Question: At first I was thinking of using a WordPress plugin like this https://experthive.hivepress.io/ because with my current budget I can’t fully afford some of the more popular SAAS, CMS, and APIs, and that theme has many benefits and even a dashboard for sellers but looking at their community forum, I noticed that they have a lot of bugs and interruptions in their processes and that doesn’t work for me as a good marketplace, especially in payments, so (besides the price) what advantages do you have compared to the main ones marketplace facilitators and builders?
Great question. This gives us a chance to openly discuss and also identify where we lack to improve our product.
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The platforms which are in the industry for more than 5 years does have lot of features. We will not be able to match all the features like them. They may be suitable. But what we think we differ is latest technologies and frameworks that solves lot of challenges the previous technologies might have. This ranges from performance to flexibility. All old platforms comes with legacy problems.
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Platforms designed for marketplace vs a platform for all. Broad vs Deep. Any platform that is designed for broader scope will always have restriction in terms of the deep features you want to offer. For example: Just now we are thinking about creating an academy for users. Indeed, Tradly can support building an multi-sided academy. However a deep focused platform like teachable has more features catered for academies. So Tradly is meant for marketplace. We started with Product Marketplace, Added event marketplaces features, directories and adding further more blocks to support other marketplaces.
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UI/UX: Providing the experiences for admins and end users will be totally different by general platforms like wordpress and deep focused platforms like Tradly. When we think of features, we think marketplace admins and marketplace buyer/seller. But when you think of wordpress, it’s mostly generally put UX/UI because they need to suit every industry.
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Native features. Whenever you want functionality for marketplace, we have/built/add in roadmap directly into the main product. When you think of wordpress, they come as plugins. This plugins also built for masses. May not be always suitable for your niche needs. You are fully dependant on plugins. When any plugins create an issue or stop providing maintenance, you risk the total marketplace.
This is some of the points I can think of now. Indeed there are many factors which we can discuss in detail based on your further questions.