Top Marketplace Apps on Shopify: Shipturtle vs Webkul

Modern marketplace builder competing with the established Shopify App

Webkul once enjoyed monopoly but with coming of powerful & innovative apps, it couldn't compete with Shipturtle's clean and modern interface, scalable, and cost-effective with intuitive vendor dashboards and robust order management features.

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Criteria

Shipturtle

Webkul

Popularity

Relatively new, but with great reviews

  • Shipturtle is a popular multivendor extension on Shopify designed for the modern marketplace, with a focus on the latest technology, 200+ core marketplace functionalities, innovative features like Vendor website sync, and unlimited scalability.
  • Configurable for several use cases like Product shipping, rental booking, and C2C marketplaces. Supports both Professional and Private sellers.
  • The app prioritizes functionalities like robust order management, integrated shipping, and vendor management tools.
  • This app is perfect for running a dropshipping business.

Established app that went unchecked, now getting outdated

  • Multi Vendor Marketplace App by Webkul is a legacy Shopify app that does not always reflect the latest updates in technology and platforms.
  • On the positive, Webkul offers 47 other feature apps on Shopify.
  • Multi Vendor Marketplace App has many reviews on Shopify due to its long history, leaving 110+ reviewers to express their displeasure over the app’s tech capabilities and delayed support.
  • Customer reviews suggest that the app over-promises and under-delivers due to limited out-of-box capabilities, like missing order modules, shipping integrations, compliant invoicing, and error-prone bulk listing.
Website Interface

Designed for intuitive use

  • Shipturtle focuses on a clear and intuitive interface to empower a positive user experience and foster vendor adoption and customer satisfaction.
  • The standard B2C offering for professional sellers can be whitelabeled and configured as per the marketplace brand. A C2C option gives complete control over the design and dashboard elements, and is integrated into the marketplace website for a seamless experience.
  • Open APIs available to integrate with a headless architecture or custom built website.
  • Designed for laptops and mobiles – can be installed as a PWA app.
  • Super fast with the latest design principles.

Potential user interface challenges

  • In one word – Terrible! Little thought has gone in designing the app’s interface. With jarring colors and unfathomable menus, looks very unprofessional.
  • Nearly 90% of negative customer reviews highlight a confusing and cluttered user interface for Webkul.
  • The app requires setting configurations across multiple menus hindering a streamlined user experience and prone to errors.
  • Hundreds of marketplaces have moved to other apps, including Shipturtle, on account of this.
Product Management

Streamlined and efficient product management

  • Extremely powerful Vendor management dashboard comprising Vendor onboarding, detailed analytics, custom vendor permissions, customer chat, reviews, and mobile access.
  • Vendor Connect feature gives Marketplaces a two-way ability to sync with the vendors’ feeds on Shopify, Amazon, etc. Inventory is kept in sync, orders are pushed to their Order Management System and listings are updated automatically.

Basic functionalities, inefficient at scale

  • The app offers standard product management but fails to provide the same level of flexibility and efficiency as Shipturtle needing multiple clicks to achieve an action.
  • Subpar bulk product upload features, lack of certain options for uploading videos and 3D models at the time of writing. Custom products partially integrated with Shopify.
  • Ability to easily sync with seller websites lacking.
  • No support for subscriptions. Supports digital and booking products with a different app integration.
Order Management

A comprehensive order management and shipping suite

  • Integrate with 200+ shippers for global shipping, generate shipping labels, rate APIs, cancel, and manifest orders.
  • Empower vendors to define their own shipping services, shipping charges, and a smooth checkout experience.
  • Amazing Order Management System with automatic shipment tracking. The interface categorizes all orders into different stages like Confirmed, In transit, and Delivered giving complete clarity to customers, marketplace, and vendors on the most common problem in e-commerce – WMO (Where is my order?).
  • Integrated Returns management where customers can initiate returns from the website and ship them back.
  • Support for WhatsApp integration, and reverse bidding.

Unsuitable for shipping and tracking

  • The app is not suited to build product marketplaces with complex shipping and order management needs.
  • Webkul limits vendor control over shipping rates, and customization needed for features like shipment integrations and tracking.
  • Vendors are expected to manually track orders leading to huge errors and confusion.
  • Basic returns management where only merchants can initiate returns.
  • Support for digital products and WhatsApp integration.

The Shipturtle Advantage

100%
Go live in 48 hours
5-10%
Revenue Boost viz. Webhooks for Sync
99.9%
Accurate Inventory Sync
400+
Modules for B2C/C2C Marketplaces

Criteria

Shipturtle

Webkul

Security, Scalability, and Support

Secure, scalable and supported

  • Detailed change logs at Order and Product levels offer complete traceability.
  • Open APIs and deep Shopify integrations empowering unlimited customization for specific needs and scale.
  • Amazing support with detailed documentation, unlimited chat support, and complimentary onboarding assistance to ensure a smooth launch.

