New in Sharetribe 🎉 Request a quote from a provider

As promised, Sharetribe now supports a regular price negotiation flow!

Last month, we launched reverse price negotiation, where customers post project listings and providers submit offers to get the business. Regular price negotiation flips this around. Providers create listings showcasing their services, and customers request quotes from them. Providers send them offers, and following the negotiation, the customer proceeds to pay.

Here are just some examples of the kinds of marketplaces you can now build:

• Professional service marketplaces where providers like event photographers or interior designers post portfolios, and customers request quotes for their projects.
• Consulting platforms where experts showcase their services and customers request tailored proposals for their unique needs.
• Custom product marketplaces where makers display their work and customers request quotes for custom pieces with their specifications.

In other words, you can now build a marketplace where customers find providers they like and request quotes from them instead of paying a fixed price. It’s an especially powerful feature for many B2B marketplaces, where projects and services often need to be tailored to specific business needs.

In this newsletter, you'll learn: 

• How to enable regular price negotiation.
• How regular price negotiation works for users.
• How to build a marketplace that has both a regular and reverse flow (like Upwork or Thumbtack).

How to enable regular price negotiation

You can switch to regular price negotiation in listing type settings. Here’s how:

1. Go to listing type settings in Console.
2. Click to create a new listing type and give it a name and an ID.
3. Choose the transaction process type Price negotiation. 
4. Choose the negotiation flow type Regular.
5. Enable or disable the default listing fields you want the listing type to use.
6. Save changes.

Note that if you modify the transaction process of an existing listing type, old listings in that type may not work correctly.

Next, let’s see what this simple change enables on your marketplace.

How regular price negotiation works for users

Here’s the regular price negotiation transaction process in its simplest form:

1. A provider creates a listing describing their services.
2. A customer sends a quote request to the provider, where they describe what they need.
3. The provider submits an offer based on the quote request.
4. The customer accepts the offer, pays, and places an order.
5. The provider delivers the work.
6. Customer reviews and accepts the delivered order.
7. The customer and provider review each other.

After receiving an offer, the customer can also:

• make a counteroffer
• message the provider
• reject the offer

When the provider delivers the order, the customer can still request changes or fixes if the delivered work doesn’t match what was agreed upon.

If you’ve tested the reverse negotiation process already, you’ll notice that from step four onwards, the transaction flows work the same. The key difference is who creates listings and who starts the transaction.

Update marketplace and email texts

This launch introduces new marketplace and email texts. You can find the new texts in Sharetribe’s Help Center:

• Copy the new marketplace texts and paste them into your marketplace text editor.
• Email texts for the regular price negotiation process were released together with reverse price negotiation emails. If you haven’t yet, copy the email texts and paste them into your email text editor. 

The default copy has been chosen to fit any kind of marketplace with price negotiation, regardless of industry. With marketplace and email texts, you can modify the language to fit your specific idea or niche.

Build a marketplace like Upwork or Thumbtack

With the price negotiation transaction process, you can build a platform where every project is unique and needs individual pricing. You’ll be able to facilitate the full negotiation, payment, and review process, without coding. Check out the tutorials for building a marketplace with quote requests and a reverse marketplace with Sharetribe.

But here's where it gets even more powerful. You can have both regular and reverse price negotiation in the same marketplace. Create two listing types:

• One with regular price negotiation for provider-created service listings
• One with reverse price negotiation for customer-created project listings

This gives you the flexibility to build platforms that work like Upwork, where both flows coexist. Freelancers can showcase their expertise in regular listings while also bidding on customer projects. Or build a marketplace like Thumbtack, where service providers have profiles and customers can either browse providers or post their own project requests.

Check out the tutorial for building a dual-flow marketplace with both regular and reverse price negotiation.

More price negotiation features coming soon

We’re working on adding even more features to price negotiation. Currently, only customers can initiate a pricing change during negotiation by making a counter offer. Our next feature adds the ability for providers to update their offer as well. 

Also, as marketplace admin, you’ll soon be able to choose how people can negotiate: counter offers, offer updates, both, or neither. Stay tuned!

Add price negotiation to your marketplace  

With regular price negotiation, you can build a platform where customers find the right provider and negotiate custom pricing—complete with online payments and reviews, no custom coding required.

It's time to start building your marketplace! Head over to Console and start testing the regular price negotiation process right away.