From the outside they look alike: a catalogue, a cart, a payment. Inside they are different businesses, and choosing wrong shows up late, once it is already built. The difference fits in one sentence.
In an online store you sell your own catalogue. In a marketplace other people sell and you run the platform.
What an online store is
Your team uploads the products, sets the prices, takes the payment and ships. The whole catalogue is yours. What has to be solved is well known: a catalogue with variants, payments, shipping, inventory and an admin panel your team can run without depending on a developer.
And you do not always have to start with everything. There are three ways to launch:
- A full store, with cart and online payment.
- A catalogue with ordering over WhatsApp, with no online payment.
- Mixed: online payment for some products and WhatsApp for others.
What a marketplace is
Here the catalogue is not yours: each seller manages their own products and stock, and your business is the platform that brings them together with buyers. That adds questions a store does not have:
- Who collects the money. The usual model is that the marketplace collects and then pays out each seller. Payment can also go straight to the seller: simpler to build, but you lose control of the checkout.
- How you make money. A commission per sale, a seller subscription, featured listings, or a mix.
- How the catalogue is organised. Everyone sells on one shared product page, or each seller creates their own (more freedom, but the same product shows up several times).
- How trust is built. Seller verification, ratings, reviews, and even inspecting the product before it is delivered.
How to tell which one you need
Ask yourself one question: who is going to upload the products?
- Only your team: you need a store, even if you carry many brands or categories.
- Third parties selling on their own account: you need a marketplace.
- Both, your catalogue living alongside other people's: that is a marketplace with your store inside it.
Why it pays to decide early
Turning a store into a marketplace later is possible, but it is not a matter of adding a feature: checkout, commissions and seller payouts shape how almost everything else is built. If you know that is where you are heading, it is better for the first version to account for it.
What they share
The same holds for both: your team should be able to run it without a developer, inventory should update on its own, and it should connect to what you already use, such as e-invoicing, your shipping carrier or your ERP.
You can see what each one includes: online stores and marketplaces. And if you still do not know which one is yours, tell us what you want to sell and we will work it out in the diagnosis.