How to Build a Two Sided Marketplace App

What a two sided marketplace actually requires

A two sided marketplace connects two groups who need each other: buyers and sellers, homeowners and contractors, patients and practitioners, event hosts and venues. The app is the meeting point, and its job is to make matching, booking and paying easier than doing it off platform. Tepia treats every marketplace as three products in one: a demand side app, a supply side app and an admin portal that lets your team see and manage everything.

Each side needs its own onboarding, its own profile model and its own notifications.

Guides from marketplace platform vendors tend to assume you will rent their software. This guide assumes you want to own the code, the data and the roadmap, which is the path Tepia takes with clients who have outgrown templates or who need features a hosted platform will not support.

Nine steps to build a two sided marketplace app

1. Pick one niche and one transaction. Define the single exchange the app enables (book a mobile groomer, rent a boat slip, hire a bilingual tutor). Tepia starts discovery here because a marketplace that serves everyone converts no one.
2. Solve supply first. Decide how you will recruit and onboard the first 50 to 200 sellers or providers before any buyer sees the app. Tepia often builds the seller onboarding flow and admin portal in the first sprint so you can begin recruiting while the buyer side is still in design.
3. Write the user stories for both sides. Discovery produces a User Stories document covering the buyer journey, the seller journey and the admin journey, plus an Investigation Summary of any third party systems (calendars, CRMs, payment providers) the app must touch.
4. Design the matching and discovery model. Search, filters, categories, location radius, availability and ranking rules. Tepia wireframes these flows in the Design phase and tests them with a handful of real sellers before development.
5. Plan payments and payouts. Most marketplaces use Stripe or Square with tokenized cards, a platform fee and split payouts to sellers. Tepia keeps card data out of your servers entirely, which keeps PCI DSS scope small.
6. Build trust features. Verified profiles, two way ratings, reviews, messaging inside the app, dispute handling and refunds. These are not nice to haves; they are the reason users transact on the platform instead of around it.
7. Scope the MVP to the transaction loop. Onboarding, listing, search, booking or ordering, payment, review.
8. Develop, test and soft launch. Alpha and Beta schedules, functional and user acceptance testing, then a closed launch in one city or category with support reps watching the first transactions.
9. Measure liquidity and iterate. Track time to first match, fill rate, repeat transaction rate and take rate. Tepia’s App Evolution consulting uses these numbers to decide what ships next.

Feature scope for a marketplace MVP

Marketplace founders usually arrive with a feature list three times larger than the MVP needs. Tepia uses the table below to sort features into the launch build and the next release so you can fund the first version sensibly.

Tepia builds the admin portal as a web app (React) so your operations team can moderate listings and resolve disputes from a laptop while buyers and sellers use native or cross platform mobile apps.

How Tepia approaches two sided marketplace development

Tepia follows a six phase process on every marketplace build. Discovery (typically 1 to 3 months, shorter if you bring specs) includes a system investigation, user interviews with prospective buyers and sellers and a third party integration review. You receive an Investigation Summary, an Interview Summary and User Stories for all three surfaces.

Design covers a design questionnaire, moodboards, a style guide, detailed wireframes for buyer, seller and admin flows, and sample designs. Development and Testing runs on Alpha and Beta schedules with written test plans, functional testing, user acceptance testing with your pilot sellers and non functional testing for load and security.

Training is hands on, in person or remote, built around user story scenarios so your support team can walk a seller through onboarding. Launch includes data migration from any spreadsheets or legacy listings, transition from the old system and Tepia support reps on the rollout. You can read the full process at tepia.co/process.

Technology choices Tepia recommends for marketplaces

For most marketplaces Tepia recommends React Native or Flutter for the buyer and seller apps so both iOS and Android ship from one codebase, with Swift and Kotlin reserved for features that need deep native access. The backend is usually Node.js or .NET with PostgreSQL, hosted on AWS, Azure or GCP, exposing REST or GraphQL APIs.

Payments run through Stripe or Square with tokenized cards and connected seller accounts. Messaging uses push notifications and, where needed, Twilio for SMS. Email goes through SendGrid. CRM and marketing sync to HubSpot or Salesforce through direct integrations or Zapier and Make when the volume is low.

Tepia also adds OpenAI or Anthropic model APIs when a marketplace benefits from AI matching, listing quality scoring or support chat, usually in version two once real transaction data exists. Related services: marketplace app development and on demand app development.

Frequently asked questions