Buyer-Seller Chat SDK for Marketplaces & E-Commerce

Enhance trust, boost conversions, and improve customer experience. With Ethora’s Chat SDK for marketplaces, you can add real-time messaging to your marketplace platform in no time, enabling seamless, secure, and scalable connections between buyers, sellers, and support teams.

Build a Chat
Real-time messaging Customizable UI/UX Security & compliance
Ethora marketplace chat between buyers, sellers and support
Buyer-seller messagingBuyers · Sellers · Admins · Support
Security & complianceBuilt-in compliance & encryption

Chat SDK for e-Commerce Platforms

Our development kit enables your team to quickly create a chat for your platform. A fully functional chat can be created in days, instead of months. Brand it to your liking, add necessary features, and improve the customer journey from the first interaction to post-checkout support.

What do You Need a Chat SDK for?

  • Driving higher conversion rates by enabling quick buyer-seller conversations.
  • Enhancing trust & transparency through in-app communication.
  • Streamlining support workflows without forcing users outside the platform.
  • 24/7 support with smart, context-aware AI agents.
Why marketplaces need a chat SDK: conversions, trust and support

Key Features of Ethora’s Marketplace Chat SDK

Real-time messaging

Instant communication between buyers, sellers, and admins with message delivery confirmation.

Transactional chat threads

Link conversations to product listings, orders, or services.

Customizable UI/UX

Match your marketplace branding with flexible design options.

Mobile-first design

Cross-platform compatibility for iOS, Android, and web marketplaces.

Notifications & alerts

Use push notifications to ensure that buyers and sellers never miss an update.

Multilingual support

Reach audiences from all over the world with multilingual chat capabilities.

Escrow & support integration

Seamlessly connect chat to payments, dispute resolution, and help desk tools.

Artificial intelligence

An AI agent to ensure round-the-clock support, from suggesting product alternatives to checkout.

Security & compliance

Built-in compliance ensures meeting regulations, and encryption secures buyer-seller interactions.

Easy Integration for Marketplaces

Adding chat to your Magento, Shopify, WooCommerce, or custom marketplace platforms is easy with Ethora. See for yourself:

  • Install the SDK – You can use npm, Gradle, or CocoaPods.
  • Connect marketplace data – Tie chat to listings, orders, or user profiles.
  • Customize the flow – Define roles - buyers, sellers, admins.
  • Deploy securely – You can run your chat on Ethora servers or self-host it.
Four steps to integrate marketplace chat with Ethora

Seamless Communication for Every Marketplace Interaction

Buyer-seller messaging

Enable pre-sale questions and negotiations.

In-app support

Provide customer service without leaving your platform.

Order-linked chat

Keep all communications tied to a specific purchase.

Service marketplaces

Connect freelancers and other professionals with clients in real time.

Peer-to-peer marketplaces

Build trust and safety into second-hand buying and selling.

Marketplace chat scenarios: buyers, sellers, support and services

Key Benefits of Ethora Marketplace Chat SDK

Increase engagement, reduce churn, and boost conversions with a chat system designed specifically for marketplaces.

  • Native chat integration inside your marketplace.
  • Custom workflows for buyers, sellers, and admins.
  • Compliance-ready infrastructure for payments and disputes.
  • High scalability for large peer-to-peer marketplaces.
  • Full data ownership with self-hosted options.
Key benefits of the Ethora marketplace chat SDK
Pricing

Save Months of Work with Ethora

Build any chat use case into your product: in hours.

Free

$0 / mo
free forever
1,000 MAU
100 Concurrent Connections
Sign Up
All Chat & AI features, including:
  • Community Support
  • 30 Days of Free Support
  • No Credit Card Required
Recommended

Enterprise

$599+ / mo
billed monthly
Unlimited MAU
Unlimited Connections
All Business, plus:
  • 24/7 Phone Support
  • Self-hosted AI
  • Custom Configuration
  • Dedicated / On-prem hosting

What our clients say about our services.

Taras and the Ethora team are a reliable partner in messaging, tokenization and AI. Great communication and products.

Joe Sticca
Joe Sticca
Digital Product & Technology Leader, Trust Industries

I have worked with Ethora and team since 2018. They have been absolutely amazing and life-saving across multiple of my portfolio projects.

Adam Palmer
Adam Palmer
Co-founder, SIAD Ventures

We partnered with Dappros/Ethora on an EU project and they successfully delivered the technology component. Highly recommended.

Peter Fearon
Peter Fearon
CEO, Remade Group

Ethora has successfully helped us ideate and deliver multiple digital transformation projects in Qatar and the MENA region. A reliable and knowledgable partner.

Tariq Gulrez
Tariq Gulrez
Ministry of Communications & IT

Ethora technology and expertise were instrumental in delivering Atom Connect, our product for streamlined communication in the workers’ comp market.

