Modular Marketplaces in 2026: Building Like LEGO Bricks

Why Modular Platforms Win in 2026

Marketplaces quietly became the dominant model of digital commerce. In 2024, online marketplaces accounted for 62% of global retail e-commerce sales, or about $2.4 trillion, and six of the world’s top 10 online retailers are marketplace-first businesses.

On the B2B side, the numbers are even more dramatic. Global B2B e-commerce is projected to reach around $36 trillion by 2026, with heavy industries like manufacturing, energy and professional services increasingly moving procurement and services into marketplace-style platforms.

For founders and product leaders, the implication is simple: if you’re building commerce, you’re probably building some kind of marketplace software — multi-vendor, vertical, B2B, or internal.

The question isn’t “Should we build a marketplace?” anymore.
It’s “How do we build one that’s modular, customizable, and ready to grow?”

What’s Driving the Marketplace Wave?

1. Buyers want one hub, not ten tabs.
Marketplaces aggregate inventory, services, or talent into a single, searchable place. That’s why they’ve become the default UI for both retail and B2B.

2. B2B is going marketplace, fast.
Governments and analysts expect B2B e-commerce to outpace B2C, with buyers demanding B2C-like UX, self-service, and flexible payment options.

3. AI and personalization are no longer “nice-to-haves”.
AI-driven recommendations, dynamic pricing, and automated matching are re-shaping how consumers and business buyers discover products. DHL’s 2025 E-Commerce Trends Report notes AI and social commerce as key forces in online shopping.

4. New verticals are going digital.
Energy, circular economy (pre-owned goods), remote work, and even internal corporate services are now being orchestrated as marketplaces.

That’s exactly the world Unibrix builds for.

Vertical Marketplaces in Practice: Unibrix Cases

1. Jules — Energy marketplace SaaS

Jules offers a SaaS solution for companies in the energy sector and partnered with Unibrix to architect a unified platform for system administrators. 

Public sources describe Jules Energy as enabling B2B customers to benefit from dynamic access to wholesale energy pricing and flexible contracts, turning traditionally opaque energy trading into a more transparent, marketplace-like experience.

For Unibrix, this meant treating the product as a B2B energy marketplace with bricks like:

• Contract & tariff configuration modules
• Real-time consumption and pricing data
• Admin dashboards for suppliers and large consumers
• Integration with external energy markets and systems
  

The result: a platform ready to scale with new contract types, geographies and partners — without a full rebuild every time.

2. Fashion & circular economy: Catecut, Bgreen and NDA fashion projects

On the consumer side, Unibrix has worked on multiple fashion marketplaces:

• An NDA multi-brand clothing marketplace (classic multi-vendor apparel platform).
• Catecut, an AI-driven personalization solution that curates clothing selections based on user preferences and behaviour (think “outfit recommendation engine” as a service).
• Bgreen, a marketplace for pre-owned goods, pushing sustainability and re-commerce.
  
  

Together, they show three key marketplace software patterns:

1. Core marketplace layer: catalogs, vendors, search, filters, cart, payments.

2. AI personalization piece (Catecut): ranking, recommendations, look-building — an example of Unibrix’s AI development services applied directly to marketplace UX.

3. Sustainability / re-commerce modules (Bgreen): condition grades, resale logic, seller onboarding, returns and verification.

You don’t want this as one giant monolith. You want modular blocks that can be turned on, reused, and adapted per brand and region.

Audio Bid — Enterprise bidding marketplace

Not every marketplace is public-facing.

Audio Bid is a bidding platform Unibrix built to streamline bidding services for a large enterprise department (NDA), using technologies like Xamarin, Angular, Ionic, and Node.js.

Internally, it behaves like a bidding marketplace:

• Departments submit requests
• Vendors or internal teams bid
• Decision-makers evaluate offers within standardised flows

Here, marketplace software development is about process control, transparency, and auditability, not just conversion. A modular approach lets the enterprise tune workflows and permissions per department, instead of hardcoding one rigid process.

Coremoting — Marketplace for work

With Coremoting, Unibrix helped build a telework platform that unites remote employees and teams — essentially a marketplace of work, tasks and collaboration.

Think:

• Matching remote workers with roles/teams
• Scheduling and presence modules
• Communication and collaboration tools
• Analytics on engagement and workload

Again, customization is everything: different clients might plug in different HR systems, time-tracking, or security policies. A modular architecture makes that feasible.

Why Custom & Modular Wins for Marketplace Software

Whether it’s energy, fashion, B2B bidding or remote work, marketplace builders face similar challenges:

• Different roles, different journeys: buyers, sellers, admins, partners — each with custom flows.
  
• Complex integrations: payments, logistics, ERPs, energy markets, tax engines, identity providers.
  
• Evolving business models: subscriptions, commissions, auctions, dynamic pricing, credits, tokens.
  

Trying to force all this into a one-size-fits-all template is how you end up rewriting the platform every two years.

Unibrix’s answer is:

• A dedicated development team tuned to your vertical and business logic.
  
• Staff augmentation when you need specific skills (Node.js, Java, mobile, AI, DevOps) added to your in-house crew.
  
• Modular product development — each function (catalog, search, AI recommendations, bidding, analytics, vendor onboarding) as its own brick, with clean APIs and clear ownership.

On top of that, AI development services bring modern marketplace features to life: dynamic pricing, fraud detection, seller scoring, personalisation, and agentic shopping experiences that analysts expect to drive billions in incremental e-commerce by 2030.

Takeaways for Marketplace Builders

If you’re a founder, CPO or CTO building a marketplace platform today — in energy, fashion, B2B services or remote work — you’re playing a long game:

• Design your platform as LEGO, not a knot.
  Catalog, payments, identity, recommendations, dashboards — all as separate bricks that can be upgraded without tearing down the whole set.
  
• Use a dedicated team where it matters most.
  Critical pieces (matching logic, contract handling, energy pricing, AI ranking) need people who live and breathe your domain.
  
• Augment instead of over-hiring.
  Staff augmentation lets you slot in specialists when needed, instead of carrying a bloated permanent team through market cycles.
  
• Start with a focused core, then stack new modules.
  MVP = the smallest set of bricks that delivers value. Successive releases add AI personalisation, new verticals, B2B flows or ecommerce features.
  

At Unibrix, we call this building serious software with the joy of play: treating your marketplace as a living structure of bricks — robust, extensible, and fun to improve.

If you’re ready to assemble (or re-assemble) your marketplace platform, we’re here to help you get all the bricks together.