Melta
Examples
Build a marketplace with Melta - providers, listings and bookings in one product
For founders, associations and businesses that want to bring providers and seekers together on a platform of their own: tradespeople and clients, holiday homes and guests, instructors and participants. You describe who offers, who searches and how the marketplace makes money. Melta builds the product, puts it online and runs it for you.
What a product like this can do
A marketplace has two sides: providers create listings, visitors search, compare, send requests or book. You sit in the middle as the operator, bringing both sides together, keeping an eye on quality and getting paid for it. These are the building blocks:
Provider accounts and profiles
Providers register, confirm their email address and keep a profile with a description, service area and contact details. Visitor, provider and admin are separate roles with their own rights.
Listings with categories and filters
Every listing has a category, a location, a price and the attributes that matter in your field. Visitors narrow down by region, price or availability.
Search
Across title, description and attributes, sorted by price, rating or recency. If the concept calls for it, the search also understands paraphrases rather than only exact terms.
Requests or bookings
A request with a message and a preferred date, or a binding booking for a set period. Both sides see the status, and confirmations go out by email under your marketplace's name.
Reviews
After a completed booking, customers leave a review and the provider can reply. Anything that breaks your rules, you take down as admin.
Moderation
An admin area for you: approve new providers, check listings, handle reported entries, block accounts, maintain categories.
Featured placements
Providers buy visibility, for instance at the top of their category or on the home page, for a limited time and paid right inside the product.
How your marketplace makes money
With Melta, customers pay inside the product, your marketplace appears as the merchant, and payouts go to your bank account. For a marketplace that means providers pay you for visibility and reach, or visitors pay you a fee per booking. Four models that take only a few sentences to describe:
| Model | Who pays | How it works |
|---|---|---|
| Listing fee | Provider | A listing costs once or per term; unpaid listings stay hidden. |
| Provider subscription | Provider | Monthly or yearly for profile and listings, in tiers if you like: Basic with one listing, Pro with ten. |
| Featured placement | Provider | A one-time purchase for a week or a month at the top of the category. |
| Booking fee | Visitor | A fee comes to you on every booking; the rest you settle with the provider. |
One thing up front, so the concept is right from the start: every payment inside the product lands with you as the operator. There is no automatic split to third-party sellers; if providers are owed money by you, you settle with them yourself. Models where providers pay you are therefore the simpler route.
How Melta builds it
- Describe - You say in your own words who offers, who searches, what a listing contains, whether people request or book, and what is paid for.
- Questions and concept - Melta asks up to four questions, none of them technical, and turns your answers into a concept in plain language: roles, pages, payment model. You adjust it by chat until it fits.
- Approve and build - When you click build, the build starts, paid from the credits of your plan. Melta builds the whole marketplace with interface, logic, accounts, database, payments, email and legal pages, typically within 24 hours. You get an email when it is done.
- Test the preview - The private preview comes seeded with demo data and named test logins for every role, and test purchases run on test data. You walk the whole path, from provider profile to paid placement.
- Go live - In seconds, without a rebuild. First Melta checks that your operator details for the imprint are complete and that the payout account is connected. You choose which preview data comes along, and you can roll back to the previous live version.
- Change by chat - A new category, an extra field in the provider profile, reviews only after a completed booking: you write it to your product's editor, watch it work, step in if you like, and the preview updates live.
Related example products
Melta has not built a two-sided marketplace as an example product yet. The closest are Steigwärts, a via ferrata guide financed by yearly sponsor packages, in other words by providers who pay for visibility, and HandyKompass, a phone comparison with an AI buying guide, in other words the search-and-compare side of a marketplace.
What comes with it
A marketplace needs more than listings and a search, and with Melta the rest is part of the plan: payment processing for subscriptions, one-time purchases and fees without a contract of your own with a payment provider, transactional email under your marketplace's name with receipts attached, a melta.ai subdomain or your own domain, legal pages (imprint, privacy policy and terms) generated from your operator details for Switzerland, Germany and Austria (general information, not legal advice), cookieless analytics with a funnel from visit to purchase, a support inbox that sorts incoming requests automatically, error monitoring, protection against spam on logins and forms, and hosting on a globally distributed network with no server to manage.
What it costs
A concept uses only a few credits; afterwards your product runs on a plan per organisation with credits every month. All numbers and how the price is made up are on the pricing page.
Common questions
Does Melta pay the providers on my marketplace automatically?
No. Every payment inside the product goes to you as the operator; automatic split payouts to third-party sellers are not offered. If providers are to receive money from you, you settle with them yourself. That is why models where providers pay you fit best: a listing fee, a provider subscription, a featured placement or a booking fee that you collect.
Can I review new providers before they become visible?
Yes. You state in the concept that providers only appear after approval. The build then creates an admin role with a moderation area: approve profiles, check listings, hide reported entries, block accounts.
How do I test both sides before the marketplace goes live?
In the private preview. It comes seeded with demo data and named test logins for every role: you create a listing as a provider, book it as a visitor and approve it as the admin. Test purchases run on test data, and no real money moves.
Can I add categories or another payment model later?
Yes, in the chat with your product's editor. You write, for example, that a landscaping category is added or that providers can buy single featured weeks. You watch the change happen, the preview updates, and you put it live when it fits. Change runs are included in every plan.
Describe your marketplace. Melta does the rest.
A concept uses only a few credits. Provider accounts, listings, bookings and payments are built in as soon as you approve it.
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