Carol Valentic
Carol Valentic
CEO, Candollar

Ethora helped us deliver our AI agent solution, letting subscribers access context-specific insights from our vast library of expert content. Their LLM and chat-bot expertise is an excellent match for our AI strategy.

Bret Gregory
Bret Gregory
CEO, DrTalks

Ethora has been an exceptional strategic development partner for Preshent. Not just a vendor, but a core contributor to the future of our platform and company.

John Richardson
John Richardson
Founder & CEO, Preshent Corporation

Ethora helped us ideate and deliver multiple digital transformation projects across Qatar and the MENA region. A reliable, knowledgable partner.

Howaida Nadim
Howaida Nadim
CEO, Foresight Communications

Our Case Studies

DrTalks
DrTalks Logo

Dr. Talks is one of the most prominent organizers of online healthcare conferences and summits.

Ethora enabled them to create a context-aware AI-powered chatbot to help users navigate thousands of pages of medical content, correctly referencing pages, authors, videos and timestamps. 100% secure and HIPAA-compliant.

This assistant enhances user experience by simplifying interaction with the platform and reducing search time.

  • 1000+ summits indexed by AI bot
  • Instant user engagement
  • Vector embeddings enable intelligent domain expert AI responses
Read more
Atom
Atom Logo

Atom Advantage is a provider of innovative AI powered workers compensation and health insurance solutions in the United States.

Ethora engine has enabled Atom Connect product used for communication between injured workers, nurses, and caseworkers. AI-powered, with documents exchange, and compliant with all regulations such as HIPAA and SOC2.

This solution reduces manual labour for caseworkers and improves patients experience.

  • Integration into caseworkers web portal
  • White-labelled mobile app for chat and health documents wallet for injured workers
  • Instant messaging between caseworkers and injured workers
Read more

Marketplace Messaging Use Cases

Online marketplaces connect millions of buyers and sellers every day, but each transaction type brings its own communication challenges. From price negotiations to dispute resolution, messaging is the backbone that keeps marketplace commerce moving. Ethora provides the messaging infrastructure to handle every scenario within a single, unified platform rather than stitching together separate tools for each interaction type.

Buyer-seller negotiation

Description

In peer-to-peer and B2B marketplaces, buyers often need to ask product-specific questions, discuss pricing, or make offers and counter-offers before committing to a purchase. Without in-app messaging, these conversations move to email or external messengers, increasing drop-off rates and removing the platform from the transaction flow.

Key Features

Real-time one-to-one chat threads linked to specific product listings, offer and counter-offer message types, read receipts and typing indicators for responsive negotiation, message history preserved for reference throughout the transaction lifecycle, and push notifications to ensure neither party misses a response.

Buyer and seller exchanging offers on a product listing in chat

Service marketplace coordination

Description

Service marketplaces connecting professionals with clients, such as home repair platforms, tutoring marketplaces, or consulting directories, require structured communication around booking, scheduling, and service scope. Clients need to describe their requirements, providers need to confirm availability, and both parties need to coordinate logistics before, during, and after service delivery.

Key Features

Scheduling integration with calendar sync and availability windows, file and image sharing for project briefs and reference materials, group chat capability for multi-party service engagements, automated status updates triggered by booking state changes, and role-based permissions distinguishing provider, client, and platform admin access levels.

Service provider and client coordinating a booking with calendar and brief sharing

Rental marketplace communication

Description

Property and equipment rental platforms facilitate high-value, time-sensitive transactions where prospective tenants or renters need to ask questions about availability, condition, and terms. Viewing or pickup scheduling requires back-and-forth coordination, and lease or rental agreement discussions benefit from documented conversation trails.

Key Features

Listing-linked chat threads so conversations stay organized by property or item, document sharing for lease terms, identification, and proof of income, location sharing for viewing or pickup coordination, message archiving for legal compliance and dispute evidence, and admin moderation tools for flagging suspicious inquiries.

Rental inquiry chat with property listing, lease documents and viewing pin

Automotive marketplace

Description

Vehicle marketplaces involve complex, high-value transactions where buyers typically have many questions about vehicle history, condition, and pricing. Test drive scheduling, financing discussions, and trade-in negotiations all require direct communication between buyer and seller, often over multiple conversations before a deal is finalized.

Key Features

Media-rich messaging with support for high-resolution vehicle photos and video walkarounds, structured inquiry forms embedded within chat for consistent information gathering, test drive scheduling with calendar integration, conversation threading that tracks the full history from initial inquiry through final sale, and integration points for vehicle history reports and financing calculators.

