Marketplace vs dropship vs ecommerce platform: what's the difference?

An ecommerce platform runs a shop that sells your own stock. A marketplace platform lets independent third-party sellers list and sell their products on your website, with you taking a commission. A dropship platform lets approved suppliers ship orders directly to your customers while you set the price and own the sale. Many retailers now combine all three on one site.

The three models side by side

	Ecommerce	Marketplace	Dropship
Who owns the stock	You	The seller	The supplier
Who sets the price	You	The seller	You
Who ships	You	The seller	The supplier
Who is the seller of record	You	The seller	You
How you earn	Margin on your products	Commission (and retail media)	Margin on the supplier’s cost price
What the software must do	Catalogue, checkout, orders	Seller onboarding, catalogue validation, order routing, commissions, split payments	Supplier onboarding, catalogue feeds, order routing to suppliers

Which software does what

• Ecommerce platforms (Shopify, Adobe Commerce, Salesforce Commerce Cloud…) run the storefront. Most need a marketplace layer or a plugin to handle third-party sellers.
• Enterprise marketplace platforms add the marketplace, and often dropship, alongside an existing storefront. 10 of them are in our ranking.
• Dropship and supplier networks specialise in the supplier side. 5 are in our ranking.
• Commerce platforms with a marketplace module do storefront and marketplace in one product.

Platforms that state both a marketplace and a dropship model, ranked by score:

Which one do you need?

• You want more range without more stock and without managing prices: a marketplace.
• You want more range but to keep control of price and customer experience: dropship.
• You want both, on one catalogue and one checkout: a platform that supports both models, such as most enterprise marketplace platforms.

See also: how to launch a marketplace and the dropship and supplier network ranking.