A peer-to-peer marketplace or better known as a P-to-P marketplace is a market where users mostly sell their services or products which is available to them, but which they are currently not using.
Basically, it is a platform to rent out your service or a product.
Similarly, a Peer-to-Peer, or a P-to-P website is an online marketplace where you do the same thing, the only difference being that it is done through a website.
The concept of a Peer-to-Peer website is slowly picking up its pace, and is expected to romp up more growth in the coming years.
Fortunately, if you are looking to start your own Peer-to-Peer website, you can do it at a very less cost, even at zero cost. We’ve discussed about those things at length below.
How to Build a Marketplace Website?
For those who are interested in building their own Peer-to-Peer marketplace, they must consider these three options- the first one is to build such a marketplace from start, where everything is done from scratch.
The second option which you have is to use Open-source software on the lines of Prestashop. The third and final option which you have is to use a SaaS software solution, which is also provided by Prestashop.
Read more : 24 Best Online Shopping Apps
For a person who wants to have his own Peer-to-Peer marketplace, these three are the best possible options to start with.
Here, we will explain to you deeply as to how all these options work whilst discussing their benefits and disadvantages so that you can figure out the best option for yourself.
Create a Marketplace Website from Scratch
When you decide to build a Peer-to-Peer marketplace from scratch, you need to remember they it will be a tiresome job which will require a lot of efforts.
That is because nothing is already available, and making everything will require time, money and effort from your side.
The main reason because of which people go for this method is the uniqueness it offers. Everything about this website will be original, and in the Graphical User Interface, you can inculcate things which are special about your business.
The other benefit of creating your own original Peer-to-Peer marketplace is that you get full freedom to create and edit the architecture of your website and application.
If you choose to buy a ready made platform, editing the architecture will be a very huge task, as you might not know what kind of technology or coding is used behind the marketplace, and even if you do, there’s a good chance that you won’t be able to find the specific code which you want to edit.
Read more : How To Build a Hotel Booking Site Like Trivago?
However, let’s be frank here, time means a lot , so choosing a platform is the best option as it can save a lot of time, a lot!.
Building a Marketplace with a Ready made Platform
Rather than building your Peer-to-Peer marketplace from scratch, you can also use a readymade platform to do the needful task for you.
Most of such platforms require no kind of payment, and are in fact open source (free). There are various options available as far as choosing such platforms go.
However, to make a fully-fledged website you need the help of professionals who has been in Prestashop website development for a long time.
The most famous one however for making a marketplace is Prestashop. With the help of this platform, you will be able to create a Peer-to-Peer marketplace which will provide you the most benefits over others.
Prestashop was built exactly for the purpose of creating a marketplace, which has made the process of doing this task simpler with it.
The necessary requirements for a marketplace such as creating a GUI for the listing of products, making personalized fronts of stores and payment gateways having the option of PayPal can be readily created with Prestashop.
For other payment gateways, you might need to include them with the help of other extensions.
Read more : How To Create A YouTube Like Website
The main benefit which you might derive out of using these platforms is that you will save a lot of money.
Creating a whole Peer-to-Peer market platform from scratch requires you to spend a lot of cash as you’ll need to employ a whole development team, but with a readymade platform, you will be able to do most of the things by yourself.
Also, these platforms give you the benefit of time, meaning that you will be able to enter the market very quickly to launch your products. That is why people prefer them.
Using a SaaS Platform
SaaS stands for ‘Service as a Software’. SaaS is the most popular from to launch a marketplace these days. It is way faster than any other above mentioned methods in helping you to launch your peer-to-peer marketplace, and is also cheaper than all of them.
You wouldn’t need to hire any development team to make your marketplace, and all you would need to do is that you will need to access the back end of your website through a browser with the help of your ID and password.
The best part is that Prestashop provides SaaS solutions for marketplaces. Additional features such as a unique landing page for your website can also be requested from your vendor. There are various plans offered by different vendors. You can choose to go for the censor which fulfills all your needs.
But everything has its flaws, and that goes for SaaS as well. If you choose to host your marketplace with SaaS, you will be fully dependent on your service provider, and whenever you would want to implement an upgrade in your website, you will not be able to do it until and unless an update is issued by your service provider.
Also, in terms of your website designs, there were some very less customization available, which might make your website look dull. That might take away the uniqueness which you wish to add to it. Out of all the SaaS service providers, only one or two provide you the service of completely shooting your whole market place to a private hoisting, by which you can get hold of the coding of your website so that you can change it according to your own wishes.
The thing here to understand is that if you want to have a SaaS marketplace, you will have to deal with its limitations.
In the end, it is important that you understand the fact that every method has its own utility, and everything depends on your needs.
Read more : 15 Must Have Features For Your E-Commerce Mobile App
If you want to create your own Peer-to-Peer marketplace, then you need to understand your wants before choosing a method.
Only when you are sure about what you want should you go and make decisions regarding the suitable method of constructing your own Peer-to-Peer marketplace.
Otherwise you might encounter future problems.