How to create a multi-vendor marketplace like Amazon and thrive

Amazon is a fantastic example to be followed. This is an inspiring story of a small online bookstore that has risen up to the multibillion-dollar shopping empire. Everyone wants to know how to create a website like Amazon.

Does the marketplace owe its success only to Jeff Bezos’ entrepreneurial talent and luck or are there certain hacks that can bring you great results in eCommerce? Let’s find out how to build a site like Amazon based on the experience of the largest online marketplace in the world!

In this article, we will guide you through core features, strategies, challenges and even development steps.

How Amazon was started

If you want to learn how to create a website like Amazon, let's start from the beginning and trace the company's evolution. 

Before Amazon, Jeff Bezos graduated from Princeton University in 1986 with degrees in electrical engineering and computer science, and he worked on Wall Street in a variety of related fields for eight years.

In 1994, he decided to leave the company and start his own business. It was tempting to create an everything store, but Bezos understood that it was impractical at the beginning. Selecting from more than 20 possible categories, he concluded that books were the best choice.

The competition was fierce, there was not enough money and employees, and the used technology the site was built with was very simple. But the young entrepreneur had strong perseverance in future success.

The initial company budget was $10,000 of Bezos’ personal assets, and in a year and a half, he managed to get an additional $84,000 in interest-free loans for his startup.

For six years the company did not return a real profit. But Jeff Bezos was always able to find sources of finances. He believed in the power of technology and the eCommerce revolution and, even though many investors thought him crazy, his confidence and energy opened many doors.

In 1996, Amazon’s sales were only $16 million, while their biggest competitor Barnes & Noble made $2 billion that same year. But it was just a matter of time and patience. Jeff Bezos tried to create a strong team of the best specialists from the leading Universities and major companies.

At last, in 1998 the long-awaited moment happened. Amazon started expanding with new categories. First, music and DVDs, then toys, electronics, and other consumer goods. Step-by-step they moved forward, blazing through the competitors in their path and transforming from vertical into the horizontal marketplace.

In parallel with the marketplace, in 2000, Bezos founded Blue Origin, a human spaceflight startup company. In 2002, he launched Amazon Web Service for developers. In 2007, Bezos presented Amazon Kindle. All these projects became no less profitable and important for the empire of Amazon.

In recent years, Amazon’s strategy is to keep its global leadership. For that, they mainly expand geographically on account of acquisitions. For example, in 2017, Amazon acquired Souq, the largest online marketplace in the Middle East region, for $650 million covering up all the investment in the platform development. This allows Amazon to use a ready platform with 50 million consumers rather than build everything from the ground up. This can be one of the inspiring points for the startup that is going to build an eCommerce marketplace like Amazon.

In 2020, Amazon, like many other eCommerce platforms, had to quickly transform many processes because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Due to the company’s great flexibility, they managed not only to go through the hard times with minimum losses but even to demonstrate record performance. Their net profit in 2020 was $100B more than in 2019. 

The 2021 was even more turbulent. Jeff Bezos left his captain role and designated Andy Jassy as the new CEO. The company faced a number of serious issues with personnel, but still managed to grow in size and revenue. Amazon has hired over 310,000 employees and increased revenue by 21%, reaching $33.3 billion in profits.

In 2021, Amazon began operations at its $1.5 billion Amazon Air Hub in Cincinnati, establishing it as the leading delivery company in the U.S. by 2023. This expansion helped Amazon surpass FedEx and UPS, solidifying its dominance in logistics and delivery services.

Amazon continues to grow, integrating new technologies such as AI in customer service and robotics in fulfillment, setting the stage for future eCommerce innovation. For aspiring marketplace creators, Amazon's journey highlights the power of strategic expansion, innovation, and adapting to global challenges.

Why is the Amazon marketplace so popular?

Amazon began as a single-category store but evolved into one of the world’s largest multi-vendor marketplaces, an online platform that enables multiple sellers to list and sell products, creating a broad catalog for buyers. It offers millions of products from independent sellers worldwide.

The marketplace is extremely popular because it provides substantial benefits to both sellers and buyers, contributing to its dominance in the e-commerce industry. Below are the key benefits for each:

Benefits for sellers:

• Access to a global customer base: Amazon connects sellers with millions of customers worldwide, giving businesses of all sizes the opportunity to scale quickly without needing their own customer acquisition channels​.
• Fulfillment by amazon (FBA): Sellers can use Amazon’s sophisticated fulfillment network, allowing them to outsource storage, packaging, and shipping, reducing their operational burden while ensuring fast delivery to customers​. 
• Marketing and analytics tools: Amazon provides tools for marketing, inventory management, and customer insights, enabling sellers to optimize their listings, pricing, and stock levels to improve sales and customer satisfaction​. 

