Magento Multi-Vendor Marketplace Comparison Analytics

14 min readMar 7, 2016

Hi Guys, if you are planning to start an online marketplace having multiple sellers but getting confused among the options available then here’s a detailed study which could help you in achieving your target. In this blog of mine I bring to you the complete and systematic analysis of Multi-Vendor Marketplace extensions that are available for Magento.

I myself have used Multi-Vendor Marketplace extensions of all the leading companies to examine their quality of work and my analysis is based on the following parameters:-

· After Sales Services like Support, Installation and Upgrades

· Hourly Price

· Features

· Extendability

· User-friendly Interface

· Customer Reviews

· Growth Towards M-Commerce

· 3rd Party Integration Possibility

· Price

I personally communicated with the customers of the companies, mentioned in my analysis, to find out their opinions regarding Magento Multi-Vendor Marketplace extensions used by them and, their reviews played an important role in building a part of my statistics.

I have tried to go into the depth of all the above listed points and after a great research wrote this blog just to share fair information that benefits all the readers of this blog. Going further in this blog you will find that it clearly describes the product and the options available with it. First let us understand about Multi-Vendor Marketplace, what it is and how it works.

Multi-Vendor Marketplace Insight

Multi-Vendor Marketplace is a business strategy where different sellers come across the same ecommerce platform. They create their own accounts and start selling their end products just by paying a fee which differs for different marketplace sites. So it is quite beneficial for vendors or sellers who get a platform for selling their own products on different marketing sites. Multi-Vendor Marketplace giants like Ebay, Amazon, Etsy, Flipkart, Snapdeal, Alibaba, Rakuten and many more have captured the market in the real sense.

The advantage of Multi-Vendor Marketplace is that it provides benefit to all the parties who are involved in the process of online marketplace sites. Customers feel happy to get the required products in their cart from different sellers and that too at a single place. Suppose a customer wants to purchase some products of brand “A” and some products of brand “B” then there are two ways to it, either visit the official site of those brands and do the checkout process individually or go to the Multi-Vendor Marketplace to make the purchase of both the brands’ products on the same cart.

Thus, Multi-Vendor Marketplace has the capability to accommodate large number of brands’ (sellers) products on the same ecommerce platform. Vendors (sellers) get the payment for their products from the customer and they need to pay a commission fees to the ecommerce marketplace owners. The commission fees for publishing sellers’ product may vary on the marketplace owner’s pricing scheme.

Comparative Analysis

Magento is a very popular ecommerce platform available for free. Anyone can download and install the community version of Magento at no cost. It is a feature rich platform where thousands of free and paid extensions are available which can enhance the features of your Magento platform.

You can convert your Magento ecommerce platform easily into a multi-vendor marketplace. There are different multi-vendor marketplace extension providers available in the market. Now selecting an apt Multi-Vendor Marketplace extension is a tedious task and involves serious research to finalize the best product. Therefore, the merchant needs to carefully analyze the features of all the extensions by making a comparative examination of the facilities offered by them.

Some of the established names in Multi-Vendor Marketplace extension development for Magento include those of Webkul, VnEcoms, CedCommerce, Apptha, Land Of Coder and Rocket Bazaar. Let us now focus on individual analysis.

CedCommerce Multi-Vendor Marketplace

CedCommerce provides marketplace extension for Magento having the ability to inculcate multiple suppliers. I personally found in my experience that no other multi-vendor marketplace is having a potential to provide a marketplace with so many unique features at that lowest cost and the service quality they provide. CedCommerce is providing Multi-Vendor Marketplace at 299 USD (Lowest price as compared with to all others). So, any merchant who is to start a multi-seller marketplace in Magento can go with CedCommerce Multi-Vendor Marketplace.

