Selling your own products and services online has become so easy. There are different tools and platforms that you can now use as a marketplace. Sharetribe can be one of the great platforms for building your own marketplace where you and/or other sellers market their own businesses online.
Basically, you can choose if you decide to create an online marketplace from scratch is not your option. But of course, there are some Sharetribe alternatives. In this article, we’re going to talk about one of the most advanced and popular web marketplace platforms available – WooCommerce multi-vendor marketplace vs Sharetribe.
What is Sharetribe?
Sharetribe is a tool that can help you to create your own marketplace. You can also use this tool as peer to peer marketplace builder.
This platform was initially developed by two Finnish university friends, Juho Makkonen and Antti Virolainen. The initial purpose to develop this platform was helping students to sell old textbooks, finding a tutor or get help moving out.
The platform consists of a built-in payment system that can support a wide range of marketplaces with helpful tools for online marketing. The user can create their own marketplace with tools that can help them customize their site for filtering content, categorizing products and services and generating marketing strategies. Anybody can use the features for custom branding, marketing and selling. The platform support mobile devices as well.
Sharetribe as Software as a Service
Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) is a software licensing model whereby instead of downloading the software to run locally on your PC, the program is hosted by a third-party provider, and then accessed by users over the internet. It is typically accessed through a web browser, with users logging into the system using a username and password.
SaaS normally refers to a license/subscription based model where the software is hosted in the cloud and accessed via the internet. There are many well-known examples of SaaS, like Office 365, Google Apps, Salesforce, Citrix GoToMeeting, Cisco WebEx and Netflix.
Sharetribe is also develop as a Software as a Service (SaaS) which means that you can create your own marketplace quickly and easily without the need of a developer. All you just need to fill out a form and install your marketplace on Sharetribe’s servers.
However, whatever features that are available to the platform are the only ones at your disposal. There is no chance to introduce more changes and added features other than those created by Sharetribe because the platform is not extendable.
Sharetribe’s open source version/free version is available for download on GitHub. You can also go to the free version of Sharetribe.
Related Read: WooCommerce vs Woo Express – a detailed auide
Reason to use Sharetribe like platform
1. Most popular programming framework
Sharetribe is written on the most popular programming framework for rapid and reliable development. That’s why it can efficiently customize the core code to suit your needs.
2. Built-in Cucumber and Rspec support
Sharetribe comes with built-in Cucumber and Rspec support. These tools are excellent for running automated acceptance and unit tests respectively.
3. Updates on regular basis
Sharetribe gets updated every month to provide the latest security measures for the marketplace. The reason to release the update version is to support the latest versions of the tools and technologies it runs on, allowing developers to implement cutting-edge functionality.
4. Technical road map
The technical road map of Sharetribe contributors are long. They learn from user feedback and plan to simplify purchasing processes, increase the number of payment options, and even add an API for mobile devices to help access your marketplace data more efficiently.
5. Strong communities
As an open source solution Sharetribe has a strong communities built around them. If you have any questions about the architectural or other tech-related aspects on this platform, you can always ask its contributors and fellow developers for advice.
Is Sharetribe better than WordPress?
Let’s take a quick look at some simple questions before launching your marketplace project to figure out whether Sharetribe or WordPress is best for you.
1. What is your budget?
Get serious and as close to the financial details as you can. It will make a difference on which platform is right for you to choose.
WordPress marketplaces can be launched for about $100 with the right theme + plugin combination, whereas Sharetribe has a recurring monthly cost of about that, for the basic level.
2. How much tech support can you do yourself?
Are you technically expert or do you have someone on your team who can give technical support for you?
Both platforms are very easy to use and navigate, but WordPress (running something like Woocommerce + Dokan or similar for marketplaces) is going to be a bit easier for the tech phobic founder to manage themselves, than Sharetribe.
3. How Serious are you about your business?
Are you building a small website or this is your Big idea?
Sharetribe is built to scale and built for serious marketplaces who want to go, grow and develop into a REAL peer to peer marketplace community. That’s what they are built to do — and that’s what they do best.
WordPress marketplaces are really an extension of what is possible with WordPress, and not natively what WordPress is designed for. That means, you may have imperfect WordPress buyer seller plugin, themes, updates and marketplace UX for your members on most WordPress sites. Sharetribe, on the other hand, is carefully created for this exact use case, and features many world class examples of high level peer to peer, sharing economy style sites that show off it’s high level of functionality.
You may also like: How to use Dokan plugin
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Look at the video:
WooCommerce marketplace vs Sharetribe
| WooCommerce | Sharetribe | |
| Current Websites | 1132120 | 305 |
| Category Position | #1 | #173 |
| Market Share | 28.4% | 0.01% |
TOP COMPETITORS OF WOOCOMMERCE
TOP COMPETITORS OF SHARETRIBE
5 Benefits of using WordPress for marketplace
There are many ways to set up a marketplace, but WordPress marketplace is easily one of the best solutions. It may be best known as a blogging platform, but it possesses applications far beyond the blog area. WordPress is a dynamic, flexible, and powerful piece of software that can be modified with addons and themes to create the perfect service marketplace.
Here are top 5 benefits of using WordPress for marketplace.
1. User-friendly—Even for Beginners
A WordPress site can be installed and up in a matter of minutes, even without any technical experience. All a user needs is a domain name and a web hosting account.WordPress can be installed free through your WordPress hosting provider or uploaded directly from WordPress.org.
Adding new pages, blog posts, images, etc. on a regular basis is a breeze and can be done quickly. Because the technology is so simple.
2. Search Engines Like WordPress Sites
Search-ability is key to ranking high on Google and other search engines. The code behind WordPress is very neat and clean and simple, making it easy for search engines to read and index a site’s content.
In addition, each page, post, and image can have its own meta tag keywords, description, and title, and optimized for specific keywords, allowing for very precise search engine optimization. You can also use different tags to further enhance your search engine optimization efforts.
3. A Built-in Blog Ready to go
Since WordPress was originally designed as a blogging platform, blogging capabilities are built-in and are very easy to integrate. Setting up RSS Feed / email subscriptions to your blog, commenting capabilities, and automatically adding the most recent blog posts to other pages of the site are also very simple to set-up, and and make your site more dynamic and interactive.
4. Tons of Themes and Plugins to extend functionality
WordPress themes offer users an array of choices for fine-tuning the appearance and functions of a new site. There are tons of woocommerce multi-vendor theme available, many of these are instantly available to a new site owner through the WordPress theme directory, and thousands more can be purchased through design marketplaces and third-party designers from around the world. Themes can be previewed live and installed at any time to change the look and layout of a site.
WordPress has all the elements needed to create a basic site, but many users want more specialized functions. The WordPress plugin directory includes thousands of plugins—small pieces of code designed to perform specific tasks—that allow users to add features such as shopping carts, galleries, contact forms, and more to any compatible WordPress site. Users can also purchase and install custom plugins from third-party developers. Plugins can be activated or deactivated and uninstalled at any time as needed.
5. Strong WordPress Community for support
Since WordPress is free and open source, it’s supported by WordPress-loving communities around the world. This community of WordPress lovers is strongly responsible for making changes to the source files and keeping WordPress updated and secure. The WordPress community also hosting WordPress camps around the world and supporting the growth of local WordPress user groups.
Conclusion
While WordPress is a great way of developing and launching a minimum viable product, project or community, it’s no longer the ONLY game in the town for bootstrapping a user generated content community.
Sharetribe offers a good tool that every marketer can use when they target to build their own marketplace. It can be easily shared with other users and with features and functionalities that are very helpful in creating your own awesome marketplace website.
