Choose The Best Online Marketplace Platform: Yelo, Sharetribe, Arcadier & Shopify

In an earlier article which discussed costs of building an online marketplace, we talked how the cost of building your marketplace website and apps was the first cost of your marketplace business. Unless you have a very special requirement to fulfill on your marketplace, it is always recommended to use a SaaS offering and customize your marketplace website and apps with the best online marketplace platform.

While we are on the topic, let me make you aware that there are a number of options you could choose from. Just type “Online Marketplace Website/Apps” on google and you will get a list of online marketplace platforms to choose from. Most of these platforms offer a free trial period. My recommendation is to try everything once before you make the big decision.

So let’s get to the reason why you are here. Most entrepreneurs find it cumbersome to find the product that they need. So we did some of the work for you. Our team at Jungleworks have spent a lot of time and efforts in developing the perfect online marketplace platform, Yelo. We continuously research our competitors and evaluate customer requirements before incorporating the essentials in our platform. In the process we have come across some of the popular marketplace platforms which most entrepreneurs opt for and drew a comparison to help you better.

Since we have put in tremendous effort in developing Yelo, we will be comparing two of the popular marketplace builders, Sharetribe and Arcadier with our product to give you a clean picture. Most entrepreneurs also bring up Shopify during our interactions with them. So we will also talk about Shopify vs Yelo and where do the products fit in in your journey.

To understand the context better, let’s get an idea of what Yelo does in detail.

Yelo: The Perfect Online Marketplace Platform
If you dream of starting an online marketplace, Yelo will help it make a reality. Your idea could be anything; a hyperlocal marketplace for local sellers, discovery app for home services, platform that aggregates cannabis dispensaries, collaboration of freelancers or marketplace like Airbnb. With Yelo, you can build it all. The versatility of the platform to build every marketplace makes it the ultimate online marketplace builder.

While developing Yelo, we considered the needs of today’s Entrepreneur:
1. No Coding Requirement
2. Super Quick Setup
3. Feature Rich
4. Fully Customizable
5. Simple To Customize
6. Admin Dashboard

Yelo provides a complete solution for your marketplace platform:

• Customized Marketplace Website: Create a user-friendly, fully-responsive marketplace website and enable your customers to rent, buy or sell goods, spaces and services online.
• Dynamic Marketplace Apps: Enable your users to buy, sell or rent goods, services and spaces on-the-go with user-friendly Android and iOS apps.
• Powerful Admin Dashboard: Have full access to catalogue and merchant management and promote your marketplace using features like promo/ referrals, notifications, scheduling, etc.
• Seamless Integration: Put together a powerful Marketplace business by easily integrating Yelo with your existing systems or any of our products designed for business excellence.

There is so much more to say, but I would recommend you explore it on your own. Create your own marketplace on Yelo for FREE and get started.

Enough about Yelo! Let’s look at Sharetribe, Arcadier, and Shopify and understand how they compare with Yelo.

Sharetribe vs Yelo:

To begin with, I ought to agree that they have an awesome product page. Started in 2008, Sharetribe has spent a lot of time in the industry creating a great product for marketplace entrepreneurs. They were probably the early-boomers in decoding that building marketplaces take a lot of time and thus the SaaS industry has a great scope. The founders recently launched a book which puts together a great guide for entrepreneurs build a lean marketplace.

Industry experts no longer believe in the First Movers Advantage. On the contrary, challenger brands learn a lot from the First Mover’s mistakes and more or less end up making a better product. This is the story of Yelo.

Though the basic offerings of both the products are almost the same, here are some key distinguishing factors.

Cons:

1. Inventory Management: Inventory management is an important feature to have on your marketplace. Yelo provides the feature of inventory management to marketplace owners. Now, the merchants can provide stock numbers so that it is easy for admin to manage stocks.
2. Promos/ Referrals: Yelo enables marketplace admins to create and manage promotions and referrals through the admin portal. You can create special promotions for any customer while handling customer grievances.
3. Free Forever Plan: To top the pros, Yelo also offers a free forever plan which helps entrepreneurs get started.

