Engagements - A two-sided marketplace: Connect payouts, search, and disputes
A marketplace is two products welded together with a payments and trust layer in the middle, and that middle is where most marketplaces stall. Connect onboarding, commission splits, escrow-style holds, search that actually matches, and disputes between two strangers you now have to mediate in code. A build takes on the whole two-sided system by someone who's wired Stripe Connect and knows where the money and the edge cases hide.
- Marketplace founders
- Two-sided platforms
- Seed-stage
What you'll have at launch
A working two-sided marketplace: Connect payouts, buyer and seller flows, search that matches supply to demand, and a dispute path.
- Stripe Connect wired for real: seller onboarding, split payments, commission take-rate, and payout schedules.
- Both sides working — a seller dashboard for listings and earnings, and a buyer flow for browse, checkout, and order tracking.
- Search and filtering that ranks by relevance, price, and availability without falling over as listings grow.
- A dispute and refund path so a bad transaction has a resolution instead of landing in your inbox.
How we build it
A build runs 8–12 weeks typical, shipped week by week in increments you review and merge.
Weeks 1–3 · Payments & accounts
Connect onboarding, split payments, take-rate logic, and payout schedules go in first, alongside the two-sided account model. Payments are the part that's illegal to get wrong and expensive to retrofit, so they anchor the build.
Weeks 4–8 · Both sides of the market
The seller dashboard (listings, orders, earnings, payouts) and the buyer side (browse, checkout, order tracking) get built in weekly increments. Because every feature ships twice, we sequence by whichever side is blocking your launch so you're never stuck waiting on both.
Weeks 9–12 · Search, trust & launch
Search, filtering, and relevance ranking go on top of real listings; the dispute, refund, and messaging flows get built; and a trust-and-safety pass adds moderation and fraud flags before launch. Then we ship it live.
What's included
- Stripe Connect: seller onboarding, split payments, commission and take-rate logic, escrow-style holds until delivery, and payout schedules.
- Seller dashboards — listing management, order pipeline, earnings, and payout history — plus the matching buyer-side checkout and order tracking.
- Search and filtering that ranks by relevance, distance, price, and availability, with facets that hold up as the catalog grows.
- A dispute and refund flow: buyer opens a case, uploads evidence, seller responds, an admin resolves, and Stripe handles the refund or release.
- Two-party messaging with abuse and spam controls, plus notification emails so deals don't go cold.
- Trust and safety tooling: a listing moderation queue, fraud flags, verified-seller badges, and a review system that resists gaming.
Stack
- Next.js
- Express
- PostgreSQL
- Stripe Connect
How it runs on the subscription
A marketplace ships every feature twice and lives or dies on its payments layer, so it runs as a build — the board dedicated to the platform, shipping payouts, both sides, and search in weekly increments. Same flat monthly subscription, from $6,900/month, most marketplaces landing in eight to twelve weeks. Founder-led, so the person who wired the Connect flow is the one fixing it later; reprioritize which side ships first whenever supply and demand shift.
Frequently asked questions
- Do you build the Stripe Connect payments and payouts?
- Yes — Connect is the anchor of this build. Seller onboarding, split payments, commission and take-rate logic, escrow-style holds until delivery, refunds, and payout schedules are all core scope. It's built first because the payments layer is the most expensive part to retrofit once you have real money moving.
- Can you build both the buyer and seller sides?
- Yes, both — that's what makes it a marketplace build rather than a single app. A marketplace ships every feature twice, so we sequence by whichever side is blocking your launch and build them out in weekly increments, letting you reprioritize as the balance of supply and demand shifts.
- How long does a marketplace take to build?
- Most land in eight to twelve weeks — longer than a single-sided product because you're building two sides plus the payments and trust layer between them. It runs on the flat monthly subscription, so you pay for the active weeks rather than a fixed project total, and can pause between phases.
- Can you handle search, ranking, and matching?
- Yes. Search with filters and facets, relevance ranking by price, distance, and availability, and the matching logic that connects the right listings to the right buyers are part of the build. We tune ranking against real listings during the engagement, since bad matching is what quietly kills marketplace conversion.
- What about fraud and disputes between users?
- The build includes a dispute and refund flow (case, evidence, resolution, Stripe refund or release) plus trust-and-safety tooling: a moderation queue, fraud flags, verified-seller badges, and a review system that resists gaming. Trust work never fully ends, so the same subscription keeps handling it after launch.
Got a project? Let's ship it.
3 spots open. Subscribe today, hand off the first outcome, and we'll ship it in weekly increments. Smaller tasks still usually land in 48 to 72 hours. No call required.