How to build a multi-vendor marketplace in Bubble

A multi‑vendor marketplace in Bubble is built by creating three core things: Vendor accounts, Products tied to vendors, and Payments that route money to each vendor (usually through Stripe Connect). In Bubble you manage this using your Data Types, Privacy Rules, Workflows, and the Stripe plugin or API Connector. The structure is simple: vendors create products, customers buy them, and Stripe handles paying vendors while you keep a fee.

Core Data Structure

You only need a small set of Data Types:

• User — add fields like is_vendor (yes/no) and stripe_account\_id (text).
• Product — fields like title (text), price (number), vendor (User).
• Order — fields like product (Product), buyer (User), payment\_id (text).

The key is the Product.vendor field. Everything depends on linking each product to a vendor User.

Vendor Onboarding (Stripe Connect)

Use Stripe’s Connect onboarding link. If you use Bubble’s official Stripe plugin, run the action Generate onboarding link. If using API Connector, call Stripe’s /v1/account\_links endpoint.

{
  "account": "acct_123", 
  "refresh_url": "https://yourapp.com/refresh",
  "return_url": "https://yourapp.com/return",
  "type": "account_onboarding"
}

Save the returned account value into the Vendor’s stripe_account_id.

Creating Products

On the vendor dashboard, the “Create Product” workflow simply “Create a new Product” and set vendor = Current User. This automatically filters what each vendor sees in their own dashboard via “Search for Products” with constraint vendor = Current User.

Checkout

Use Stripe’s Checkout Session that supports Connect. Bubble’s Stripe plugin exposes this as “Create checkout session”. Set:

• Price = Product’s price
• Stripe Account = Product’s vendor’s stripe_account_id
• Application Fee = Your commission

This ensures the vendor gets paid automatically.

Order Confirmation (Webhook)

In Stripe, add a webhook pointing to a Bubble Backend Workflow endpoint. Event you care about is checkout.session.completed. In the backend workflow, create an Order using the data from Stripe.

{
  "type": "checkout.session.completed",
  "data": {
    "object": {
      "id": "cs_123", 
      "metadata": { "product_id": "abc" }
    }
  }
}

Bubble extracts the metadata and you create the Order.

Privacy Rules

• Products: vendor is Current User for editing.
• Orders: buyer can see their own; vendor can see orders for their products.

This prevents vendors from seeing each other's data.