In this article, we look at the best multi-vendor WordPress marketplace themes. Building a functional online marketplace from scratch can prove costly: if you have an idea for a marketplace website along the lines of Amazon, Etsy, or eBay, one of these premium themes will provide an inexpensive way to test the waters.
The requirements of a multi-vendor marketplace are fairly self-evident. Sellers need to be able to sign up, build shops and sell their wares; buyers need to be able to buy those wares with ease and confidence. And perhaps most importantly, site owners will want to be able to monetize those transactions, often by taking a percentage cut.
All the themes on this list support intuitive, easy to use marketplace solutions and satisfy those requirements, though several do need additional plugins for full functionality. Most are integrated with at least one of the following well-known plugins: Dokan, WC Vendors, or WooCommerce Product Vendors.
You may also want to check out our list of top WordPress membership site themes.
Here are the best multi-vendor marketplace themes currently available for WordPress:
Social Marketplace
You get what you pay for might be a cliche, but the Social Marketplace theme, developed by the talented WordPress team at BuddyBoss, perfectly illustrates why that cliche exists. As a WordPress marketplace theme, Social totally delivers, and it brings all the functionality and attention to detail that’s making BuddyBoss one of the fastest growing WordPress developers around.
It might be at a higher price point than our other picks, but the fantastic integration of WC Vendors (a WooCommerce add-on) along with BuddyPress gives it a certain edge over the competition. The design is clean and modern, as you’d expect, and the user-experience has been carefully crafted for both site users and site admins.
But if you don’t require the deeper social features provided by BuddyPress and BuddyPress, you can’t go wrong with our next top pick, either–at a lower cost. Which is…
ClassifiedEngine
If you’re looking to create a multi vendor classifieds site, such as an auto trading site, ClassifiedEngine is the perfect, turnkey solution for you.
ClassfiedEngine has everything you need to create a perfect classified marketplace site. You can charge by post, offer membership, or you can use more complicated commission sales structures to the vendors on your site. There are also trial offers and more.
Everything is built in, so you don’t have to set up any outside packages to get ClassifiedEngine working on your site. The theme works great on mobile devices, and is local (location friendly). There are tons of features, and plugins are available to extend the theme even more.
If you’re looking to build a classified-like marketplace, this one is worth a try.
Martfury
Martfury is one of our favorite themes of all time. It’s a top reviewed multi-vendor marketplace theme that does basically anything you are looking for.
The coolest thing about Martfury is that it’s mobile-first. Google has switched more than 50% of its index to mobile-first, so you need to be sure your site works just as well (if not better) on mobile than on desktop. Martfury was designed with that in mind.
You will need to use Dokan or another solution (you can get it set up for you for $50) to enable the multi-vendor functionality of this theme, but once you have those installed, this theme works flawlessly, allowing individual stores, inventory management, coupons, shipping, and commissions. There’s even a built in price comparison engine.
Try it out, and we guarantee you’ll agree — Martfury is a gorgeous option for any multi-vendor WordPress marketplace site.
Zass (Etsy-Style)
Relatively new to the scene, this multi-vendor marketplace theme was developed and designed for entrepreneurs and webmasters inspired by Etsy and other crafting communities. Although it’s not a straight Etsy-clone, and offers its own unique design and layout, the features and functionality should be familiar, and will provide a nearly turn-key solution to anyone wanting to get their crafting market up and running quickly and inexpensively.
Zass’s e-commerce and marketplace features are powered primarily by WooCommerce and the WC Vendors plugin (you can get them set up for you for $50 or less). Site visitors can create and manage their own shops, and you can set a commission on their sales. The theme is retina-ready and fully optimized for mobile devices, so you’ll have no weird or unpleasant performance and design inconsistencies regardless of what you view it on.
There’s also no shortage of options and extras to fiddle with on the back-end, so you’ll be able to fine tune everything to match your vision.
Catalog
A recent addition, the clean, contemporary design of the Catalog theme is reminiscent not only of stock photo and digital product providers, but also of marketplaces like Shopify and Etsy. Built on the responsive Twitter Bootstrap framework and powered primarily by WooCommerce & WC Vendors (you can get these set up for you for $50), Catalog is a streamlined, purpose-oriented theme developed especially for multi-vendor websites. The result is a focused, well thought-out and user-friendly product.
The theme includes some other useful features, most notably, support for the popular bbPress plugin, allowing you to build community forums for both buyers and sellers. Drag & drop page building is supported, for layout editing and design, and back-end options give you control over colors, typography, icons, and more.
A few nifty usability features like Front-End upload forms and mega menus add more value still. The theme is well supported, documented, and regularly updated by the developer, and set up is fast and easy using the single click demo installation. Recommended.