Delayed support, scalability concerns

  • Lack of change logs leaves the app prone to errors and accountability.
  • Some reviews on Shopify are critical of the app’s scalability concerns related to speed, accuracy, and stability.
  • Live chat support is limited to higher-tier plans and charges extra for setup assistance.
Vendor Management

Fostering strong vendor relationships

  • Extremely powerful Vendor management dashboard consisting of Vendor onboarding, detailed analytics, custom vendor permissions, customer chat, reviews and mobile access.
  • Vendor Connect feature gives Marketplaces a two-way ability to sync with the vendors’ feeds on Shopify, Amazon, etc. Inventory is kept in sync, orders are pushed to their order management system and listings are updated automatically.
  • Enables granular & global control on features and modules available to different vendors.

Vendor essentials, but consider stability

  • Webkul offers a suite of features to support vendors, including seller dashboards, profile pages, and customer chat functionalities.
  • Merchants can enable sellers to view full customer profile.
  • However, only provides global control on features and modules available to vendors.
Payout Management

Automated and flexible payments

  • Any payment gateway can be used on the website. Payouts to vendors via Stripe and Paypal.
  • Robust rules-based engine where commission can be set based on product, vendor, category, or globally. Flexibility to treat product price, taxes, shipping, and discounts separately.
  • Payout can be controlled to factor in delivery, returns, and refunds.

Flexibility, but investigate compliance

  • Set multi-level commissions set globally or product, category, vendor-wise.
  • Offers more payout options via Paypal, Stripe, Payfast, and Razorpay (India).
  • Lack of a clear flow of payments basis delivery and returns rule. Difficult to track for vendors what is paid and what is not.
Pricing

Transparent pricing and scalability

  • Top tier plan at $149 per month (estimated for a marketplace receiving 5000 orders).
  • Shipturtle customers often experience significant cost savings due to increased efficiency, stability, and scalability.
  • Live chat assistance and a very knowledgeable team assist on many areas for scaling a marketplace, unrelated to the app.
  • Guaranteed to go live within 2 days using out-of-the-box configurations.

Long-term value in question

  • Webkul may seem a cheaper alternative but limits on the number of sellers (base plan allows only 3), limited customer support, additional development work or workarounds, and platform bugs make it costlier over time.
  • Customers who have migrated from Webkul to Shipturtle are experiencing significant cost savings, up to 50% less (estimated for marketplace receiving 5000 orders a month).

Conclusion

Shipturtle is suitable for B2C, C2C, and B2B marketplaces across products, bookings, and rentals

  • Create B2C and B2B marketplaces that offer Products, Services, Digital products, and more.
  • Only app on Shopify to offer seamless peer-to-peer or C2C features with Shopify login integration and customization possibilities.
  • This opens doors for innovative marketplaces like peer-to-peer sales (used goods, rentals) or niche communities.
  • Shipturtle offers a faster launch process, potentially getting your marketplace up and running in two days

Webkul is suitable to launch a low-cost MVP. C2C not an option at all.

  • While Webkul offers functionalities for rentals and services, they are not suited to build product marketplaces with complex shipping and order management needs. However, it allows the Shopify store to convert into a directory listing marketplace.
  • Basic features can need customizations due to outdated capabilities. This can lead to longer setup times, extending for weeks, if not months.
  • They claim to offer a C2C marketplace, but on checking, it is only for namesake. No difference in their B2C and C2C offerings.

Fact: 100+ of Webkul customers have already switched to Shipturtle, no-one has switched the other way ever!

Shipturtle lets you connect vendor websites, and automate listings, orders, shipping, payouts & much more. You can scale unlimited with open APIs for custom development.

Enjoy 14-day free trial to experience its benefits firsthand.
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1000+ Marketplace Owners Shipturtle

"I am so impressed every day that I work with the Shipturtle team. I had a vision to launch a business that would include 3 different kinds of vendors: C2C sellers, small business vendors and on-demand printing/manufacturing vendors.  I was starting completely from scratch... I launched my business last month and they have been phenomenal in their customer care and support... They have gone above and beyond to help me succeed. I highly recommend working with Shipturtle."

Nicole DeBoom

eNDe project, United States

"The team at ShipTurtle is professional and always willing to help when I need it. They have done a lot of custom work for me, and broke my expectations for their custom capabilities. I would recommend their platform over all other marketplace apps on Shopify. Lastly, their customer service team deserves 5 stars."

Jonathan Patterson
PRX Market, United States

"From Day 1 with ShipTurtle we have been very satisfied with our experience. We have a unique selling platform which has required coding tweaks to improve or simplify functionality on our site. ShipTurtle has fulfilled all of our requests and also made recommendations on improvements in the future."

Alicia
Second Chance, United States
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Migrating to Shipturtle from Webkul is easy!

Bulk excel upload | Minimum time | 360° onboarding support
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