B2B Marketplaces: How They Work and When to Use One

Every growing brand hits the moment. A peer at a trade show or a well-placed ad tells you that you really should be selling on some big B2B marketplace. It sounds like free growth, a shortcut to thousands of business buyers you would never reach on your own.

It can be exactly that. But it can also squeeze your profit margins and put a middleman between you and the customers you spent years chasing.

Before you commit, it helps to understand how these platforms move an order to checkout, and how to tell whether one fits your business. That is what this guide covers.

What is a B2B marketplace?

A B2B marketplace is an online platform where companies buy from and sell to other businesses. Instead of one company selling its own products through a single storefront, a centralized marketplace connects businesses so they can transact online.

Three groups make it work:

1. The operator sets the rules and keeps transactions secure. 
2. Sellers, which include manufacturers, wholesalers, and distributors, list their products with descriptions and specifications. 
3. Buyers, from independent retailers to procurement teams, arrive to search, compare, and order.

These platforms have come a long way. Early business-to-business directories were matchmaking sites where the deal closed offline later.

Today’s marketplaces handle the whole process, from catalog and quote to payment and often fulfillment, which simplifies the corporate buying cycle.

Buyers get direct access to a wider range of suppliers while keeping their procurement processes lean. For sellers, it opens up business opportunities they could not build alone. 

How does a B2B marketplace work?

The mechanics differ for each side of the transaction. Let me walk you through the buyer, the seller, and the operator sides one by one.

How buyers discover and compare suppliers

On the buyer side, everything starts with a search or structured browse. You can filter by specification, price tier, or supplier, then compare listings from multiple suppliers side by side.

For larger orders, a lot of marketplaces support request-for-quote workflows, so buyers can compare prices and request quotes from several suppliers before committing. 

Since sellers are placed together, a marketplace can also lower procurement costs by highlighting direct competition. Bulk discounts and wholesale pricing are common here, since orders tend to run larger than a standard retail purchase.

How sellers reach new customers

For sellers, a marketplace offers demand they did not have to generate. Buyers arrive through the platform’s traffic and reputation, which lowers digital marketing costs and opens a new sales channel to potential customers and international buyers.

Some platforms even offer fulfillment services that reduce a seller’s operational costs, and the built-in discovery helps you attract customers without a large ad budget. 

The trade-off is control, since sellers accept the platform’s fees, ranking, and policies in exchange for reach.

How operators run the platform and make money

The operator sits in the middle. It verifies businesses and resolves disputes, which keeps the experience consistent.

Marketplace operators earn revenue through transaction fees, seller subscriptions, and ad spends. Since mutual trust keeps things functioning, business verification for both buyers and sellers is standard here. 

These platforms also integrate with inventory management and payment processing systems so your orders and stock stay in sync across channels.

What are the key types of B2B marketplaces?

Not every marketplace works the same way, and they mainly vary in the type of people they attract.

1. Horizontal: Horizontal marketplaces serve multiple industries on one platform, the way Amazon Business sells products across nearly every category.
2. Vertical: Vertical platforms focus on a particular industry or niche, like Thomasnet for industrial procurement or Faire for wholesale retail. They often outperform horizontal ones for specific industries, because category-specific search and supplier density carry more weight than the size of the overall network.
3. Supplier, wholesale, or industry-specific: These organize sellers around a different buying context rather than a single catalog, so the assortment reflects category behavior.
4. Local or global: Local marketplaces connect businesses within a specific geographic area, while global marketplaces facilitate international trade and cross-border transactions.
5. Many-to-many or one-to-many: Many-to-many marketplaces let multiple buyers and sellers transact freely. One-to-many marketplaces are run by a single controlling entity

How is a B2B marketplace different from a distributor or your own store?

Each option fits a different business model, so you have to choose based on how they operate.

A B2B marketplace lists many independent sellers and lets buyers compare across them. A branded ordering channel, sometimes called a single-seller store, is run by one brand that controls its own catalog, pricing, and customer relationships. 

Buyers might also opt for a distributor, that buys inventory outright and resells it, so it owns the margin and the relationship. And then there are procurement networks, which sit on the buyer’s side to manage approvals and track spend.

The practical difference comes down to control and ownership. On a marketplace, you pay for the demand, while in your channel, you own the relationship and the data.

What does it really cost to sell on a B2B marketplace?

Marketplace growth has been hard to ignore. During the pandemic years, B2B marketplace sales had a massive growth, and 75% of retailers expect B2B marketplace sales to keep growing in the coming years. 

The number of platforms climbed too, from around 400 a few years ago to 750 and counting, with projections putting the total past 1,000. 

So the reach is real, but the cost is where sellers get surprised.

