Marketplace
Marketplace SaaS stack
Two-sided marketplaces need three slots the solo-founder stack does not: split payments (Stripe Connect), seller onboarding, and transaction-level dispute handling. Get these right early; retro-fitting them after the marketplace has live transactions is a regulatory and technical migration.
Who: Founders building a two-sided marketplace where the platform takes a cut from transactions between buyers and sellers.
Cost ceiling at launch scale: $60-$120/month plus Stripe Connect fees. Connect adds 0.25-2% on top of standard processing.
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The 6 slots
Split payments + seller payouts
The only mature solution for marketplace splits, automated seller payouts, and 1099 handling at indie-SaaS scale.
Cost: 0.25%-2% on top of standard processing
Frontend + framework
Next.js
Same logic as the solo-founder stack.
Cost: free
Hosting
Native Next.js host.
Cost: $0-$20/month
Database + auth + seller verification
Supabase
Row-Level Security lets you keep seller data isolated; auth supports multi-role (buyer / seller / admin).
Cost: $0-$25/month
Transactional email + receipts
Marketplaces send 3-5x more transactional email per transaction than single-sided SaaS (buyer + seller receipts + dispute notifications).
Cost: $0-$20/month
Scheduling (if service marketplace)
Embeddable booking per seller; open-source so the marketplace owns the booking layer.
Cost: $0-$12/user/month
When NOT to use this stack
If the marketplace is one-to-one (you sell to many buyers, no sellers other than you), the solo-founder stack is sufficient. Marketplaces only need this stack when there are real sellers.
Common mistakes
- Trying to handle marketplace splits with regular Stripe charges + manual seller payouts. This works at 5 transactions/month and breaks at 50.
- Skipping seller KYC. Stripe Connect's Express tier handles this; rolling your own creates compliance risk and slows seller onboarding.
- Letting buyers and sellers transact off-platform. The marketplace fee is the entire business model; design the first-transaction experience to discourage off-platform leakage.
When to swap a slot
- Move from Connect Express to Connect Custom when sellers need branded experiences and you have engineering capacity to handle KYC.
- Add a dedicated dispute system (separate from email) once disputes exceed 1% of transactions.
Tuned for these niches
Related Brunson terms
Frequently asked
- How do I price the marketplace fee?
- Most successful marketplaces charge 8-20% of the transaction. Below 8% the unit economics rarely close; above 20% the marketplace becomes the cheaper-to-leave option. The right number depends on the value-add the marketplace provides over direct seller-to-buyer transactions.
Other stack recommendations
Stack is right, but page is broken?
The free 90-second Launch Diagnostic looks at your live product page and labels the failure mode — Wrong Person, Weak Offer, or Weak Belief. The stack is necessary; the funnel is sufficient.