Benefits for buyers:

• Wide product selection: Buyers benefit from a vast array of products across numerous categories, ensuring they can find virtually anything they need in one place​.
• Competitive pricing: Amazon’s third-party seller ecosystem encourages competitive pricing, which benefits buyers by offering a range of price points for similar products​. 
• Fast and reliable shipping: Amazon’s efficient fulfillment system, including same-day and next-day delivery options, offers unmatched convenience for buyers, making it a go-to platform for quick and reliable purchases. 
• Customer reviews and one-click shopping: Features like verified customer reviews and one-click shopping simplify the buying process and improve trust, making purchasing decisions easier and faster​.

Now, let’s make it clear how to build an eCommerce website like Amazon from a business perspective!

How to build a website like Amazon despite challenges

One of Amazon’s driving goals was to create something superior to the existing online bookstores. But there are always issues in the way of a marketplace’s startup. Knowing the existing challenges of your competitors, you can find solutions on how to start your own Amazon store wiser. Here are some of today’s hurdles and solutions:

1. Pricing

The ‘everything’ stores sell goods that can be bought everywhere, so the lower price creates one of the competitive advantages for marketplaces like Amazon. The issue here is how to keep prices attractive for users but still stay profitable?

The prices on Amazon depend on many factors, like competitors' prices, seasonality, supply, and demand. Taking into account these and many other factors, the analytical systems of the website may change prices several times per day. And the goods on Amazon don’t always cost less than at other marketplaces. Amazon keeps in secret its algorithms of dynamic pricing.

From the technology point of view, there are many ways to tune the dynamic pricing on a website: from web-scraping to AI.

2. Driving the audience

At the time when Amazon started, they already had several powerful competitors, like Barnes and Noble and Books.com. It was crazy to try surpassing them. But nothing was impossible for Jeff Bezos. His young company had a simple website with few features, no inventory, little budget, and a small team. Jeff did many routine tasks, like packaging the orders, by himself.

The main goal was to by all means drive more and more customers. That’s why Amazon gave huge discounts on books and delivery and almost did not get revenue for the first few years. The Everything Store by Brad Stone describes many extraordinary solutions used by Amazon for trying their best to acquire and retain customers on the platform in its early days:

“One early challenge was that the book distributors required retailers to order ten books at a time. Amazon didn’t yet have that kind of sales volume, and Bezos later enjoyed telling the story of how he got around it. ‘We found a loophole’, he said. ‘Their systems were programmed in such a way that you didn’t have to receive ten books, you only had to order ten books. So we found an obscure book about lichens that they had in their system but was out of stock. We began ordering the one book we wanted and nine copies of the lichen book. They would ship out the book we needed and a note that said, ‘Sorry, but we’re out of the lichen book’.”

Thus, they could provide customers with needed books without the necessity to have them in stock.

3. Diversity of targets

One of the biggest difficulties of horizontal marketplaces that sell everything is how to create targeted value propositions and marketing campaigns for all the variety of customer groups.

To solve this issue, identify the largest group and focus your attention primarily on them. This group, however, can be subdivided into smaller segments with more precise needs.

Amazon defines the following customer segments:

1. Geographic:

• Region (more than 100 countries)
• Density (urban and rural)

2. Demographic:

• Age (18 and older)
• Gender
• Life-cycle stage (bachelors, newly married couples, families with children under six, Retired, etc.)
• Occupation (students, employees, and professionals)

3. Behavioral:

• Degree of loyalty (‘Hardcore loyals’, ‘Softcore loyals’, ‘Switchers’)
• Benefits sought (attracted by the widest range of products, the convenience of online purchasing, competitive prices)
• Personality (easygoing, determined, and ambitious)
• User status (non-users, potential users, first-time users, regular users, or ex-users of a product)

4. Psychographic:

• Social class (lower class, working class, middle class, and upper class)
• Lifestyle (Resigned, Struggler, Mainstreamer, Aspirer, Succeeder, Explorer, Reformer)

You can use the same categorization to segment your audience. If you already built an MVP it will be easier to identify an average user and create an Ideal Customer Profile. This ICP will represent the target group. So, you will need to understand their challenges and provide a better solution than those that already exist in the market. When you manage to grow enough of this major audience, you will be able to switch to the other groups to grow them.

