Marketplaces in B2B: Allegro and Amazon vs a dedicated sales platform

B2B companies increasingly ask whether they should sell through Allegro or Amazon, or build their own B2B sales platform. This is not a question about choosing one over the other. It is a question about multichannel strategy and about what each channel genuinely offers, and what it cannot.

A B2B marketplace and a dedicated B2B sales platform solve different problems. Treating them as direct competitors leads to poor decisions.

What selling through a marketplace means for B2B companies

Allegro Business is a dedicated segment of Allegro designed for business transactions. Sellers can offer net prices, issue VAT invoices directly through the platform and mark listings as intended for business buyers. Allegro Business reduces the entry threshold for B2B online sales to a minimum: a seller account, a product list, and a commission on sales.

Amazon Business works similarly, with the added advantage of global reach and logistics infrastructure (Fulfillment by Amazon). Business buyers on Amazon expect prices exclusive to business customers, bulk purchasing options and integration with their own procurement systems.

Both channels share a common strength: a large buyer base, zero build cost, immediate start. And a common constraint: you are not building a relationship with the customer, you are building a relationship with the platform.

Differences between marketplace and a dedicated B2B platform

A dedicated B2B sales platform is an environment the company controls entirely. Individual pricelists per contractor, commercial terms based on negotiated agreements, bulk orders, ERP integration, transaction history on the customer side, a logged-in zone with a catalogue tailored to the purchasing group. These are things no marketplace will ever offer, because it is a fundamentally different business model.

On a marketplace the buyer is a customer of the platform. On a dedicated B2B platform the buyer is a customer of the company.

The differences translate directly into data: on Allegro and Amazon, data about customer purchasing behaviour belongs to the platform. On your own platform that data stays with the company and can feed CRM, segmentation, offer personalisation and sales forecasting.

Marketplace commissions for B2B sellers typically run from a few to over ten percent of transaction value. On low-margin products that number changes the entire viability of the model.

More on what a dedicated B2B sales platform includes is on the service page.

When a B2B marketplace makes sense

Marketplaces work well as an acquisition channel. If a company is entering a new market or testing new product categories, Allegro Business or Amazon B2B provide reach without building traffic from scratch. This is especially relevant for high-turnover products with low customisation and a relatively simple purchasing process.

For small and medium trading companies that do not yet have the scale to justify a dedicated B2B platform, a marketplace may be the only sensible online channel. Fixed costs are minimal and logistics infrastructure (especially FBA on Amazon) enables global sales without a company-owned warehouse.

Marketplace also makes sense as a complement to an existing store for the segment of customers who naturally start their search on Allegro or Amazon. If the company is not visible there, the customer goes to a competitor.

When a dedicated B2B platform wins

A dedicated platform becomes necessary when buyers’ purchasing processes are too complex for the marketplace model. If the buyer needs multi-level approvals, a credit limit, consolidated invoicing across orders, ERP integration or their own purchasing catalogue, a marketplace cannot handle it.

In B2B sales with individual commercial terms per customer, a marketplace is a channel that treats everyone the same. That is fundamentally at odds with B2B logic, where commercial relationships are often the result of years of negotiation.

Companies serious about B2B online sales build their own platform as the primary transactional channel. Marketplace then becomes one of several supplementary channels, managed with integration rather than separately.

How to connect marketplace with a dedicated sales platform

Integrating a marketplace with a dedicated platform is a technical project, but first it is a decision about where the “source of truth” for data lives. The most common model: the dedicated platform and ERP are the centre, the marketplace is an external channel fed from that centre.

In practice this means synchronising stock levels from ERP or platform to Allegro and Amazon, pulling marketplace orders into the order management system, generating documents and updating shipping statuses.

Ready-made multichannel sales management tools connect multiple marketplace channels to an e-commerce platform without building integrations from scratch. For more complex requirements, especially where the company has an ERP with its own API, we build a dedicated integration. We cover this in the article on integrating B2B platforms with ERP and PIM systems, and details of the service are on the integrations and platform automation page.

What to deploy and in what order

Companies that come to us with a marketplace question are usually at one of two stages.

First: they are selling through a marketplace and want to launch a dedicated B2B platform, and are wondering whether the marketplace stays. The answer is almost always yes — the marketplace stays as one of the channels and the dedicated platform becomes the centre. Deployment order: platform and ERP first, then marketplace integration.

Second: they have a dedicated platform and want to add a marketplace as a new channel. The key here is designing the integration so that the marketplace does not create additional manual work in order handling. A good integration means adding a marketplace channel does not increase operational costs proportionally to the added volume.

Technologically we work with platforms that have mature integration ecosystems: Magento (Adobe Commerce) and Shopware are two environments where Allegro and Amazon integration is a well-documented path. If you are choosing a platform with this integration in mind, that is a relevant criterion to factor into the decision rather than a detail to resolve after deployment. More on platform selection is in our comparison of Magento, Sylius and WooCommerce for B2B.