Custom coding enables you to build any feature you need, whether you’re making slight changes to Sharetribe’s out of the box, no-code capabilities or creating a completely custom user experience.

Thanks to Sharetribe’s software architecture, there are very few technical limits to what can be achieved. Custom code can be used extensively to create exactly the functionality your marketplace needs. Rather, the limitation in possibility comes in the time, money, and skill required to implement a feature.

Learn more about the costs of custom coding to understand better the investment required.

Consider also how to extend Sharetribe with code as efficiently as possible.

In this article, we explore some common marketplace features you may want to build with custom coding. “Feature” in this context, refers to any extension of Sharetribe using code: it can be any work on a spectrum from a small modification of a functionality that already exists to an extensive build of completely new and unique functionalities.

We group features into four categories of changes to make them easier to understand: visual design, user experience, transaction process, and third-party integrations. In reality, features may entail multiple different types of changes to deliver a seamless user experience.

Visual design (often called UI) refers to how your marketplace looks and feels like. It includes elements such as layout, colors, fonts, menus, buttons, listing cards, and other visual components that make up the marketplace site's overall aesthetics.

Sharetribe allows you to have full control of the frontend application, thus allowing full flexibility to implement any visual layout, color scheme, typography, and interactive elements that shape the overall look and feel of your marketplace. You can either extend the visual design by modifying the existing design components, such layouts, menus and buttons or implement a completely custom design. The former approach is more cost and time efficient because you do not need to create new visual components.

Here are some examples of visual design changes you can make:

User experience or workflow (often called UX) refers to the sequence of steps that users go through when performing an action to reach a goal in your marketplace.

Just like visual design, you can fully customize the sequence of actions users take to reach their goals. This includes actions such as signing up for the marketplace, creating a listing, searching for listings, and initiating a transaction.

Similarly, extending the default user experience provides the most efficient way to customize your marketplace workflow, while implementing a completely custom user journey can be expensive, despite the full flexibility it provides.

Here are some examples of user experience changes you can make:

Transaction process refers to changes involved in a transaction. A transaction is a unique type of user workflow because it brings two users (customers and providers) together. The transaction defines the interplay between them on your platform. Each transaction follows a defined process made up of specific actions, states, and transitions. These determine how the transaction progresses and what each user in the transaction (customer and provider) can do at every stage.

Here are some examples of transaction process changes you can make:

To enhance your marketplace functionalities and the user experience, you can build integrations to external services or tools into your marketplace. These integrations expand your marketplace’s capabilities by leveraging specialized solutions provided by other software providers. Sharetribe offers APIs to help you build these custom integrations. As long as the external service also provides developer tools or APIs, it’s likely possible to integrate into your marketplace.

Here are some examples of third-party software you can integrate:

If you would like to see examples of custom features other marketplaces have built or just get a practical sense of what’s possible to achieve, check out our customer gallery.

This gallery showcases marketplaces that have customized their platforms using code, to varying degrees. You'll notice minor customizations when the marketplace resembles your no-code marketplace, but with added changes that cannot be achieved through Console. On the other hand, a significant customization will have design and features that look completely different from what you can create using the no-code builder in Console.

If you’re unsure whether or not a feature can be implemented using Sharetribe, don’t hesitate to contact our team via the support chat widget in Console.

You can also learn more about how much it costs to customize your marketplace with code, and what you should know about custom coding as a no-code founder.

If you’re interested in hiring developers to build custom features for your marketplace or want to find out more about the potential costs required, you can visit the Sharetribe Experts Marketplace to connect with verified Sharetribe Experts.