4. Treating buyers and sellers equally

With their customer-centric model, one of Amazon’s issues is that they praise buyers more than sellers.

Recently Amazon was under investigation by Germany's antitrust authority, which resulted in forcing the company to lessen the restrictions for European merchants. The changes included 30-day notification of termination of the partnership with business, simplifying the explanation of Amazon's terms of services, and fairer presentation of customer reviews.

In spite of known issues, merchants keep on joining the largest platform in the world as for many of them it is the only way to promote themselves or increase the revenues on the additional platform.

Still, sellers make up an important part, as the bigger the supply the more customers are attracted to the marketplace. If you just start a business like Amazon, focus your attention on attracting sellers providing them fair and comfortable conditions. By creating a sufficient supply you’ll then be able to attract buyers.

How to start a business like Amazon: Value proposition, strategy, monetization, and features

Let’s dissect the main aspects of how Amazon works.

1. Value proposition

To build a website like Amazon and make it competitive in the market, it is important to understand what things attract your customers that cannot be found at your competitors. There is a very good explanation of a value proposition given by Guerric de Ternay, the author of The Value Mix:

The value proposition is the perception of the benefits that a customer gets from buying, using, or consuming a specific product or service in comparison with available alternatives.

Amazon treats different categories of customers but, in a nutshell, there are sellers and consumers.

Being ‘genuinely customer-centric’, according to Jeff Bezos’ words, everything is made to create special conditions for customers that are better than those of the competitors. The consumer’s value proposition is expressed in the following benefits:

• Lowest prices
• Widest range of products
• Seamless payments
• Convenient worldwide delivery
• Valuable features like shopping in their native language, package tracking, estimating import fees, and 24/7 customer support, among others.

According to Statista some of the most important factors that influence the purchase decision on Amazon among its buyers are:

• Fast and free shipping - 80%
• A broad selection of goods - 69%
• Prime membership - 65%
• Best pricing - 50%
• Easy return process - 44%

As for the sellers, Amazon provides the best conditions for selling more than on their own online stores:

• A comfortable platform for selling
• A place to advertise their services
• Access to the largest customer database
• The option to make an Amazon store out of the brand’s own shop to protect intellectual property and sell using Amazon’s order system.

For the last point, a clarification should be made. Products sold on Amazon are divided into two sets:

• Fulfilled By Merchant (FBM) - items sold on Amazon by third-party sellers who only manage orders on Amazon’s website while the rest of the processes are fulfilled by themselves (storage, shipping, customer service).
• Fulfilled By Amazon (FBA) - goods that are kept in Amazon’s fulfillment centers and the Amazon staff handles all the operations.

According to Statista, 61% of products sold through Amazon are third-party sellers’ products. Even such huge corporations as Nike, P&G, GoPro, and Cassio did not resist the temptation to use the platform.

Amazon created a diversified logistics chain of more than 300 facilities that work smoothly providing a great customer experience. Here is how the items travel from manufacture to the customer:

2. Business strategy

Amazon uses the Cash Machine Business strategy. This means that Amazon works at very tight profit margins and invests a lot in inventory, buildings, new products, innovations, and experiments for further extension.

Due to this strategy, Amazon does not need to borrow or issue stock. Amazon’s Cash Conversion Cycle looks like this: they use their own cash for reinvesting it into buying more goods and creating a larger assortment and better service, which in turn drives audience growth and an explosive expansion for more and more industries and categories.

Thus, if your eCommerce business allows you to receive payments from buyers quickly and you are able to win time before you have to return money to your suppliers, your free cash flow will always be positive even when your net income is not.

Cash Conversion Cycle = Days of inventory on hand + Days of sales outstanding – Days payable

The Amazon’s CCC = 31.36 + 33.36 - 79.98 = -15.26 

Nobody knows how long it will keep on before the suppliers start squeezing the terms. When Amazon’s CCC moves to zero each year, it leaves less space for reinvesting the cash.

There is another strategy used for growing the marketplace.

Created by Jeff Bezos on a piece of paper back in 2001, the strategy of The Amazon Flywheel or Amazon Virtuous Cycle is still in use.

