There are many reasons you want to create a marketplace on Shopify. First of all, it’s the most secure, safe, all-in-one powerful solution to creating an online store. Shopify’s app store is massive and full of impressive applications that enhance your store.
On the other hand, creating a marketplace can be quite tough. You definitely need more power than Shopify’s internal tools. Luckily, over the years, many companies have attempted to create apps to convert your Shopify store into a marketplace, with much trial and error.
If you’re interested in finding must-have Shopify apps, check this guide:
We are going to be using ShipTurtle in this tutorial. It’s one of the best multi-vendor Shopify apps I’ve used, and I’ve used them all.
Step 1. Get a Shopify store
On this blog, I will assume you already have a Shopify store. But if you don’t, you can get Shopify here.
Step 2. Get the ShipTurtle app from the app store
Ship Turtle is the best app for creating a marketplace on Shopify by a long shot. I’ve used them all since I created my first marketplace 2 years ago. Their support is amazing, the platform actually works, and they have an insane amount of features above any others.
Not to mention, their user interface is the best out of all of them too.
Feel free to check out their demo website here so you can give their app a go.
Advice on other Shopify marketplace apps
Never use Webkul software, I’ve had an insane amount of bad experiences with them, one of which actually caused my store to pay out ALL of my PayPal money to the vendors, and I never got anything back, not even an apology from them. The fault was that their app “malfunctioned”. Their app is full of malfunctions that cost me a lot of money, and lost a lot of trust in my vendors. Never mind the rest of the issues I had.
Features of Shipturtle
- Vendor Dashboards
Dedicated Login
- Shipper Integrations
100+ Global Shippers
- Commission Automation
4 level Rules
- Payout Integrations
Stripe, Paypal
- Vendor Website Sync
Inventory & Orders
- White Labeling
Your brand – everywhere
- Inhouse Fulfilment
Hybrid model optional
All features on Shipturtle Lite
- Shipping Integrations
100+ Global Carriers
- Invoicing
Manage Taxation
- Return Order Flow
Smooth Returns
- Branded Tracking Page
No customer panic
- Inventory Management
All in one OMS
- Bulk Utilities
Process 100+ orders in seconds
- Reconciliations
Payment & Shipment Cost
Pricing
Shipturtle has a few pricing options that work great for the level of growth you are at. The cheaper plans work great for small stores, and the more expensive plans work great for large stores.
Step 3. Get set up
It’s quite straightforward, really. All you need to do is go inside Shipturtle and set everything up to suit your store’s needs.
They also support digital products, which is a great feature for any digital-based store.
Create a vendor login page on your store
Once this is created, you can inform your vendors that they can now log in to their accounts to create products. Vendors get a whole range of settings to choose from, including vendor dashboards, vendor-customer chat, vendor shipping rates and much more.
You will find some code given to you by Shipturtle in the settings on their app for the vendor login and signup.
You can create a page by going to your Shopify dashboard > Online store > Pages > then create a page and include the Shipturtle shortcode. Or if you have a page builder Shopify app, you can use this instead.
Once you have your page set up, you will need to copy the code from the Shipturtle app onto your page.
Set up automatic payments for your vendors
I use an app called CollabPay for this. It basically calculates how much the vendors are owed by you setting percentages. Then on the payout dates that you set, your vendors will get paid automatically via PayPal Payouts. It’s the best app I’ve used to split payments automatically on Shopify.
You can get the CollabPay app on the Shopify app store.
Summary
There you have it, the best marketplace app for Shopify. All this is from my experience creating marketplaces on Shopify over the past few years.