Multimarket
Multimarket is a great solution for digital products, although it works with any sorts of products. The theme includes fully built designs for a multi-vendor photos marketplace (like iStockPhoto or Shutterstock), a themes marketplace (like Themeforest or Envato), as well as designs for fonts, graphics, books, and more.
Like some of the other items on this list, you will need Dokan or some other plugin installed for WordPress in order to make this one work. You can have this done for around $50 on Fiverr.
We love the gorgeous look of this theme, and the ease of use for end users. Really, the only downside to this one is that it’s best suited to digital products.
Marketify
Our number one selection prior to the release of Social Marketplace was Marketify, by the team at Astoundify. It’s the best-selling WordPress marketplace theme on Themeforest, with nearly 1600 sales. The design is clean, modern and fully responsive.
Marketify lends itself equally well to both physical and digital products, but it’s especially well matched to digital. Products like photos, audio, video, fonts and even templates are right at home on Marketify. If your intention is to build a site like Codecanyon, Envato, Flashden or any number of stock photography marketplaces, this is the direction you’ll want to take.
Powered by the Easy Digital Downloads plugin, we should note that the marketplace extension bundle for EDD is sold separately. It’s not strictly required, but is strongly recommended to build a full-featured marketplace.
Rigid
Although not exclusively a multi-vendor product, Rigid fully supports WC Vendors (including the PRO version) and includes a demo/skin that’s perfect for building an Etsy-style marketplace. Dokan is also supported (you can get it set up for you for $50 or less).
The theme is optimized for usability and speed, featuring AJAX-powered searching, infinite scroll, and a built-in mega menu. This one comes with a lot of styles to choose from out-of-the-box, but there’s lots of room for additional customization on the backend.
A wide-variety of popular 3rd party plugins are fully supported–MailChimp, Yoast, NinjaForms–all that good stuff.
Of course, the whole thing is SEO optimized, retina-ready, and fully responsive, just as you’d expect. As with most ThemeForest products, some nice premium add-ons are bundled. Free lifetime updates are included.
AuctionTheme (eBay-Style Auctions)
Looking for an auction-style marketplace? AuctionTheme is perfect for you. You can use this theme to build a complete eBay-like auction site, where you charge a percent commission fee per auction. The theme is comprehensive and easy to set up, so you’ll be up and running with your auction in no time.
Some of the great features include “make an offer” functionality, multiple monetization methods (fixed-fee, listing fee, membership fees, etc), feedback and ratings, virtual payments, private messages, and support for digital items. It also includes location search, social media integration,
AuctionTheme is fast, and highly optimized, so it won’t be a burden on your server or on your users. It works out of the box with Paypal, as well as a half dozen other payment gateways.
Market
Succinctly titled Market, this relatively new theme boasts a clean, contemporary design that’s going look and work great no matter what device you view it on. The theme integrates with the Easy Digital Downloads plugin, instead of WooCommerce, to provide its marketplace functionality. Front-end submissions are supported via the (optional) Front-end submissions add on.
Each author can build their own storefront, with a profile that includes their bio, contact information, and a custom logo or banner. Webmasters looking to build a site like Fiverr can also take advantage of the free Download as Service EDD add-on. If you don’t want to be limited to digital products, the Simple Shipping add-on provides the option to sell & ship physical goods.
Market is optimized for speed, translation-ready, and SEO ready/optimized to help you secure a top spot in Google and other search engines.
MarketHub
Released in May, MarketHub was created specifically for building a multi-vendor, digital products marketplace. The design is sleek and modern, designed to offer maximum scalability and flexibility. Powered by WooCommerce (and the WC vendors plugin), MarketHub includes everything you need to build a robust digital marketplace out-of-the-box. An advanced reviews plug-in is also included.
Developers may also appreciate the inclusion of SASS, Bourbon and Neat technologies. Fully responsive, and optimized for all devices.
Makery
The Makery theme is first-and-foremost about physical products. This is the sort of WordPress marketplace theme you need if you’re building a Etsy style marketplace on the WordPress platform.
Instead of using Easy Digital Downloads, Makery is powered by WooCommerce. Support for features like unlimited shops, multiple carts, seller profiles and commissions are built-in.
Makery is easy to customized, thanks to the included options panel. It’s responsive, translation ready, and comes with demo content to ensure a quick & painless installation and setup.
ClassiPress
ClassiPress is flat, clean and leaves out many of the useless gimmicks and clutter common to contemporary themes, resulting in excellent UX: it’s speedy, mobile-ready, and a breeze to navigate and use, giving potential customers and users site a few more reasons to come back again next time.