The posted commission is never the whole story. Your effective rate adds paid visibility, payment processing, and returns and claims on top of the headline fee.

That math decides which products can sell profitably on the channel. A distributor with a 32% gross margin gives up more than half of it to a platform charging a 17% effective take rate, before fulfillment costs enter the equation.

Platform dependency is the other cost. When fee changes and policy shifts are announced, you’re forced to get on with it or leave the channel.

When should you use a B2B marketplace?

A marketplace makes sense when it matches how your buyers already behave and what your products need. Three signals point toward that:

1. Your buyers already shop at marketplaces

If procurement teams in your category already start on a marketplace, your absence costs you visibility. Buyer behavior has shifted hard towards digital commerce, and 2025 validated it.

Digital Commerce 360 reported that B2B ecommerce grew 13% to $2.93 trillion in 2025, even as total B2B sales stayed nearly flat, with more than 90% of B2B transactions now placed electronically.

McKinsey’s 2026 Global B2B Pulse Survey found that 71% of B2B companies now sell online, and among those, about a third of revenue runs through digital channels. Buyers are comfortable spending big through self-service too, since 73% will now place orders over $50,000 online, up from 59% in 2022.

On marketplaces specifically, 59% of B2B buyers now make more than a quarter of their purchases through them, and Amazon Business remains the largest B2B marketplace by a wide margin. Meeting buyers where they research is the point.

2. Your products are standardized

Catalog-ready products that buyers can judge on specification and price do well in comparison charts. So if you have raw materials and standardized SKUs, they’d fit the self-service model, where buyers can order quickly without a sales call.

Configurable or heavily negotiated products don’t work as well in this environment.

3. You want visibility or compete on price and availability

When discovery and market reach outweigh control, a marketplace offers you an audience and a ready-made buying flow. It gives you greater access to a larger network of buyers and suppliers, and it can help small businesses expand internationally without building distribution from scratch. 

A marketplace can also surface market trends and show what a new target audience is buying: insight that helps you decide which products to push. 

When is a B2B marketplace the wrong fit?

The same platform can work against you when your business runs on factors a marketplace tends to ignore.

Your revenue depends on reorders

Repeat-order businesses survive on customer relationships. When a marketplace sits between you and the buyer, the reorder flow and the buying data become the platform’s asset instead of yours.

For a business whose growth hinges on customer loyalty and repeat ordering, that’s a major gamble.

Your pricing is negotiated and account-specific

Marketplaces built for open comparison strain against complex pricing. B2B transactions often include Net 30 and volume discounts, and buyers frequently need multiple approvals before purchasing.

When a buyer sees a price that does not match their contract, the order closes through your assigned rep, and the channel proves it cannot be trusted for that account.

You need to own buyer data and the relationship

Marketplace analytics can reveal buying trends and customer preferences, though usually for the operator first. If field sales and account depth drive your growth, the loss of direct access to valuable data is a cost you should model before shifting to a marketplace.

Join, build, or run your own ordering channel?

Once you know whether a marketplace fits, the next question is how to participate. There are three paths.

1. Join an existing marketplace when speed and distribution outweigh control, and you can compete on price, availability, or service. You trade some margin for a pre-built audience.
2. Build your own marketplace when the platform itself is your differentiator, and you want to monetize other sellers through fees. Running a marketplace platform is intense work, but if you can figure out long-term governance and member onboarding, it pays off at scale.
3. Run your own branded ordering channel when you want modern self-service ordering without handing over the relationship. This middle path keeps your margin and your data in-house while still meeting new customer expectations for online ordering. It also frees you from marketplace-driven retail pricing wars.

A simple rule of thumb helps here. If you compete mainly on price and availability, joining a marketplace works well. But if you win on relationships, process, and repeat orders, a channel you control usually serves you better.

Choose the channel that fits your business

A B2B marketplace is a powerful way to get discovered and deliver the streamlined procurement processes that many buyers now prefer. 

What it does not do is protect the reorders and relationships that most CPG and distribution businesses are built on.

This is where B2B ecommerce software comes into the picture. It gives brands and distributors a branded self-serve ordering channel that keeps pricing strategies and customer insights in-house, while still giving business buyers the modern ordering experience.

SimplyDepo is one such platform. It lets brands and distributors spin up a white-label web and mobile wholesale storefront without hiring developers. You can set custom price lists that adapt to customer behaviors, offer Net Terms to each account, capture orders from the field, and manage every order from one dashboard filtered by fulfillment status, date, payment, or customer. 

Orders and catalogs are synced across channels through systems you already run, so the buying data stays yours. 

A marketplace can widen your reach, but a channel you own contributes to your business success by keeping the customers.

Book a personalized free demo and explore how SimplyDepo fits into your business operations.