category) and the remainder is released to the seller's connected account for weekly payout.
Stripe Connect supports payouts in 40+ countries. Listing prices are displayed in the buyer's currency. Cross-border settlement has currency conversion managed by Stripe. Tax calculation (VAT, GST) for cross-border transactions is handled via Stripe Tax.
A two-sided marketplace with listings, search, escrow, identity verification, reviews, and ops console typically runs $50k–$120k. Industry-specific trust requirements (background checks, professional licence verification, insurance certificate requirements) add scope. Fixed-price.
12 to 16 weeks for the core marketplace with the full trust infrastructure.
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.