Is it possible to build a marketplace?

Design help Design inspiration
1

I want to create a marketplace website and app. But I don’t know if it has such facilities and capabilities to build such a platform here.

In such a way that the user registers, creates a profile for himself, creates an advertisement for his products and services. Then the visitor can see all the ads and finally communicate with the advertiser user through in-app chat.
The user must pay to create an ad. So there must be an online payment portal.

Now I am asking for help from you friends to tell me if it is possible to create such a platform with Webflow?

Unfortunately, I could not find the answer to my question among the articles and explanations. I hope you can help me find the answer.

2

Hi there,

this is a very complex question, which has no definite answer. In short: No, Webflow does not provide the functionality to accomplish what you are looking for out of the box. The user authentication is very limited, the shop functionalities are limited and the CMS is limited as well. It is not built or intended for such complex apps like yours.

So if you like to use Webflow as an “Low Code Editor” for your HTML, your styling, animations and stuff, you would need other services to get the functionality done. Depending on your needs, maybe you could use a combination of:

  • Wized.com for handling the Data In, the Data Out, the user authentication, etc.
  • Airtable.com as your new CMS. Organise your users, their content, etc.
  • Webflow.com for HTML, styling, animations, etc.

This could be possible but you need to learn and understand all of those services. And still, while its maybe possible, it may not be the best solution for this. Probably it’s better, to use another framework/CMS/techstack that brings more functionalities out of the box.

Nevertheless, those are very interesting and very powerful services in combination with Webflow. Give it a look.

All the best!

2 Likes
3

Hello dear friend, thank you very much for taking the time to answer me.
Unfortunately, I cannot do the suggestions you gave, because it requires expertise and I do not have any knowledge in this field.
I hope I can find an alternative that has the ability to build my idea.

4

Within Webflow, you won’t be able to achieve this marketplace. However, there are other no-code tools you can work with such as Wized.com and Memberstack. We also wrote an article here: How to build a marketplace like Airbnb using Webflow and Firebase [2023] | Codelevate