Service marketplaces

A service marketplace runs two businesses at once. On the supply side it recruits providers, whether trades, cleaners, carers, pet sitters or tutors, and decides who may appear. On the demand side it captures a customer request well enough to match it. The operator's day is spent on the seam between the two: approving applications, watching which categories or areas are short of supply, and handling the moments when a match goes wrong. Nothing in this sector works unless the onboarding record is honest about what it holds. Platforms here record documents as supplied by the provider, with the date, and results returned by a connected check provider, with the date; they show that record to customers and let the operator decide who is visible. They never state that the platform itself has verified anyone, because it has not.

The second shared fact is that a request has to be structured before it can be matched. A free-text message cannot be routed by category, distance, availability or must-haves; a form that asks the right questions for that category can be. From there the models diverge, and the differences are what each topic is built around. A tradesperson marketplace lets trades express interest and quote, and the customer shortlists and hires on the platform. A quote comparison platform sells each request to a fixed number of providers by territory and the customer compares, with no hiring on the platform at all. A cleaning platform skips quoting entirely: the price comes from a rate card and the customer books a slot. Carer matching introduces two parties and records an arrangement without any payment between them. Pet care and tutoring book sessions against a calendar and hold a balance that is released as each visit or lesson is completed.

Money in this sector is held rather than simply taken. The customer pays at booking, the platform holds the amount until the service is completed and confirmed, commission or a lead fee is retained and the provider share goes into a payout run with a statement. Where the model is leads rather than bookings, the provider buys credits or a subscription and the platform records every lead against that balance. All of this is the client's own product collecting money from its own users through its own payment provider; it is a capability we build, and it is entirely separate from how the agency bills for the build.

Finally, every marketplace needs a dispute desk. Masked messaging keeps the conversation on the platform so that when a lead is contested, a visit is said to have been short or a lesson never happened, the operator sees the request, the quotes or booking, the messages, the check-in times and the confirmations on one timeline before deciding anything. Reviews are tied to confirmed work so they cannot be invented. These are the capabilities every topic below shares; each then adds what makes it distinct, from lead credits and territories to meet-and-greets and progress notes.