They have Multivendor package built for all the type of customers

Multivendor Basic Package : 60 USD
Multivendor Platinum Package : 299 USD
Indian Multivendor Package : 1914 USD
(Package Made According to Indian E-commerce Industry)
Advance Multivendor Package : 2400 USD

If you go with their Platinum version of Multi-Vendor Marketplace, they will provide you a bunch of addons which will give you a full-fledged multi-vendor marketplace with enhanced features. To add more to this, CedCommerce provides 3 Months Free Support and Free Installation Service for their extensions to their customers .

***Multivendor Marketplace Platinum Package for Magento 2***

CedCommerce is providing many features in their Multi-Vendor Marketplace extension. You can extend its features by using their 150+ available addons. Let us have a look at some of the features of CedCommerce Multi-Vendor Marketplace:-

· Totally responsive design

· Multiple websites login and product support

· Analytical dashboard

· Advanced sales reports for vendors

· Enhanced configuration settings for the admin

· Facility for admin to approve/disapprove vendor’s product

· Smooth transaction process with proper commission deduction

· Facility of Refund also available in case of order cancellation

· Easily manageable accounts, products, orders, transactions, advance reporting system, etc for vendors.

· Admin has full control of marketplace. The admin panel includes the required settings which help in managing the vendors and their details.

I would like to mention here that CedCommerce Multi-Vendor Marketplace because of its striking features and commendable after sales services has become my personal favorite, which is why I have shown individual comparison of CedCommerce Multi-Vendor Marketplace with other companies Marketplace extensions as well so that you can clearly make your decision based on that.

Webkul Multi-Vendor Marketplace

Webkul is involved in multi-vendor marketplace development since 2012. So, it can be easily said that a lot of customers’ trust their multi-vendor marketplace software. Webkul is providing their multi-vendor marketplace extension at a cost $418.80 with 3 months of free support. Webkul has covered most of the essential features of multi-vendor marketplace in their software. Any kind of multi-vendor marketplace needs can be solved with this one. Webkul multi-vendor marketplace has following features:-

Separate seller / vendor profile / micro site .
Seller can add banner , shop logo custom HTML text .
Seller / Vendor product search in vendor panel .
Feedback and review system with interactive star rating.
Different seller commission for every seller.
Back-end admin product assignment for seller account.
Category and subcategory assignment from seller end.
Seller Dashboard will display the current status of the product account e.g Pending, Complete, Processing.
Special price , special price to.
Stock Availability check.
Ajax check for vendor / seller shop URL .
Review and feedback management for vendors/ sellers.
Product Preview for product approval at admin.
Vendor / Seller and Admin moderation and approval.
Seller / Vendor Enable disable from admin of the store.
This module provides an attractive landing page with top 4 sellers with their top 3 products.
Allow to seller to edit shop URL for Profile page, collection page, review page, Location page.
Option to view the list of all the sellers of the marketplace at one place.
Admin will allow the specific Product Image Type for the product images, when seller adds the product.
Allow seller to add Carrier and Tracking numbers for orders.
Admin will allow Product Image Type for the product image when seller adds the product.
The seller will be notified by mail when product inventory reaches to the specified minimum level set by the admin.
Product Edit and Delete option on seller panel.
Interactive view for seller profile and easy to upload seller logo and banner with colors.
All product type Simple, Downloadable, Virtual, Configurable, Bundle and Group Products (using addons) supported.
Latest order at vendor dashboard and order management using shipping addons for marketplace .
Seller / Vendor transaction report at seller panel.
All Templates working including (ultimo , template monster and theme forest).
All currencies Supported.
Hint(s) / Guide feature for the fields which will be managed by magento Admin.
Store Owner or Admin can limit the category(s) for the sellers / vendor i.e . Vendor can add the product on allowed categories only.
SMS integration with Twilio SMS Addon.
Automatically generate seller product URL’s like- Profile, Collection, Location & feedback URL.
Admin can choose and customize 3 different layouts for Landing Page.
Admin can choose to auto-approve orders or not.
The seller can manage the order from the front-end when approved by admin.
Admin can allow seller to add related products, up-sell products and cross-sell products from seller’s panel.
Admin can allow seller to add product limit for customer on product purchase.

