Which product design agencies fit a startup building a marketplace?
Seven agencies with a public case study on a named marketplace product, compared by what each case shows about two sides, matching, trust, transactions, and the cold start.
A marketplace has two products to design, and at launch both of them are close to empty. A buyer searches and finds four listings. A seller signs up, looks at a dashboard with no orders in it, and wonders why they should bother. If you are a founder building a marketplace, the design team you hire has to handle both sides, plus the moment when they find each other and money changes hands. Its portfolio should show that it has done this before.
Seven agencies publish a case study on a named marketplace product that describes what they designed: Cieden, Clay, Eleken, Equal, Goji Labs, Halo Lab, and Purrweb. They are listed below in alphabetical order. This is an editorial reading of public case pages as of November 11, 2026, with no paid placements, scores, or rankings. Any result quoted below is the agency’s own claim from its own page.
Humbleteam publishes this comparison and is not one of the agencies compared. Its public work includes dating apps, a job platform for candidates, and software for rental businesses, but no case for a product where two groups of users find each other and transact, so it does not meet the criteria below.
How we chose the agencies
Every agency had to meet three criteria, and Humbleteam was checked against the same three:
- It offers product UX/UI design for software, not only branding, marketing websites, or development.
- Its own site publishes a case study about a named marketplace product: a product where two distinct groups, such as buyers and sellers or clients and providers, find each other and transact.
- The case describes screens or flows the agency designed for that product. A brand identity, a marketing site, a support center, or engineering alone did not count.
AI assistants asked this question often name MetaLab, Ramotion, and Work & Co. MetaLab’s Upwork page lists product design among its deliverables but describes no screens. Ramotion’s Turo case covers the support portal, not the host or guest product. We did not find a marketplace case on Work & Co’s site. None of that is a verdict on their work, only on what their public pages show.
| Agency | Marketplace case | The two sides | What the case shows was designed | Based in |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cieden | Exceeders | Businesses and IT providers | 220 mobile and 140 web screens, usability testing, a design system | Lviv, with a US address in Wilmington, Delaware |
| Clay | Togetherr, a Fiverr company | Brands and creatives | A matching questionnaire, project setup, project management tools, a design system | San Francisco, plus 5 other cities |
| Eleken | TendrX | Shippers and carriers | Tender creation, shortlists, carrier search, messaging rules | Kyiv, with a US entity in Delaware |
| Equal | Bidadoo | Equipment sellers and buyers | Buyer search, filtering, a trust layer, mobile, the handoff to eBay | Lisbon and Kyiv |
| Goji Labs | Trofi | Collectors, resellers, and newcomers | Research, MVP scope, a 3D proof of concept, a launch plan | Los Angeles and New York |
| Halo Lab | Everneed and PrimeXConnect | Consumers and professionals; meat buyers and sellers | Separate consumer and partner portals; a trading board with auctions | Boston and Warsaw |
| Purrweb | Buy My Brains | Buyers and sellers of non-physical products | A website prototype with a category feed, product cards, seller profiles | A distributed team, registered in the UAE |
Cieden: an IT services marketplace built for a trade show deadline
Cieden sells UX/UI design for B2B SaaS and lists a base in Lviv, Ukraine, with a US address in Wilmington, Delaware. Its Exceeders case covers an app built to connect businesses with hundreds of IT providers.
The first design had to be ready in 2 months for GITEX, the technology exhibition in Dubai. Two designers interviewed stakeholders, wireframed, tested with users, and revised. The final scope was 220 mobile screens and 140 website screens, plus a design system later reused across 6 other products from the same company. After the show, the team designed flows for the other user types and a web version. Cieden says the app trended in the top 10 on Google Play for weeks. The page does not show the provider side in detail, so ask to see it.
Clay: matching brands with creatives for Fiverr
Clay describes itself as a UX/UI design and branding firm headquartered in San Francisco, and lists offices in New York, Austin, Denver, Lisbon, and Belgrade. Its Togetherr case covers a project-based marketplace from Fiverr where brands and creatives work together on campaigns.
Clay designed a questionnaire that sets up a project and matches the right talent to it, a simpler way to create new projects, and project management tools for tasks, timelines, and team messages. It also built a design system with detailed states for each element. The case shows the brand’s side best. It says little about how a creative joins, gets vetted, or gets paid, so ask for those screens.
Eleken: a freight platform where shippers and carriers meet
Eleken is a UX/UI design agency for SaaS products based in Kyiv, Ukraine, with a US entity in Delaware. Its TendrX case covers a platform where shippers find reliable carriers before they request rates.
The case spells out how the two sides differ. Shippers create tenders from saved templates, choose whether a tender is public, anonymous, or private, and then shortlist or reject carriers with a reason. Carriers find shippers through tenders and search and can follow them, and a carrier can upgrade its profile to become a forwarder. Carriers cannot message a shipper first, because there are far more carriers than shippers. Two designers built the first version in 3 months, and the page says the product was in beta. Ask what changed after launch.
Equal: buyer search for a heavy equipment marketplace
Equal is a B2B product design agency with teams in Lisbon and Kyiv. Its Bidadoo case covers a seller-first marketplace for heavy equipment, trucks, and industrial assets, with weekly no-reserve auctions and Buy It Now. Bidding settles on eBay, and Bidadoo owns the search and evaluation before that handoff.
