Best PitchI built a marketplace on my own and I still run it.
CageList is a marketplace. Players book batting cages, facility owners get paid, and I wrote every line of it and still answer when something breaks. That last part is why this page exists. Plenty of people can build you the marketplace you can picture. Fewer have had to handle the double booking, the refund on a Sunday night, and the owner who wants to know why his payout is two days late — which is the actual product, and which almost nobody quotes for.
The hard part is not the listings page.
The listing grid and the search filter are a week of work and they are the part everybody demonstrates. The parts that decide whether the thing survives are the ones underneath: how money reaches the supply side, what happens when a booking goes wrong, who is liable when it does, and what the site shows a visitor on the first day when there is nothing in it yet.
- Accounts for both sides, because the person supplying and the person buying need different screens entirely
- Payouts, not just charges — taking money is half a system, getting it to the other side is the rest
- A refund and dispute path decided before you need it, not improvised during it
- An answer to the first day, when there are no listings and no reason for anyone to stay
- An admin screen built for how you will actually spend your Monday
This is the one on this page most likely to fail, and not for technical reasons.
Marketplaces die of a supply problem far more often than a software problem. If it sounds on the call like you have twelve suppliers who have not agreed to anything yet, I will say so, and I will suggest you spend the money proving they will show up before you spend it on me.
A project like this usually starts with the Product package, below. Quoted after we talk from the day you approve the scope, and no website I build takes longer than 30 days.
Pick the one that fits. The price is the price.
Whichever one you pick, you fill in one form and the rest is on me: the domain, the business email, the site, the listings, and the automations behind them.
Launch
Business
Most businessesProduct
Brand identity — $900
Logo, colours, type, and a one-page guide so everything a customer sees looks like it came from the same business.
Merch store — $600
Your own shop selling shirts, hats and whatever else carries your name. Nothing is printed until somebody orders it, so you are never sitting on a box of unsold stock. I build it and hand it over. Orders, sizes, refunds and the person asking where their hoodie has got to are yours, not mine.
AI assistant — Quoted for your business
An assistant on your site that knows your business, answers questions after hours, and takes details when you cannot.
Different business, different argument:
Tell me what you are trying to build.
The form takes about ten minutes. I read every one myself and reply the same day.
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