· Webkul is providing additional featured addons which can be use to extend the features of Webkul marketplace.

**CedCommerce Multi-Vendor Marketplace vs Webkul Multi-Vendor Marketplace**

CMPlugins Multi-Vendor Marketplace

Creative Minds is renowned name in Magento extensions development. Their Multi-Vendor Marketplace extension costs $300 and if purchased along with PayPal Vendor Payments, it costs $350 with 1 year support and upgrades. If purchased with PayPal Vendor Payments + Bundle Installation, it costs $380 with 1 year support and updates. It provides following features:-

Supplier Panel — Dashboard page shows Revenues and Number of items sold.
Bulk Product upload with images is possible
Adding Products — Suppliers can add new products with a description, metadata and images
Enable/Disable option for product suppliers to register and choose a customer group
Preview and Edit the products on frontend before they go live
Supplier dashboard with sales
Supplier Product List — Suppliers can view and manage their products from the frontend
Customizing Product Forms — Product forms can easily be customized in the admin panel
Orders Report and Products Report are available. Products report is available for:-

· Bestsellers

· Ordered Items

· Most Viewed

· Low Stock

Supplier can add new elements to the product form
Supplier can edit his profile i.e. update name, description and logo image.
Supplier can choose the shipping methods
Supplier gets notification when the products are approved by the admin and the products are ordered by the admin
Supplier has his own shop page
Supplier can view and ship his orders
Admin can change labels of the existing product metadata
Admin can see the list of all the products added by the supplier
Admin can change the supplier/owner of a product
Admin can generate sales report for supplier

**CedCommerce Multi-Vendor Marketplace vs CMPlugins Multi-Vendor Marketplace**

VnEcoms Multi-Vendor Marketplace

VnEcoms multi-vendor marketplace is also a very popular extension for marketplace. Their multi-vendor marketplace extension comes in two versions Standard and Platinum edition each of them costs $399 and $999. It seems to be a bit expensive to pay around one thousand dollars to get all the features of the multi-vendor marketplace. They have 40 addons which you can use to extend the features of their multi-vendor marketplace. The attraction of VnEcoms multi-vendor marektpalce is that it uses the admin panel theme for Magento vendor panel. It has some features less than Webkul and CedCommerce multi-vendor marketplace.

The features of VnEcoms multi-vendor marketplace are-

· 3 Extension Modes

· Vendor Group Management

· Vendor Commission Management

· Vendor Transaction Management

· Vendor Credit Account

· Withdrawal Management

· Manage Vendors

· Manage Vendor Attributes

· Vendor Login

· Vendor Register New Account

· Vendor Account Approval

· Responsive Vendor Cpanel

· Vendor Dashboard

· Vendor Product Management

· Grouped Product

· Configurable Product

· Downloadable Product

· Virtual Product

· Product Custom options

· Vendor Product Approval

· Vendor Orders Management

· Vendor Shipments Management

· Vendor Invoices Management

· Vendor Credit memo Management

· Vendor Configuration

· Multiple shopping cart for each vendor

· Split order to multiple orders

· Support all Magento themes

· Multiple websites support

· Multiple Language Support

· Customizable

· Support

· Upgrade

· Money Back Guarantee

**CedCommerce Multi-Vendor Marketplace vs VnEcoms Multi-Vendor Marketplace**

Apptha Multi-Vendor Marketplace

Apptha is also a leading multi-vendor marketplace solution provider company for Magento. Anyone can purchase and download their extension and covert their Magento store into a multi-vendor marketplace solution. They are using the same functionality as Webkul i.e. taking the customer session as a vendor and showing a panel same as customer to the vendor. They have provided some feature rich things like the social login to register the account as a vendor. They also have some addons to provide extra functions, but mostly rely on customization to provide multi-vendor marketplace functionality. They provide just 4 addons in this area.

