How to Create a multivendor marketplace using WCFM

Quick Tutorial is about how to install WCFM multivendor marketplace on your website and add related products from other websites in an easy way.

Did you know that WCFM allows you to create a multivendor marketplace without ever having to code a single line?

If you are looking for a straightforward solution that is easy to set up, tried and tested by thousands of customers, then you have found it. Simply set up your product categories, fill in the details of your vendors and publish the marketplace – it’s that simple.

There are many multivendor marketplace plugins available in the market. Still, we have selected the WCFM plugin for this Tutorial because it’s easy to set up a multivendor marketplace without coding. Also, it gives you a one-stop shop for your buyers, where they can discover and buy any product, from any seller, in one place.

The plugin uses the best features of WordPress and WooCommerce – a compelling eCommerce platform – let’s create an online marketplace with amazing functionality and beautiful design in this Tutorial.

What is WCFM, and how can it help you create a multivendor marketplace?

If you are familiar with running an eCommerce website using WordPress CMS, you must be aware that you’ll have to install the WooCommerce plugin to fulfill the eCommerce needs. But WooCommerce supports only a single vendor, and you cannot create a website like Amazon using only WooCommerce.

To enhance WooCommerce ability to provide support for multivendor, you can use the WCFM plugin. It allows you to add as many vendors to your eCommerce site to sell their products using your eCommerce portal. Even though there are other plugins like dokan with multivendor support, I choose WCFM for its diverse functionalities and affordable price.

The WCFM is a front-end manager developed by WC lovers. The WCFM plugin gives sellers various convenient tools to manage their store, from adding products and services to changing their profile settings. The Multi-Vendor Marketplace is managed by the seller using the Store Manager tool. The seller can add new vendors and products and edit or delete existing items if needed.

The best part about using the WCFM plugin is you can sell, rent products, and offer memberships, services, and subscriptions under one hood. Also, you can integrate WCFM with many other WooCommerce extensions to customize it further according to your needs.

Some of the awesome features of WCFM are as follows;

Free version available.
Set an effective commission system for vendors and administrators using a commission policy.
Numerous payment gateways can connect with WCFM to withdraw commissions, such as PayPal, Stripe, Skrill or even bank transfers.
The shipment module is also very comprehensive, letting the vendors reach customers globally while ensuring that the shipping price remains affordable.
WCFM provides vendors with a free vendor app to manage their shop even when traveling.
Everything is operated using a frontend editor, where the seller can manage all multivendor tasks from the dashboard; it lets you monitor sales reports, coupon creation, and product management from the front end.
You can easily manage site admin and staff by using an addon WCFM Groups and staff.
The product hub option lets the vendors create product bundles and offer unique products in bundles.
The site owner can enable the reviews option, and they can disable the vendor to see its review.

How to up a WooCommerce multiple vendors marketplace in 3 steps

As of now, you are quite familiar with why we will use the WCFM plugin to create our multivendor marketplace. We’ll start our Tutorial on how you can create a basic multiple vendor marketplace using WordPress CMS and WooCommerce plugin.

Things you’ll require to build up the website:

The domain name and Web hosting
WordPress CMS
Woocommerce plugin
WCFM marketplace

Step 1: Select Domain Name and Web Hosting for your multivendor website

A large multivendor marketplace can be difficult to manage with insufficient infrastructure. Because you will be dealing with large volumes of products and vendors, choosing the right web hosting with good features is important.

You’ll have an image-heavy website also videos or pdfs when hosting multiple vendors on your website; this may slow down your website. Also, a daily backup data option isn’t out of the question. So, when you are trying to get hosting for your multivendor marketplace? Make a checklist of the following features before locking on any web hosting.

Fast Load time
Uncompromisable security
DDOS protection
HTTPS and PCI Compliant hosting
Unlimited bandwidth
SSL certificate
One-click WordPress installation

You can use a dedicated managed WordPress hosting or any cloud hosting for your eCommerce multiple vendor store. You can visit the web hosting section to get an idea of which hosting will suit you. Some of the awesome eCommerce hosting services your can try are Bluehost and Cloudways.

