Hiring a developer to build your Flex marketplace

Sharetribe Flex allows you to build a unique marketplace fast with custom development. To work with Flex, you need these development skills, or you need to hire a software developer. Though any developer with the required skillset will do, we recommend hiring a vetted developer from Sharetribe's official Flex Expert Network for great quality work at competitive rates.

To hire a developer to build your Flex marketplace, you'll need to take three key steps:

1. Firstly, you should use Flex’s no-code tools to modify Biketribe, the starting marketplace theme. This will reduce the setup work a developer needs to do and introduce you to Flex’s out-of-the-box capabilities. You can get started making these changes in Flex Console after creating your free Flex account.
2. Secondly, you need to consider what custom features you want to build or modifications you would like to implement to the starting template and communicate these requirements to the developer.
3. Lastly, you need to match your requirements with your specific budget and timeline while also taking into consideration Flex’s capabilities.

Why do you need a developer to build a marketplace with Sharetribe Flex

While Flex offers no-code tools to make basic modifications to your marketplace, you will likely need someone with technical expertise to work with Flex today. Here are a few ways developers can help:

• Launch: because of its headless software architecture, you are responsible for self-hosting the frontend of your marketplace on a server. This is a technical task, so even if you do not need to use Flex’s code tools to create your marketplace, you will likely want a developer to help you set up your marketplace frontend hosting, DNS, and email sending.
• Customizations: to create a truly unique marketplace with custom designs and workflows, you will need some degree of custom software development. For this, you need a developer with the required programming skills and knowledge of the Sharetribe Flex platform.
• Integrations: If you need to integrate your marketplace with other software applications, such as payment gateways, shipping providers, or calendar tools, you will need a developer who can build an integration to those systems and ensure that they will work seamlessly together.

How to find a qualified developer

Although you have the option to hire any developer with the required development skills to build your Flex marketplace, we highly recommend considering one from our Expert Network. Experts in our network are vetted for their skills and professionalism. Each has built at least one custom marketplace using Flex previously, though most have built several.

You can connect with a developer from the Flex Expert Network through the Flex Console. Either book a call with Sharetribe to discuss your project and questions. If you prefer, you can review Expert profiles and contact them directly in the Expert directory.

The first step to working with a Flex Expert is to meet and share your requirements. They can then prepare a high-level estimate for you, including the estimated cost and time to build your marketplace.

The required budget

Using the Sharetribe Web Template and the Flex Console’s no-code capability as a starting point, building a unique marketplace concept typically requires around 80 - 100 hours of development.

At a rate of $30 per hour (the hourly rates of Flex Experts vary from $30 to $100), building the first version of your marketplace would cost $3,000. This is the absolute minimum budget you need to be prepared for.

More commonly, the development will involve implementing more customizations beyond the basics and will take more hours. Therefore, the average budget required to launch the first version of your platform tends to be around $10k.

The cost and time to develop your unique marketplace with Flex depend heavily on your specific requirements in terms of features, workflows, and design. What you are building and who you hire to build it are the biggest determinants of the budget needed to build your marketplace. As a general rule, we recommend you launch your first version (the "Minimum Viable Platform") with as minimal a feature set as possible so you are able to launch faster and validate your concept. We call this the Lean Marketplace approach.

Prepare your requirements to get proposals

Key to a productive developer evaluation process is having clear requirements for the work you want them to complete. Developers want to know what your marketplace is all about and how you envision it working so that they can prepare proposals for you to consider. Proposals typically include information about the estimated cost of the project, estimated timeline, and outstanding questions, alongside information about practicalities of working together such as account setup and ways of working.

You will get more accurate proposals with greater detail if you have clear requirements. You are not expected to know everything about how your marketplace will look and work at the beginning, but you should try to prepare clear guidelines for your most important feature needs. This generative process is made easier by having the starting Template to use as a jumping off point for your custom marketplace. In our next article, we share more tips on how to use the Template to prepare requirements for meeting with developers.