Comments on post “Sharetribe”
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Marc Köhlbrugge
@marckohlbrugge · Founder of BetaList
Seems like a very easy way to create your own peer-to-peer marketplace. Best thing is that it's open source (Ruby on Rails with MySQL), so you're not locked in to their platform. (Their monthly pricing is very reasonable however.)
Three example from their website:
- https://www.thequiver.com
- https://www.maggieskidsmarket.com
- https://www.casaguau.com
I've been considering building a marketplace for startup services (dev shops, design agencies, etc) so I might give this a try.
Curious to hear what other PH'ers think. Two concerns I have right now is that it doesn't seem to support Stripe integration yet, and the flexibility of how the marketplace operates. (You can currently choose between selling, rentals and services.)
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Juho Makkonen
@kusti · CEO, Sharetribe
@marckohlbrugge happy to help you if you wish to try out Sharetribe. We love Stripe (we use them for billing our own clients) and once their marketplace product (https://stripe.com/us/marketplaces) becomes available outside US, we will definitely take a closer look at integrating them.
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Marc Köhlbrugge
@marckohlbrugge · Founder of BetaList
@kusti Thanks for the reply. Congrats on the success so far!
I didn't realize Stripe Marketplaces weren't available outside the US yet. (I'm based in Europe just like you so I feel your pain).
Do you think Sharetribe would work well for a marketplace of freelancers and agencies? I had a look and it seems like every listing requires a price, but I'm not sure how that would work since not every company bills using hourly rates. E.g. Sortfolio.com uses price ranges for specific kind of projects. Is something like that possible on Sharetribe?
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Juho Makkonen
@kusti · CEO, Sharetribe
@marckohlbrugge in that specific case it might be a bit tricky to handle the payments through our payment system. We also have an "invoicing" style payment flow though - there's still the initial price, but the provider could decide the final price after he has had a conversation with the person requesting the service. That currently works only with our Braintree integration though, so it's limited to US marketplaces.
An alternative solution would be to disable payments for now, and simply use the marketplace as a communication tool. We currently have some clients operating that way.
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