Many domain registrars are available worldwide; you can check your business name availability with any of these registrars. You’ll get different extension offers; some will be country-specific. io, .uk, or you can go with the .com extension, the most common domain extension for any business industry.

Step 2: Installing WordPress CMS and WooCommerce

Most web hosting services provide one-click WordPress installation with all their WordPress hosting plans. However, if your hosting doesn’t offer one-click installation, you can go to WordPress.org/download/ to download it free and install it using your Cpanel.

The next step is WooCommerce installation to create your eCommerce multi vendor site. Bluehost offers a one-click installation of WooCommerce along with WordPress. Alternatively, you can install the WooCommerce plugin from the WordPress dashboard.

Go to: WordPress Dashboard> Add Plugins> Add New> search for WooCommerce > click on install and activate.

Add details about your WooCommerce store as follows;

Select your store’s industry.

Give details of your products; either you’ll be selling physical products or downloads. As we will offer only downloadable products, I have enabled only the “download” checkbox.

How many products will be displayed? Provide details.

You are done with the basic steps of creating your eCommerce site. Now comes the most important step of the entire Tutorial, where you’ll install the WCFM plugin and configure it to a full-fledged multivendor marketplace.

Step3: WCFM installation – The best multivendor Woocommerce plugin

As a multivendor marketplace, WCFM is extremely high-performance and scalable. It can process billions of daily transactions with low latency, high availability, and no data loss. It’s open-source, just like WooCommerce and WordPress, and comes with a free version. You can download the zip file from the WCFM marketplace official page and install it, or you can follow these steps.

So, let’s begin with the installation procedure:

Go to: WordPress dashboard >click on the ADD NEW plugin option
Once you are done with the plugin installation, go to the WCFM plugin, and on the plugin page, you’ll find the prompt to activate the WCFM marketplace dashboard.

Type WCFM marketplace in the search bar and click on the install and activate button.
After installation, you’ll see a prompt to enter the WCFM marketplace configuration. Click on install WCFM Core to start the setup.

You can access the dashboard setting area after clicking the “Let’s go” tab. Everything is pretty easy to set up; if anything isn’t edited at the moment, you can edit it later.

You’ll enter into the dashboard setting area where some basic settings such as WCFM view, theme header, and other basic settings can be edited. We’ll keep the default settings.

Next, you can edit your website’s URL, which I will set as “digtalstore”, and my URL will appear like this “https//www.testmultivendorsite.com/digitalstore”.

The next important setting is if you want to ship the product, then turn on the “Marketplace shipping” and “marketplace shipping by weight”, but as we are not going to sell a physical product, I’m turning off these settings. You can enable the “google map API key” to show your store’s location.

Next comes the commission settings area, where you can select commissions you will charge from your vendors. You can choose percentage, percentage + fixed, or fixed commission. So, I will charge a 10% commission for every sale. With WCFM, there are two types of coupons that can be offered, each vendor can set up their coupons, and you, as an admin, can create coupons for everyone so that you can set commission on both types of coupons offered by you as an admin or offered by vendors individually.

Here comes the withdrawal setup where you can set up how the vendors can withdraw their payments. You can enable the withdrawal option when the order is marked as completed and the minimum possible withdrawal limit. It also allows you to set up PayPal as a payment option for your vendors.

In this section, you can set the colors and layouts according to your brand, select your preferences, and then click on continue.

In the Capability area, you’ll allow your vendors to access certain settings in your eCommerce store. You can enable them to submit products, publish or delete products. I have not permitted vendors to access the backend area; they are only restricted to the product update area.

Finally, the basic setup is done, and your multivendor store is ready to start.

This’s how your dashboard will look: you can see all the graphics on your dashboard, for example, sales, commissions, and sold products.

Wrapping up

Follow the tutorial to create a clean, responsive multivendor marketplace that is easy to set up with no coding knowledge required. This article aims to show you that you can easily create a basic setup of a multivendor site like amazon, eBay, or any other eCommerce site within an hour following these steps.

You can use the WCFM plugin to allow multiple vendors to sell Software, SaaS, Games, Mobile apps, E-Commerce, and other services on your website. To make your WooCommerce multivendor marketplace, you need only a few elements, including eCommerce hosting.