According to the Amazon Flywheel, growth happens when the customer experience is enhanced, driving more traffic. This stimulates more sellers to join the platform, creating an abundance and variety of goods. Growing Amazon all the time improves the cost structure for that price can be lowered, which attracts new customers and spins the wheel.

As there is no one-size-fits-all solution for all marketplaces, your flywheel may be different and specific for your industry. Jim Collins, the author of the best-seller Good to Great, also released a book Turning the Flywheel, in which he teaches readers how to create their own flywheels.

3. Business model

Marketplaces like Amazon usually have a hybrid business model, which means that they combine several methods of monetization that leads to more sustainable revenue.

The Amazon Marketplace generates revenue through the combination of commissions, flat rates, and subscriptions:

1. Commissions. This business model is the most popular way of making money in marketplaces. Most categories have a referral fee around 8-15%, though some categories, like jewelry and Amazon device accessories, can reach 20-45% depending on the item price and category complexity.
2. Flat rate. On each purchase, the platform takes a fixed price that today is $0.99.
3. Subscription. Amazon Prime is a subscription for consumers who want to have privileges such as free two-day shipping, access to unlimited streaming of movies and music playlists, secure and unlimited photo storage, and other perks. All this will cost them $139 per year. Today, more than 100 million users have subscribed and this number continues to grow. For high-volume sellers, Amazon offers a Professional Seller plan at $39.99 per month, allowing unlimited listings without the per-item charge.
4. Affiliate. There is also an affiliate program that allows merchants to earn 1-10% of purchases from the link posted on their websites.

4. Essential features

Almost all other websites like Amazon are built with the same scope of basic features, including:

• Registration and user authentication
• User profile (different for a Seller and Buyer)
• Search
• Listings creation
• Shopping cart
• Payments
• Shipping
• Notification emails
• Support chat
• Disputes and returns
• Admin CMS.

How to make an eCommerce website like Amazon without a clear understanding of the factors of a great online shopping experience? This will give you ideas for a more valuable list of features.

For that, let’s look at a survey on what eCommerce website components benefit a great customer experience.   

Clear product images

Making a website like Amazon, pay special attention to the quality of images. As images are an important sales driver, Amazon required brands to upload images that correspond to the developed standards:

• Image size: Images should be at least 1000 pixels in either width or height. Amazon recommends 2560 pixels wide.
• Image frame: The product should fill 85% of the frame.
• Background color: ALL product photos should have a pure white background.
• File format: You can upload JPEG, PNG, GIF, or TIFF files.
• Color mode: Both sRGB and CMYK are accepted.

When creating a website like Amazon, pay attention to having a common style for images. This gives the whole website a nice, consistent, and professional look.

Product reviews

Reviews are important for building the customers' trust that cannot be ignored when you make an eCommerce website like Amazon. However, reviews should also be reviewed, i.e. verified for fairness and bots. In other words, reviews are useful only if they are trusted.

For example, the system may check the IP address of a reviewer to prevent spamming for the same users or to track the fraudsters. Also, you can mark reviews of unregistered users to show others that these reviewers are unauthorized and can be fraudulent. We did this for one of our major clients, NoCowboys, the largest tradesman marketplace in New Zealand. Here is how it looks:

Product description

“We don’t make money when we sell things. We make money when we help customers make purchase decisions.” - Jeff Bezos.

One of the key elements that help people make decisions are product descriptions. Same as with the images, there should be certain rules for posting descriptions to make them useful. Descriptions also play a great role in search ranking and conversion. Amazon elaborated on the rules for descriptions that should be followed by the posters.

Descriptions help buyers to make decisions, so sellers need to make descriptions attractive and informative. As a product owner of a new online store like Amazon, you can help them by implementing an explicit way of adding descriptions with useful autocomplete forms and error corrections, automatic category recommendation judging by image, batch editing, and other time-saving features so that the sellers spend less time adding descriptions.

Easy checkout process and variety of payment options

It was found that 69% of users abandon their shopping cart without completing the purchase, which in it turn constitutes a loss of up to $18 billion annually. The main reasons are unexpected shipping rates and being unready for a purchase. How to make a website like Amazon with a high conversion rate? You should work to eliminate these negative factors.

