Your own niche marketplace — many sellers, one platform, you take the commission_

A niche marketplace is more than a catalog with many sellers. Discovery needs to validate both user groups, the transaction type, seller-admission criteria, commission structure, payment and payout flow, cancellations or refunds, disputes, moderation, and compliance duties. An MVP can then include vendor dashboards, catalogs, search, checkout, order status, ratings, commissions, and an admin panel according to priorities and provider capabilities. Every rule involving funds, identity, data, and disputes needs a clear operational owner before the platform opens to the public. This is Custom work from IDR 15M; scope, escrow or split payments, integrations, security, price, and timeline are confirmed after discovery. Seller volume, buyers, transactions, commissions, market liquidity, and investment outcomes are not guaranteed.

A marketplace is one of the most complex types of custom software because it has to handle many roles at once with different interests. We use a modular architecture: the buyer layer, seller layer, admin layer, and payment layer are all separated but connected via an internal API. The database is designed with a tenant model — every vendor 'rides along' in the same database but their data is isolated via permissions. For performance, the most frequently accessed catalog pages are pre-rendered and served from a CDN, with smart invalidation when there's a new product/stock update. A dedicated search engine (Meilisearch or Algolia) handles queries with complex filters so the response is under 200ms. The escrow system is implemented with split payments: funds enter the escrow account, and 7-14 days after the buyer's confirmation the funds are released to the seller after the commission is deducted. Every movement of funds is recorded in a double-entry ledger for strict auditing. Dispute resolution is designed as a workflow state machine — every transition (complaint → mediated → resolved) requires a specific action from the relevant party. For anti-fraud, we set up signal monitoring: a new seller with a sudden high order volume, repeated IPs, suspicious refund patterns.