Selecting the Ideal Multi-Vendor eCommerce Platform: Top 10 Solutions for 2024

Before we dive into comparing the best multi-vendor marketplace platforms, let’s examine the market of marketplace platforms and compare their main features.

The market of multi-vendor platforms offering products and services is growing at a CAGR of 4.55% and is expected to reach $73.5 billion by 2029. As the general ecommerce market grows and more disruptive technologies like artificial intelligence (AI) and the Internet of Things (IoT) appear, most businesses will inevitably move online, adopting modern marketplace capabilities.

This scenario applies to small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) and enterprises equally. The B2B ecommerce segment is expected to lead the trend in developing robust multivendor marketplaces with particular attention to personalization, convenience, and vendor representation.

When choosing a B2B multi-vendor marketplace platform best suited to assist your business goals, it’s crucial to consider the following aspects:

Marketplace model

Which marketplace will your ecommerce business choose — vertical or horizontal? The horizontal model offers products or services across different industries (e.g., Amazon), while vertical marketplaces focus on a particular niche (e.g., Airbnb).

Pricing model

There are numerous pricing models for multi-vendor platforms out there: subscription model, GMV-based pricing, order- or volume-based model, and more. Which one can be a better fit for your business?

Product type

Decide which products or services your business prioritizes to choose the best multi-vendor marketplace platform tailored for your offering.

Multi-vendor transactions scale

Ensure that your platform of choice is scalable and ready to extend as your business grows. If rapid growth is on your to-do list, the platform should efficiently manage a high volume of transactions without compromising performance.

When considering these aspects, it’s vital to look closer at the platform’s technical capabilities. Here, we present some fundamental features you want to see in your multi-vendor ecommerce platform.

Vendor portals

These are some of the most crucial parts of a platform’s frontend. Vendor portals allow marketplace owners to set the required level of connectivity for your company so you can give your suppliers as much freedom as you want. These portals must be convenient and user-friendly.

Multiple fulfillment centers support

This feature allows for managing the availability of products for warehouses in different locations. Multiple fulfillment centers support is crucial as marketplace vendors will need to integrate their processes within your system.

This feature allows vendors to connect their existing catalog data with your marketplace. Automated vendor catalog integrations streamline the product listing process, ensuring accuracy and up-to-date information without extra manual work on the vendor’s side.

In addition to connecting vendors, marketplace owners will want to connect their backend and middleware to B2B or B2C channels and smoothly integrate with different payment providers through ecommerce API integrations. In Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) specifically, an API-first approach is necessary to ensure the ERP application data is accessible to other programs.

Modern customers are omnichannel, and marketplace owners and vendors must embrace that. This means orders must be fulfilled across multiple stores and sales channels, with data accurately synchronized from different sources.

Marketplace localization and multiregional support are crucial on several levels: these features help enhance customer experience and ensure compliance with local laws and regulations.

Modern and future-proof platforms for ecommerce multi-vendor marketplaces have the abovementioned features or at least are designed to seamlessly add on features when necessary.

With the assistance of the Marketplace Suite Spot report, the Virto Commerce team presents a list of leading solutions for the development of robust multi-vendor marketplaces.

As part of this comparison, we mention the platforms’ delivery model: Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), and Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). You can learn more about the advantages and limitations of these cloud models in our blog.

CommerceHub is a dropshipping platform for global retailers. It offers a wide range of features, from inventory to delivery management.

Delivery Model: SaaS.

Suitability: Good fit for dropshipping, online retail, and enterprise retailers.

Solution Features: Catalog harmonization, seller onboarding options, AI-based categories and products, and delivery solutions, but with limited marketplace functionality.

Ideal Customer: A retailer company that wants to enter a dropshipping market.

Logicbroker positions itself as a supply chain experience management platform with additional marketplace functionality.

Delivery Model: SaaS.

Suitability: Good fit for dropshipping, ecommerce automation, and supply chain management support.

Solution Features: Pre-built commerce connectors are available with a varying number of integration points, though without a native ecommerce frontend.

Ideal Customer: Mid-market and enterprise-level businesses with a lower volume of transactions.

Marketplacer is a retail-focused solution offering features tailored for companies working directly with their end clients.

Delivery Model: SaaS.

Suitability: Good fit for retail businesses focusing on global sales.

Solution Features: Through integrations with Adobe Commerce and Shopify Plus, the platform offers multilanguage support, multiple currencies, and other features relevant to global sales.

Ideal Customer: SMBs aiming to sell their products globally.

Mirakl is a marketplace solution for third-party marketplaces and dropship business management.

Delivery Model: SaaS.

Suitability: Tailored to handle massive operations. Good fit for basic selling needs and marketing purposes.

Solution Features: Great personalization features, catalog harmonization, and content generating, though lacking native customer-facing catalog, search, cart, or checkout capabilities.

Ideal Customer: Enterprises and mid-market businesses that seek their first comprehensive B2B ecommerce platform without immediate expansion plans.

Launched in 2020, Nautical Commerce is a relatively new multi-vendor commerce system.

Delivery Model: PaaS.

Suitability: Suitable for B2B and B2C marketplaces, supporting both products and services. Good fit for companies that want to take over their market niche faster.

Solution Features: Features for marketplace creation, management, and expansion, a headless frontend, and built-in fintech features, with limited templated out-of-the-box solutions.

Ideal Customer: SMBs and digital commerce operators that seek flexibility.

Spryker is a solution that develops B2C and B2B marketplaces to streamline ecommerce operations. 

Delivery Model: SaaS and PaaS.

Suitability: Good fit for tech-related businesses that require scaling.

Solution Features: Full stack offering with marketplace functionalities; however, many are yet to become natively class leading.

Ideal Customer: Mid-market businesses that aim to evolve into enterprises with greater flexibility.

VTEX is an ecommerce platform tailored to create marketplaces with strong order management capabilities.

Delivery Model: SaaS.

Suitability: Good fit for mid-market sales that require multiple vendor support and complex onboarding.

Solution Features: Inventory management features, headless storefront, fulfillment, and retail optimization, though with limited support for complex B2B sales. 

Ideal Customer: Mid-market retail companies seeking marketplace functionality and a rapid-launch storefront with out-of-the-box features.

Webkul acts as a multivendor marketplace plugin for solutions like Magento and Shopify rather than a separate platform.

Delivery Model: Platform Extension Plug-ins.

Suitability: Good fit for SaaS platforms that lack the essential functionality for marketplace development, though with substantial ​​merchandising and catalog limitations.

Solution Features: Extensive product management, vendor management, standard CRM, and payment features.

Ideal Customer: SMBs at the beginning of their marketplace journey.

OroCommerce is an open-source platform mostly tailored for manufacturers, wholesalers, and distributors.

Delivery Model: SaaS and PaaS.

Suitability: Good fit for developing complex connections between the participants in manufacturing and wholesale.

Solution Features: Product catalogs, multi-website support, and deep personalization but with limited extensibility and technical support.

Ideal Customer: Mid-market businesses and enterprises starting their multivendor journey in a complex niche.

Virto Commerce is an open-source, API-first ecommerce platform tailored to grow strong B2B businesses.

Delivery Model: SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS.

Suitability: Perfect fit for complex B2B scenarios and multi-vendor marketplaces.

Solution Features: More than 60 pre-built ecommerce modules (e.g., catalog, cart, real-time inventory, and more) and easy-to-change open code that enables new features with greater flexibility. Feature-rich catalog management with flexible personalization options that can be easily integrated with ERP, external catalogs, and other systems.

Ideal Customer: Large enterprises seeking a robust and scalable solution with unlimited extensibility driven by unique Virto Atomic Architecture™.