eCommerce & Online Selling
How to Build a Marketplace Like Shopee or Lazada
To build a marketplace like Shopee or Lazada you need three connected products — a buyer storefront, a seller dashboard, and an admin console with commission and payout control — plus a plan for the chicken-and-egg problem of attracting both sides at once. The technology is well understood and can be built in weeks. The reason most marketplaces fail is that they launched with an empty catalogue. Here is how the model works, what to build, and what it costs in the Philippines.
An animated online store checkout: a product is added to a cart, paid with GCash, and confirmed with an order number.
A store that takes the order and the payment while you are asleep.
A marketplace is not a bigger online store
In an online store you own the stock, set the price and ship the goods. In a marketplace you own none of that. Other people list, price and fulfil, and you run the platform, hold the money in transit, and take a cut.
That difference changes everything about the build. You are not managing a catalogue, you are managing thousands of sellers who all want different things, plus buyers who blame you when a seller disappoints them. Every feature has to work for three audiences at once.
Solve the empty-catalogue problem before you build
Buyers will not visit a marketplace with forty products. Sellers will not join a marketplace with no buyers. Every marketplace faces this, and the ones that survive picked a side and forced it.
- Recruit sellers manually first. Onboard thirty to fifty real vendors by hand before launch, in one narrow category.
- Go narrow, not broad. "Everything" competes with Shopee and loses. "Construction supplies in Region IV-A" or "halal food suppliers in Metro Manila" does not.
- Give early sellers a reason. Zero commission for the first months, free listing photography, or a guaranteed spot on the homepage.
- Bring your own demand. If you already have buyers — a trade group, an existing customer base, a following — you start from the buyer side instead, and sellers follow.
Decide how you make money before development starts
The revenue model determines the database, so it is not a decision to defer. Commission per transaction is the most common: a percentage taken automatically at checkout. Seller subscriptions charge a flat monthly fee regardless of sales, which is more predictable but harder to sell to new vendors. Listing or promotion fees charge for visibility. Most mature marketplaces run a combination.
Whichever you choose, model the arithmetic honestly. A 5% commission on ₱500 orders means you need very high volume before the platform pays for itself. Higher-value categories reach viability far sooner.
What you actually have to build
The buyer side
Search and filters that work across many sellers, product pages showing the seller's rating and shipping terms, a cart that can hold items from several vendors, checkout with GCash, Maya, cards, bank transfer and cash on delivery, order tracking, and a review system tied to verified purchases.
The seller side
Registration with document verification, a product manager with bulk upload, inventory that reflects reality, order management with printable waybills, a payout ledger showing what is pending and what has been released, and performance stats. If the seller dashboard is painful, sellers stop updating stock — and stale stock is what kills buyer trust.
The admin side
Seller approval, category and commission control, dispute and refund handling, payout runs, fraud and policy monitoring, and reporting on gross merchandise value, take rate and repeat purchase. Admin tooling is the part first-time founders underestimate most, and the part they need most from week one.
Split payments and payouts are the hardest part
When a buyer pays ₱2,000 for items from two sellers, the platform has to split the amount, deduct commission and shipping, hold funds until delivery is confirmed, then release each seller's share on a schedule — while keeping a record that survives an audit.
In the Philippines this means integrating a payment gateway that supports GCash, Maya, cards, online banking and cash on delivery, and building a clean ledger underneath it. Cash on delivery adds a settlement lag most founders do not plan for: the courier collects, remits days later, and your books have to track that gap without confusing sellers about when they get paid.
We build multi-vendor marketplaces with split payments, seller dashboards and admin control — including FastCart and WeMove.
See eCommerce developmentTrust is the product
Buyers are not really choosing between marketplaces. They are deciding whether to risk money with a seller they have never met. Everything that reduces that risk raises your conversion rate.
- Verify sellers properly — business documents, a real address, a working contact number.
- Hold funds until delivery is confirmed, and say so clearly at checkout.
- Publish a refund and dispute policy that a person can read in a minute, and enforce it consistently.
- Allow reviews only from verified purchases, and never delete negative ones quietly.
- Answer disputes fast. The buyer blames your platform, not the seller, and they tell people.
What it costs and how long it takes
A marketplace is enterprise-scale work: the Business package at ₱199,000 over 15 working days covers the buyer storefront, seller dashboard, admin console, payment integration and admin training. Pro at ₱149,000 over 10 days suits a smaller launch and adds a branded Android app, which matters if your sellers manage listings from a phone. Payment is 50% downpayment with the balance against milestones.
Domain, hosting, business emails, support and warranty are free for the first year, then hosting from ₱499 a month on VenderIT Cloud, which runs at 99.9% uptime. The free lifetime 24/7 AI assistant is included, and on a marketplace it earns its keep immediately by handling the constant stream of order status and seller onboarding questions.
Launch narrow with fifty committed sellers rather than broad with five hundred who never log in again.
Build the smallest version that lets one seller list, one buyer purchase and one payout complete. Run real transactions through it. The gap between how you imagined sellers behave and how they actually behave is where the useful requirements live — and you only find it once real money moves.
Frequently asked
A full multi-vendor platform with buyer storefront, seller dashboard, admin console and split payments fits the Business package at ₱199,000 over 15 working days. A smaller launch fits Pro at ₱149,000 over 10 days with a branded Android app included. Payment is 50% down with the balance against milestones, and year one covers domain, hosting, emails, support and warranty.
Three ways, usually combined. Commission takes a percentage of each transaction and scales with volume. Seller subscriptions charge a flat monthly fee, which is more predictable but harder to sell to new vendors. Listing and promotion fees charge for visibility. Choose before development starts, because the commission and payout logic has to be built into the ledger from the beginning.
You do not — you force one side first. Most Philippine marketplaces succeed by recruiting thirty to fifty sellers manually in a single narrow category, offering zero commission or free listing support for the first months, then marketing to buyers once the catalogue is genuinely useful. If you already own an audience, start from the buyer side instead and let sellers follow the demand.
Not on general merchandise. You compete by being specific — a category, a region, or a buyer type they serve badly. Trade supplies, licensed professional services, wholesale for a particular industry, or a province with poor courier coverage. Depth in a narrow category beats breadth, because your sellers get buyers who are genuinely looking for them rather than scrolling past.
GCash and Maya at minimum, plus cards, online bank transfer and cash on delivery. COD still carries a large share of Philippine orders and creates a settlement lag — the courier collects, remits days later — so your payout ledger has to track that gap clearly or sellers will assume you are holding their money without reason.