Build A Marketplace Buyers And Sellers Trust
A marketplace connects two sides, such as renters and lenders or clinics and designers, and handles listings, bookings, payments and payouts between them. We have built Cad Cam Masters, Cinekit, Cercle and Truck-4.
Reviewed by Azmat Rana, CEO & Founder · Updated
What A Marketplace Needs
Most marketplaces struggle with trust and payments, not features. Both sides need to feel safe before the first transaction.
Core capability
Listings and search
Listing tools for sellers and filtered search for buyers. Cinekit lets creators search camera gear by location and category.
Bookings and availability
Calendars and date ranges that stay correct when many people book at once, as on Cinekit’s gear rentals.
Payments, deposits and payouts
Stripe for checkout, security deposits and payouts to sellers. Cinekit holds deposits on expensive gear, and Cad Cam Masters pays designers through the platform.
Trust and verification
Profiles, reviews and checks that make strangers comfortable trading. CashKart only lets verified agents buy devices from sellers.
Returns, refunds and credit
Clear flows for when things go wrong. Cercle refunds into store credit, so the money stays on the platform.
Project story · Cad Cam Masters
Matching dental labs with remote CAD designers
Cad Cam Masters connects dental practices, clinics and labs with freelance dental CAD designers. Labs post jobs, designers bid, and the work and payments run through the platform. We built it over 18 months.
- Duration
- 18 months
- Two sides
- Dental labs and CAD designers
- Payments
- Stripe
- Stack
- React, Ruby on Rails, MySQL, AWS
The problem
Dental CAD files are large, and uploading them during checkout stalled the servers for everyone else. Labs also needed a way to follow each design through its milestones.
What we changed
- 01Built job posting and contract bidding, so labs can hire designers directly.
- 02Moved heavy CAD file uploads into an asynchronous AWS pipeline, separate from the main web transactions.
- 03Added milestone viewers so labs can review detailed renders as the work progresses.
- 04Automated marketplace payments through Stripe.
Where it stands
Labs now work directly with remote CAD designers, which reduced clinic overhead and sped up prosthesis fabrication. That is the job of any marketplace: make the deal between both sides easier than any other way of doing it.
See Cad Cam Masters in our projectsFrom Idea To First Transactions
A marketplace launches in one niche first and grows from there.
Discover
Pick The First Market
We agree which buyers and sellers to start with, what they trade and how money moves between them.
Design
Design Both Sides
Seller onboarding, listings, search, booking and checkout, designed so the first transaction is easy for both sides.
Build
Build And Integrate
Payments, payouts, notifications and admin tools, tested against real cases like cancellations and disputes.
Launch
Launch And Learn
We launch to a small group, watch where people drop off and improve those steps first.
Technology Behind Our Marketplaces
The stack behind the marketplaces we have shipped.
Rails
React
Next.js
Stripe
PostgreSQL
Mysql
ElasticsearchWhat To Decide Before You Build A Marketplace
These choices shape the data model and the payments set-up, so they are easier to make early.
Who pays whom, and when
Commission, subscription, listing fees or deposits. Stripe Connect handles most of these, but the model has to be chosen first.
What happens when it goes wrong
Cancellations, damage, refunds and disputes need rules before launch. Cercle refunds into store credit.
Which side to grow first
Most marketplaces recruit sellers first, so buyers find something to buy on day one.
How trust is earned
Verification, reviews and deposits. CashKart verifies every buying agent before they can trade.
Heavy files and media
Photos, video or CAD files need their own upload pipeline, as on Cad Cam Masters, or they slow the site for everyone.
Web, app or both
Many marketplaces start on the web and add apps once the model works. Truck-4 and Cinekit run as web platforms.
Marketplaces In Action
Marketplaces from our portfolio.
Related services
Projects like this one usually involve these as well.
Further reading: Marketplace payments with Stripe: deposits, payouts and refunds
Prefer to add engineers to your own team?
Hire full-time developers in the stacks we use for this work.
Marketplace Development FAQs
What founders ask before they build a two-sided platform.
Listings and search, bookings or orders, payments and payouts, trust features like verification and reviews, and the admin tools you need to run it.
Most of ours run on Ruby on Rails. Cad Cam Masters pairs Rails with React, and Cercle uses React and Next.js on Rails. Cinekit is built in Rails, CashKart pairs Rails with Vue, and Truck-4 uses React with Node.js services.
We usually use Stripe Connect, which takes the buyer’s payment, holds deposits where needed and pays sellers their share. It also runs the identity checks sellers need before they can be paid.
Yes. Cinekit rents camera gear with security deposits, and Cercle rents designer fashion with returns, cleaning and store credit.
Yes. Cad Cam Masters matches dental labs with CAD designers, and Truck-4 lets businesses find, lease or buy trucks and trailers.
It has to be built for that from the start. Cinekit grew to more than 100,000 users, and Truck-4 runs on microservices with more than 2 million shipper records.
You do. Everything we build for you, including the source code and the intellectual property in it, belongs to you.
Ready To Build Your Marketplace?
Tell us who is buying, who is selling and how money should move, and we will map out the first version.