Check-out usually takes time and nerve as people need to pass the boring procedure of entering all shipment and payment details. To increase the customer experience, the founder of online shopping websites like Amazon can use the following tips:

1. Create a clear and prominent Call-To-Action and minimum steps to complete the checkout.
2. Switch a variety of payment alternatives. Take into account the specifics of the regions that may not accept some of the payment methods while preferring some local options. Thus, having PayPal only was a mistake of many marketplaces.
3. Allow people to buy with no sign-up required. You may just hint to them that registration gives them the option to save their information to facilitate online shopping in the future.
4. Don’t collect too much information. First, it takes time to check out and irritates people. And second, it may imply more responsibility for you in terms of data security. So, think twice, do you really need to know something more than the shipping address?
5. Prove to them that their banking information is protected.

To create an unprecedented customer experience for users, Amazon’s founder created the ‘1-Click’ ordering option that substitutes multiple actions required for checkouts like payments and shipments. Moreover, the platform waits for 30 minutes after the user clicked ‘1-Click’ to allow them to continue shopping and add more items, combining them for cheaper shipping.

Easy search and simple navigation

When starting a shopping site like Amazon, one of the main things is to create mechanisms of how people will find necessary goods among hundreds or even thousands of published listings.

It would be absolutely impossible to find something among more than 12 million products listed on Amazon without a smart search and navigation. Amazon, like other major marketplaces, uses its own searching algorithm called A10. This search engine sorts data by many valuable aspects, paying attention to sales history, conversion rate, and seller history. Moreover, now they also prioritize products that are promoted through blogs, Instagram, Linktree, and other sources.

Also, there are sponsored and privileged listings that are shown in special sections.

The Wall Street Journal announced that Amazon tuned their search engine algorithms to retrieve the goods that brought more profit, often pushing ahead Amazon’s own products. However, Amazon denied this accusation, pointing out that they use a lot of different metrics - like long-term profitability - to study how this impacts the customer experience.

Following modern design trends, when you build a website like Amazon, keep in mind that navigation and search should be not only effective but also simple to use. In most of our eCommerce projects, we implement ElasticSearch, the most sophisticated and smart search engine to date.

Easy to use on mobile devices

It was found that 54% of all website traffic worldwide came through mobile devices in 2021, so it’s not news that any eCommerce platform needs either a responsive design or a mobile app to make a smooth customer experience.

Creating a website like Amazon, pay special attention to the performance - the mobile versions of websites should be very quick. For mobile, the shopping cart abandonment rate is higher than for desktop carts.

There are many ways to speed up an online store like Amazon. For example, using sophisticated search engines like ElasticSearch. Or using CDN services, if your marketplace contains a lot of visual content (and it will definitely will). CDN is necessary for the high performance and availability of images uploading and displaying in any part of the globe.

“Remember me” log in

The “Remember Me” checkbox on the login was very popular several years ago. However, today website developers reject this feature as during the process of saving password cookies they can be easily hijacked by hackers.

Now, all modern browsers include a password remember feature, eliminating the necessity to save password cookies in the website’s database. This method is safer but still is not recommended to users.

Product videos

Videos have been on the rise for some time. eCommerce can use videos for product demonstration and review as they are more attractive and lead-generating, so having the option of providing video upload is an advantage for those who are going to make eCommerce websites like Amazon.

Multi-vendor marketplaces support not only buyers, but also sellers and administrators, each with tailored features for a seamless experience.

Easy-to-use sellers panel

Here are some basic features to help merchants provide their services within your platform.

• Account and shop creation: Enables sellers to easily register and set up shops. 
• Product management: Tools for listing, updating, and organizing products or services.
• Sales and analytics: Insights into sales performance, customer engagement, and key metrics. 
• Automated payments: Smooth, secure transaction handling for financial ease. 
• Marketing tools: Integrated features for promotions like discounts, featured listings, and targeted ads.
• Shipping integration: Simplified logistics with shipping rate management and tracking capabilities.

Functional admin panel

Let’s think of functionality you will need as a business owner.

• Vendor and commission management: Controls to oversee seller activity and commission structures. 
• Data analytics and reporting: Insightful data for understanding user behavior and marketplace performance.
• Fraud detection: Security features to protect the marketplace from fraudulent activities.
• Customer support management: Tools for handling inquiries, complaints, and feedback. 

