There are various platforms which lie in two categories of being closed source and open source. Platforms like Magento, Shopify, Sharetribe, BigCommerce, CS-Cart, Virtuemart, J2 Store, Prestashop, WooCommerce, Hikamart/Hikashop, X-Cart, and many others lies in the above two categories. But none of them has the potential to be declared as an ideal niche or multi vendor marketplace open source or closed source. All of them are misleading in the format where they claim to provide 100% support and all the essential eCommerce features once the user subscribes to them for free and at minimal cost respectively.
Having a marketplace opensource developed with minimal efforts if the need of the hour and this could be only achieved if the platform is reliable, values the customer-vendor relationship, and has all ears to hear your recommendations, critiques, questions, ideas. The primary focus of the service provider and the platform is to provide not only relishing experience but also user-centric facilities and essential features which could help them create a – b2b, b2c, or c2c niche or multi-vendor marketplace opensource for free or at a minimal cost.
A platform like CS-Cart doesn’t aim to offer a frustration-free user flow and doesn’t aim to offer a well-thought customer journey. In fact, the customer support of such platforms is not free of cost. This company tends to charge their customer through the credit points which the subscriber has to buy through them. Even for the smallest of the small query of yours, they will charge many credit points. Therefore, such platforms absolutely deserve a ‘No’ from their site visitors at a first glance. Platforms like Shopify and WooCommerce doesn’t provide the accessibility to their subscribers or site visitors to even create a multi-vendor marketplace open source. You have to highly depend either on the third-party development service providers like CS-Cart development service providers or on the third-party plugins.
The issue with using both is elaborate here. When using a third-party’s development service, you may incur the problem of lack of communication and transparency. They will charge you heavily without even delivering the results which you expected. Moreover, any change in requirement would be either charged at sky-touching prices or they may even neglect it to cater. They might not provide you any guarantee of success with the solution they provide and may only focus on the monetary benefits. The disadvantage of using third-party extensions/plugins is that they may showcase compatibility issues with other plugins or platform architecture. They might slow the overall performance of your marketplace opensource and may tend to even show uncertain and uninformed timeouts. Such issues cause a negative user experience in the user journey at your marketplace.
One such platform that overcomes all such challenges and lets you initiate with your own b2b, b2c, c2c – niche and multi-vendor eCommerce web store is Sellacious. This platform has more than 5000 essential ecommerce features with which you can not only create and host your web store within 15 minutes but also let your vendor create their own mini web store and display their offerings in compliance to the overall platform design and standards. If the administrator wants they could also allow the vendor to give the vendor access to stylize their own webstore as per their wish. Moreover, the store owner can define and confine roles and permissions respectively for their marketplace. You as a store owner can upload as many products as you want in the enterprise version and up to 200K+ products and their variants in the lifetime version. You as a store owner or administrator can create breadth and depth of categories and sub-categories respectively and also can identify the best design pattern to showcase data and thus aim to offer fluid navigation to your user with this platform.
With the enterprise version, you get absolutely free web store setup sessions. Also, irrespective of your plan subscribed you could reach out to customer support and get your grievances registered and resolved. The support staff assures zero response time and minimal resolution time. Choose the best, go for Sellacious!