ClassiPress provides a complete classified ads solution with multiple commission models, free and paid pricing, and more. All of the functionality is built in, so this is an easy, turnkey solution..
Additional features are also included for building ads, pricing tables, testimonial sections, and portfolios.
Handy
Entrepreneurs aspiring to create the next Etsy might find what they’re looking for (and an inexpensive shortcut) with the Handy theme. Designed specifically as a shop theme for tangible, handmade items, Handy is powered by entirely by WordPress, WooCommerce and the WC Vendors Plugin.
The theme is versatile, with several different layout styles to choose from, and an excellent options panel for tweaking fonts, colors and more. Revolution Slider is packed in free, and Handy is both responsive and retina-ready. Video tutorials are provided.
Le Crafts
New in August, Le Crafts is another Etsy-inspired vendor theme targeting startups specializing in crafts and handmade products, and it was developed and designed with physical products and shipping in mind. This one has the distinction supporting the popular Dokan plugin, a rather extraordinarily feature-rich vendor add-on for WooCommerce.
But if Dokan isn’t your jam, not to worry – WC Vendors and WooCommerce Product Vendors are supported too. This is a fairly versatile theme in terms of layout, with 7 homepage presets included, and 6 pre-defined portfolio layouts. You’ll find plenty of very nice secondary features as well, including an entire smorgasbord of built-in custom widgets, a fantastic Shortcodes plugin (Koo Shortcodes), Ninja Form, and of course, the seemingly inseparable Revolution Slider & Visual Composer.
Marketica
Marketica is the newest WordPress marketplace theme on our list, evidenced by the way it embraces a few lovely, modern design trends. Flat design, classy typography and a liberal use of whitespace work together to create an air of visual harmony and professionalism. But isn’t that what they all say?
This is another theme that goes the WooCommerce route, making it an excellent choice for real world, physical products. Marketica wisely supports several popular WooCommerce add-ons for creating marketplaces. Choose from WC Vendors, WooThemes’ Product Vendors, or the Socio Multi Vendor plugin.
Marketica has some nice extras bundled for free: Visual Composer, for drag & drop page building, and Slider Revolution for putting together engaging, impressive homepage slideshows. Additional support is built-in for the popular Ubermenu plugin, but that must be purchased separately.
The theme takes advantage of WordPress’s own live customizer for real-time previewing of tweaks and customizations and is translation-ready.
Stocky
The sleek, responsive, and retina-ready Stocky theme was developed especially for creating photography marketplaces like iStockPhoto, Dreamstime, and Shutterstock . Like many themes designed to sell digital products, Stocky relies on the Easy Digital Downloads plugin for marketplace functionality, and like the Marketify theme, you’ll get the most out of it by using the Marketplace bundle.
Advanced theme options are available for theme customization. Upload backgrounds, create color schemes with the color picker, and more. The theme is built on HTML5 and CSS3, translation-ready, and fully documented.
Walleto
Wow! It’s a theme not found on the ThemeForest marketplace! Walleto was designed by up-and-coming WordPress designer SiteMile. Both physical products and digital, downloadable products are supported.
Unlike the other themes we’ve looked at for, Walleto uses neither WooCommerce or EDD for its ecommerce features, and the developer has instead implemented their own solution.
Users can create their own shops, track purchases and orders, and interact with other marketplace users by way of a built-in private messages systems. e-Wallet functionality is supported, and the site can be monetized in several ways: charge for subscriptions, or choose a commissions based model, earning a percentage of every sale.
One of the benefits of this theme is that it’s ready to go out of the box – no additional plugins and setup will be required.
Pricerr (Fiverr-Style Microjob)
If you’re looking for a Fiverr-like microjob theme, you can try Pricerr. Pricerr helps you build a site where multiple vendors can bid to perform microjobs. This theme is turnkey, and you can buy and be up and running in minutes. It includes all of the functionality you’d expect in a Fiverr-like site, including social integration, multiple payment gateways, seller control, and more.
We review Pricerr and other Fiverr-like microjob themes in detail here.
Digita
Digita is an innovative template that can be called a perfect solution for your future electronics online-store. It is a highly-customizable and elegant solution that will provide you with a power that you have never experienced.
You do not need to be a specialist in programming in order to get your next online-shop ready. This excellent template also ensures that you will have every single tool to build a special website. As an example, the package comes together with two header and footer layouts, product image zoom, contact form, and newsletter integration.
You will be also happy to get a collection of custom widgets, advanced reviews, and single product styles. All of the features and many others will give you a chance to attract lots of visitors to your online-store and turn them into your loyal clients.