Extras

Here are some extra "fancy" features that can make a multi-vendor marketplace stand out:

• AI-powered personalization: Personalized recommendations based on user browsing and purchase history to improve engagement. 
• AI chatbots: Real-time customer service bots that answer queries instantly and enhance user satisfaction. 
• Augmented reality (AR): Allowing buyers to virtually try on products (e.g., furniture in their space or apparel on themselves) before purchasing.
• Social shopping features: Integration of social sharing and influencer collaboration, allowing users to share favorite products and interact with social feeds.
• Gamification: Reward systems, points, and badges for loyal customers or sellers that encourage continued engagement.
• Voice search integration: Voice-activated search capabilities, making it easier for users to search products hands-free.
• Real-time inventory updates: Instant inventory checks and alerts on low-stock items to keep buyers informed and prevent out-of-stock disappointments. 
• User-generated content (UGC): Product reviews, video testimonials, and user photos to build trust and authenticity.

Incorporating these features adds depth to the user experience, making the platform more interactive, engaging, and tailored to modern user expectations.

What it takes to create a website like Amazon

To create a robust multi-vendor marketplace like Amazon, your development team will guide the project through a series of steps, integrating essential technologies at each stage to ensure a seamless and scalable platform for both buyers and sellers.

1. Market research and planning 

Your team will begin by analyzing your target market to understand audience needs and competitor offerings. They will define the platform’s unique value proposition to differentiate it from other marketplaces.

This initial planning will guide the choice of technologies, including selecting frameworks and tools that align with your business goals and expected user base. At the end of this step you will have a Software Requirement Specification, a document that will describe the development process in detail.

2. Platform design

Designers will create a clean, intuitive interface, with a responsive layout that works smoothly on both desktop and mobile devices. Using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript frameworks like React or Vue.js, we’ll design interactive elements like product search, filters, and personalized recommendations.

Focus on an optimized user experience to ensure effortless browsing and a highly engaging experience, which will retain users and support both buyer and seller needs.

3. Core feature development

Development team will build essential marketplace functionalities for different user roles:

For sellers: Developing tools for creating product listings, tracking inventory, and accessing sales analytics. Secure payment integration, using gateways like Stripe or PayPal, will enable smooth transactions.

For buyers: Setting up search functionalities with engines like Elasticsearch to allow efficient product discovery and build features such as wishlists, secure checkout, and order tracking to enhance user satisfaction.

For admins: Features for vendor and commission management will be developed, along with an analytics dashboard for tracking marketplace performance.

Back-end frameworks like Laravel (PHP), Django (Python), or Node.js will power these features, ensuring data management and transaction handling are secure and reliable. 

You can also incorporate extra features to enhance engagement:

• AI-powered personalization for tailored product recommendations and AI chatbots for customer support.
• Predictive analytics will enable the platform admin to forecast demand and plan inventory, while Augmented Reality (AR) can allow buyers to preview products in real-world settings, increasing purchase confidence.

4. Scalability and security

The team will construct a strong back-end infrastructure to handle high traffic and transactional volumes, using cloud services like AWS or Google Cloud to ensure flexibility as the marketplace scales.

Advanced security measures will be built in, including encryption for payments and user authentication protocols, safeguarding sensitive user data and building customer trust. 

5. Testing and launch

Before launch, the team will rigorously test the platform to identify any bugs, ensure speed and performance, and optimize for security. They will conduct both automated and manual tests to ensure seamless operation. Once the platform is stable, you will launch with a marketing strategy to attract initial users, focusing on both buyer and seller acquisition to ensure balanced platform growth. 

6. Maintenance

As your business grows, the development team will provide ongoing maintenance to ensure the platform continues running smoothly. This includes regular updates, performance optimization, security monitoring, and troubleshooting any issues that arise. This allows you to focus on growing your business, confident that your marketplace is supported by a dedicated technical team.

With this structured approach and technology integration, we’ll deliver a high-performance, scalable, and user-friendly multi-vendor marketplace, well-equipped to meet the needs of modern e-commerce.

Our marketplace development experience

At Greenice, we excel in developing secure, scalable, and feature-rich multi-vendor marketplaces tailored to diverse industries. Here are some of our standout projects that highlight how we’ve supported clients in building thriving marketplaces.

Cosmetic B2B marketplace

We developed a high-performance B2B marketplace tailored for cosmetic ingredients, enabling manufacturers to easily browse, evaluate, and purchase products while allowing vendors to showcase their offerings to a precisely targeted audience. To enhance user engagement and support business growth, we integrated a powerful search engine that optimizes the buying and selling experience. This streamlined search functionality boosts accessibility and relevance, driving maximum engagement and monetization for all marketplace users.