Apptha multi-vendor marketplace comes with the following feature list:-

For Store Owners

One step checkout: Instant and simplified payment options for customers in the form of a single integrated checkout page.
Super Deals: This attracts your customers to buy the product/deal by displaying the Time left to buy, Discount Percentage, Saving amount etc.
Social Login: Easy and instant login options for customers using social login accounts.
Store specific URLs: URLs of the stores in the marketplace are generated as per the names specified by the vendors.
Exclusively developed attractive theme for Marketplace.
Seller account can be approved or declined either manually or automatically.
Product updates of sellers can be approved via mails either automatically/manually.
Sellers, Seller profiles and their products.
Option to set up a different commission fee (in %) per product for each seller.
Two different payment and payment transfer options for sellers: Bank/PayPal accounts.
Facility to manage the complete payment transaction for each seller easily.

For Seller (Merchant)

Seller dashboard: Merchants can get to know their sales facts and figures through options like ‘Sales.
Report’, ‘Most Viewed Products’, ‘Life Time Sales’ which exhibits collective information.
Vendors can retrieve complete information of their sales performance using options like ‘Sales Report’, ‘Most Viewed Products’, and ‘Life Time Sales’.
Sellers now have the facility to add product of types namely ‘Simple’, ‘Virtual’, ‘Downloadable’ through an option which can be set by the administrator.
‘Custom’ option for products can be added by sellers which can either be Enabled or Disabled by the admin.
Sellers can request the customers to visit their social networking pages by placing Facebook and Twitter buttons on their profile pages.
Easy to sign up via default login.
Facility to create, sort, and manage countless products with details via dashboard.
Facility to update product details instantly.
Facility to add logo, banners to be displayed on front-end.
Option to delete and add any product for any seller.
Option to categorize products under relevant categories and sub categories.
Facility to send email confirmation to admin and merchant for every purchase made.
Complete product detail page displaying similar, other products, merchant data, other merchant product related to this product.
Option to categorize products under relevant categories and sub categories.

For Customers

Customers can become a seller in the marketplace upon the approval of the marketplace operator.
Through the integration of Social Login extension customers can access the marketplace via social login accounts or can sign in via default login account.
Customers can share product information via Facebook, Twitter and Google+ buttons placed on ‘Product Details’ page.
Easy and simple checkout process for customers through the integration of One Step Checkout extension.
Instant email confirmation upon product purchase.
Simple, safe, and secure payment transfer options.

**CedCommerce Multi-Vendor Marketplace vs Apptha Multi-Vendor Marketplace**

Overall Statistics

Ranking

Ranking is a very important factor which describes the performance of an entity or a thing based on certain data. As per my analysis and understanding, I would give the following ranks:-

· CedCommerce Multi-Vendor Marketplace — Rank 1

· Webkul Multi-Vendor Marketplace — Rank 2

· VnEcoms Multi-Vendor Marketplace — Rank 3

· Apptha Multi-Vendor Marketplace — Rank 4

· CMPlugins Multi-Vendor Marketplace — Rank 5

I have given these ranks not just because of one or two remarkable features but because of all the parameters that have contributed in this analysis of mine. I have tried to put my data exactly in the manner that customers understand such that their focus goes on the points of their interest.

Conclusion

With this blog of mine, my main aim was to give you all a comparison statistics so that you can choose the best for yourself. I have done a thorough study of all the multi-seller marketplace extensions, collected the facts, analyzed them carefully and then only drew out these conclusions.

Thus, as visible from the above comparisons of all the multi-supplier marketplace extensions, CedCommerce Multi-Vendor Marketplace is the best extension that could be used to setup an online marketplace with least investment and numerous features. Its great extendibility makes it unique from others. Therefore, CedCommerce Multi-Vendor Marketplace would be worth using and my vote goes for it.