Equal started from analytics, user behavior, and competitors’ flows, then rebuilt search, filtering, the mobile experience, and the jump to eBay across the site in 10 weeks. It added a trust layer for expensive purchases: guarantee messaging, global shipping, testimonials, and a clear explanation of how buying works. Equal reports improved conversion and more inquiries, without figures. Read this case if you already run a live marketplace whose buyers get lost. The page covers buyers only, so ask about seller-side work.
Goji Labs: scoping a collectibles marketplace before launch
Goji Labs is a strategy-first digital product agency headquartered in Los Angeles, with an office in New York. Its Trofi case covers a collectibles marketplace and community for serious collectors, resellers, and newcomers.
The work started with workshops and UX research that mapped each user type and the moments that mattered to them. The team then cut the MVP down to collection showcasing, ownership transfer, and sharing outside the platform, and deferred ideas that added complexity. It built a proof of concept with 3D-scanned collectibles inside the prototype, designed the marketing site, and planned a pioneer program to seed the platform with credible collections. That makes this the clearest case here on the cold start. The page says more about strategy than about screens, so ask to see the offer and transfer flows.
Halo Lab: a services marketplace and a B2B trading board
Halo Lab is a design and development agency founded in Odesa, Ukraine, in 2013, and it now lists locations in Boston and Warsaw. It has two marketplace cases.
Everneed connects consumers with professionals across service categories in Austria and the Netherlands. Over 5 months, Halo Lab designed the brand, the website, and two separate portals, one for consumers and one for partners, with a dashboard showing each provider’s business data and tasks. The page does not mention reviews, verification, booking, or payments.
PrimeXConnect is an Australian B2B platform for the red meat supply chain. Working inside the live product’s design system, Halo Lab designed inventory management, sales planning, and a Market Board where sellers list stock at a fixed price or for auction, buyers bid live, and sellers accept, reject, or counter from a table row. The page notes that Nui Markets acquired the platform in December 2023.
Purrweb: a marketplace prototype for a first-time founder
Purrweb is a design and development studio founded in 2014. Its company facts page describes a distributed team across Europe and Asia, a registered office in the UAE, and one small office in Omsk, Russia. Its Buy My Brains case covers a peer-to-peer platform with two roles, buyer and seller, for non-physical products.
The founder came with an idea and a general vision. Purrweb built a website prototype in which buyers pick categories, get a feed of matching offers, open a product card, and visit seller profiles that showcase their work. It also designed the landing page and an animated explainer video. The page says the project came in on budget and on time, and that the founder is now seeking investors. Purrweb is mainly a build studio, so this case fits a founder who wants one team for a prototype and the first version.
Which marketplace problems should the cases answer?
Most portfolios show screens one at a time. For a marketplace, ask how a screen on one side changes what the other side sees. Six problems come up in almost every early marketplace, and the cases above answer them unevenly.
| Problem | What to ask the team to show | What the cases here show |
|---|---|---|
| Two sides with different jobs | Separate navigation and home screens for each side, and what each side sees about the other | Halo Lab: separate consumer and partner portals. Eleken: different flows for shippers and carriers. Clay: brands and creatives. |
| Supply onboarding | Sign-up, the first listing or profile, and any checks before a seller can trade | Eleken: carrier to forwarder upgrade. Halo Lab and Purrweb: provider and seller profiles. No case shows a full seller sign-up with checks. |
| Search and matching | Search, filters, empty results, and how a match is suggested | Equal: buyer search and filtering. Clay: a matching questionnaire. Purrweb: a category feed. Eleken: tenders and search. |
| Trust | Profiles, reviews, verification, and rules that limit unwanted contact | Equal: guarantee and shipping messages. Eleken: carriers cannot message first. Goji Labs: 3D views of items. No case describes a review system. |
| Transactions and payouts | Offers, auctions, checkout, and what the seller sees when money moves | Halo Lab: fixed prices, auctions, and counteroffers. Equal: the handoff to eBay. Goji Labs: ownership transfer. No case shows payout screens. |
| The cold start | What a buyer sees with 10 listings, and what brings the first sellers in | Goji Labs: a pioneer program to seed collections. Cieden: a launch timed to a trade show. |
Read the gaps as carefully as the matches. If your sellers have to pass identity or business checks before they can get paid, none of these cases shows that flow, and merchant onboarding with KYB checks is its own design problem. Ask every agency for it separately.
How to choose
Start with the stage you are at and the side that is hardest to win.
- Before launch, with an idea and no product: Goji Labs on Trofi for scope and the cold start, or Purrweb on Buy My Brains if you want one team to prototype and build.
- A first version with a hard date: Cieden on Exceeders, or Eleken on TendrX if your marketplace is B2B.
- A live marketplace whose buyers get lost in search: Equal on Bidadoo.
- A B2B marketplace with auctions, offers, or inventory: Halo Lab on PrimeXConnect.
- A services or talent marketplace where matching is the product: Halo Lab on Everneed and Clay on Togetherr.
Then give every agency on your shortlist the same scenario. An illustrative example: a new seller signs up on a Tuesday, lists one item, and waits. On Thursday a buyer searches, sees 6 results, and makes an offer below the asking price. The seller counters from a phone. They agree, the buyer pays, and the platform holds the money until the item arrives.
Ask each team to sketch 5 screens: the seller’s empty dashboard, the buyer’s thin search results, the offer and counteroffer, the payment confirmation for each side, and the seller’s payout status. A strong answer asks what your platform holds back, when the seller gets paid, and what each side sees if the deal falls through. A weak answer draws a polished home page with 200 listings. If you are still comparing agencies for a startup in general, start with our wider startup comparison.