Trusted services platform

For NoCowboys, a leading review website in New Zealand focused on reliable home service providers, we undertook a comprehensive redevelopment. Our work enhanced the platform’s codebase, CRM, and user experience, which significantly boosted its functionality, making it easier for users to find dependable professionals.

Business sales hub

In creating BizSaleByOwner, an innovative marketplace for buying and selling businesses, we expanded the platform from a minimal viable product (MVP) to a robust solution for both buyers and sellers. Our team added advanced features to facilitate the sales process and integrated support for users to connect with expert counselors, streamlining the business trading experience.

Creative design marketplace

For Arcbazar, an interior design contest platform connecting clients with designers, we tackled issues related to a disorganized codebase and scalability. Our solutions included developing a machine learning-based award suggestion tool and tagging features, enabling a more engaging experience for users worldwide and enhancing platform functionality.

How much does it cost to build a website like Amazon

Creating a multi-vendor marketplace like Amazon involves variable costs depending on the approach, features, and development team's rates. To build a platform from scratch with Amazon's functionality can be quite an expensive venture. However, you can reduce initial costs by starting with a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and expanding features over time as your user base grows.

There are two main development approaches to consider: white-label solutions and custom development. 

White-label solutions

White-label platforms use pre-built components to launch a marketplace quickly and affordably. They offer enough features for a standard marketplace setup with basic customizations. The cost of white-label solutions can range from $5,000 to $15,000 depending on the level of customization and integrations needed. This approach works well for startups or businesses with a limited budget, allowing them to enter the market with minimal upfront costs. But if you need unique functionality and strong business logic, it will be much easier to start development from scratch than trying to rewrite existing code. 

Custom solutions

At Greenice, we can provide a basic custom marketplace starting at $15,000 for an MVP, scaling in cost depending on your desired functionality.

Custom development provides complete control over the design and features, enabling a marketplace tailored to specific business needs. This approach is ideal for businesses that require unique functionalities, such as AI-driven recommendations, advanced analytics, or a customized user experience. But the more features you want - the more expensive it gets. The cost can exceed $200,000 for a complex Amazon-like platform with advanced functionalities.

Factors that affect the cost of custom solutions include:

• Feature complexity: Advanced features such as dynamic pricing, real-time logistics integration, and customer analytics increase the development timeline and cost. 
• Development rates: Costs vary by region. North American and Western European developers typically charge higher hourly rates, while teams from regions like Eastern Europe (e.g., Ukraine) offer lower rates without compromising on quality, making them a cost-effective option.
• Capital costs: Capital costs refer to the initial expenses needed to acquire the physical and technological infrastructure necessary for the marketplace. This includes hardware, software licenses, and other equipment required to support development and operations. Capital costs are essential in building a scalable and stable marketplace platform, as they ensure that the foundational technology can handle growing user and transaction volumes. Efficient capital allocation in areas like servers, databases, and security tools also mitigates risks and improves performance, which is vital for long-term stability and growth.

Balancing your budget with the required features and customization level is key, whether you choose white-label or custom development. This structured approach allows entrepreneurs to achieve a high-quality, scalable marketplace aligned with their business goals.

How to apply this to your business

We have reviewed Amazon’s website evolution, business model, and features that increase lead conversion. When creating your own marketplace, you can follow some of the schemes that made Amazon’s growth unstoppable and modify them to your business needs.

The main lesson that we can learn from Amazon’s history is that Rome wasn’t built in a day. Even such giants once started with a simple set of features, a single product category, and minimal budget and experience. They started with a ‘Concierge’ MVP type where most activities are performed manually by the owners themselves. Only through persistence and focusing on increasing customer satisfaction were they able to scale up quickly.

There are several ways to build a website like Amazon but cheaper. One is to create a site like Amazon with a website builder, of which there are many in the market. But security is a constant concern of such platforms, as well as the possibility to add unique features. That’s why a better solution is to develop a custom website with an MVP to verify your idea first. Then, you can gradually increase the power by adding more categories and features.

Our web development agency has vast experience in launching eCommerce startups. For example, Arcbazar was modestly started as a contest website for architects with only a few orders, but today it serves half of the world and was recently chosen to participate in the ‘Google for Startups’ program. Here is what Arcbazar said about their partnership with Greenice in an interview with Clutch: We would be glad to become a technical partner for you and help you realize all of your most ambitious plans!