Pros:

1. UI Customizations: Sharetribe enables its users to customize their website on-the-go. This level of customization allows users to experiment with the look and feel of their website.

Our verdict:

Well, Sharetribe does offer a greater liberty when it comes to UI customizations. But when it comes to creating a marketplace which will give you an competitive edge, Yelo seems like a better choice. In addition to the ones mentioned above, Yelo provides admin notification and customized user login templates. One of the important factors that distinguishes Sharetribe from Yelo is the seamless integration with delivery management software, real-time chat platform and an advanced analytics tool that makes Yelo a complete solution to grow your business.

Arcadier vs Yelo

Another big player in the SaaS market, Arcadier offers a solution to build marketplace for every business model. One of the prominent features of Arcadier is the entire user experience while you set up the trial account; which may also seem overwhelming to entrepreneurs who are just playing around with their options.

Again, although most of the features are similar to what Yelo offers, here are some key distinguishing factors.

Cons:

1. Integration with Delivery Management Platform: A good order management website provides great user experience when it is enabled by efficient delivery management. Yelo provides a seamless user experience via integration with Tookan, a delivery management platform.
2. Scalability: The current plans offered by Arcadier makes it a hurdle for growing marketplaces. On contrary, Yelo does not limit users on number of transactions made every month.

Pros:

1. Built-in CSS templates: One thing that might interest the slightly technical entrepreneurs is the feature to write your own CSS and java-script code in your marketplace website. This feature allows you to customize various aspects of your marketplace website.
2. SEO: Another good part about Arcadier is the SEO support (much like WordPress) where you can work on the title and meta-description of your website for it to rank in search.

Our verdict:

Starting your trial period with Arcadier can be a bit taxing. You will need to know a lot of details about the marketplace, even when you say you are just playing around. The marketplace offering is not complete as it allows you to choose a platform for collaborating professionals but does not provide a layout for the same. If you are technically inclined and want to play around with the CSS and Header Java-script, Arcadier has more options for you. It also has better SEO and SEM support than Yelo. But when it comes to core features of your marketplace, Yelo has an edge over Arcadier. So if you want to worry less about the technical aspects and more about running the business, Yelo is a preferred choice.

There are a few other big names in the industry which I would like to mention.

1. Izberg: This is a high grade enterprise solution which can be integrated with your existing website and apps to turn it into a multi-seller platform. The solution however is suitable for mid to large companies.
2. Mirakl: This also provides high levels of customization but due to low level of development support has fewer adoption.
3. Marketplacer: As compared to Yelo, Sharetribe or Arcadier, Marketplacer is less customizable. It has more features for Analytics though. It is difficult to move your marketplace website to a new provider with Marketplacer.

Shopify vs Yelo

To highlight the major difference in one line, ‘Shopify is not a Online Marketplace Platform’. It is an e-commerce platform. So, business owners who wish to build a two-sided marketplace cannot do so on Shopify.

What is the difference between and e-commerce and marketplace?

We have already discussed this topic in a related article, I will however attempt to give you a brief description here.

Our Verdict:

If you are looking to set up a marketplace, where you aggregate sellers and service providers and do not want to get into the hassles of building inventory, an online marketplace platform like Yelo is the right choice. The features in Yelo will suit you build the perfect marketplace for your business. If you however plan to start an e-commerce website for selling goods and providing services, where you want to take the business risks of buying and stocking inventory, Shopify is a more favourable platform. However, Yelo can also be customized to create a e-commerce website. To know more, get in touch with us at Yelo.

To Wrap It All Up

Our goal at Yelo  is to create a powerful online marketplace solution where we try to minimize the efforts that you make while setting up your marketplace. We are continuously working on industry trends and requirements to suit every marketplace need and I must say, we have done pretty well so far.

But like I said in the beginning, Don’t Trust Me! Try out our Live Demo and play around a bit.

If you like what you see, Contact Us.

If you think something is missing, Contact Us.

If you wanna be the best business in town, Contact Us!