Vehicle listing chat with photos and test drive scheduling

Freelance platform messaging

Description

Freelance and gig economy platforms need messaging that supports the entire project lifecycle, from initial brief sharing and scope negotiation through milestone updates and final deliverable review. Communication must be organized, searchable, and auditable to protect both the freelancer and the client in case of disagreements about scope or quality.

Key Features

Project-linked conversation threads tied to specific contracts or milestones, file sharing with version tracking for deliverable review cycles, group chat for projects involving multiple collaborators or stakeholders, message search and export for contract compliance and invoicing reference, and integration with payment milestones so release of funds can be triggered directly from chat confirmation.

Freelance project chat with milestones, deliverables and client review

Customer support and dispute resolution

Description

When orders go wrong, whether through delayed shipping, damaged goods, or misrepresented listings, marketplace platforms need a structured communication channel that brings buyers, sellers, and platform administrators together to resolve issues fairly. Unresolved disputes are the single largest driver of negative reviews and platform abandonment.

Key Features

Three-party chat threads connecting buyer, seller, and platform mediator, complete message history accessible to all parties for transparency, admin escalation tools with the ability to freeze seller payouts pending resolution, structured resolution workflows with predefined outcomes such as refund, replacement, or partial credit, and automated satisfaction surveys triggered after case closure to track support quality.

Three-party dispute resolution chat between buyer, seller and platform mediator

AI-Powered Marketplace Assistants

AI is changing how marketplaces operate by automating routine interactions, improving discovery, and cutting the workload on human support teams. Ethora's AI framework plugs directly into the messaging layer, so you can add intelligent assistants that participate in conversations alongside human users. These assistants are powered by large language models (LLMs) trained on your marketplace's specific data, so responses stay accurate, relevant, and consistent with your platform's tone and policies.

When a buyer describes what they are looking for in a conversation, an AI assistant can analyze the request in real time and suggest relevant listings from your marketplace inventory. Unlike static recommendation engines that rely only on browsing history, conversational AI understands specific requirements expressed in natural language. For example, "I need a waterproof jacket for hiking in Scotland, under 100 pounds, preferably in dark green." The assistant searches your catalog, filters by the stated criteria, and presents matching options directly within the chat, shortening the path from intent to purchase.

Sellers, especially new or occasional ones, often struggle with writing effective product descriptions and setting competitive prices. An AI assistant can guide sellers through the listing process, suggesting category classifications, generating optimized descriptions from a few keywords or photos, and recommending price ranges based on comparable listings. This reduces the barrier to listing, improves listing quality across the platform, and increases the likelihood of successful sales for all sellers.

In service and B2B marketplaces, connecting the right buyer with the right seller goes beyond a simple search. An AI-powered matching bot can analyze buyer requirements, cross-reference them against seller profiles, availability, ratings, and specializations, and proactively introduce the best matches via chat. This works especially well in professional services, wholesale, and custom manufacturing marketplaces where each engagement needs careful qualification.

The majority of customer support inquiries in marketplaces are repetitive: order status checks, return policy questions, shipping timeframe inquiries, and account-related issues. An AI support agent handles these queries instantly, 24 hours a day, without human intervention. The assistant can pull real-time data from your order management system to provide accurate tracking updates, process simple return requests, and escalate complex issues to human agents with full conversation context. This reduces support ticket volume by 40 to 70 percent while improving response times from hours to seconds.

AI assistants can monitor conversations in real time for patterns associated with fraudulent activity. This includes detecting messages that attempt to move transactions off-platform, identifying scam patterns such as advance payment requests or counterfeit item indicators, and flagging accounts that exhibit suspicious communication behavior across multiple conversations. When suspicious activity is detected, the bot can automatically alert platform moderators, quarantine the message for review, or warn the potential victim, all without disrupting the experience for legitimate users. Learn more about Ethora's AI capabilities with our self-hosted LLM AI agent and embeddable AI chat widget.

AI marketplace assistant recommending products and flagging fraud in chat

FAQ

Can I integrate chat into existing marketplace platforms like Shopify or WooCommerce?

Yes, Ethora supports integration with popular marketplaces and e-Commerce platforms, including Shopify and WooCommerce. You can embed chat directly into your storefront using our React web component or add it to your mobile apps via our React Native, iOS, or Android SDKs. The SDK connects to your existing product catalog and order system, so chat threads can be linked to specific listings or purchases right out of the box.

Does the chat support order-linked communication?

Yes, it does. You can tie chat threads to specific listings, products, or transactions, so all messages between buyer and seller stay organized under the relevant order. This means your support team can pull up the full conversation history for any transaction when handling disputes or returns, and buyers can easily find past discussions without scrolling through unrelated messages.

Is it secure to use Ethora to handle buyer-seller information?

Absolutely. Ethora’s SDK complies with data protection regulations, as well as uses encryption to keep data safe at rest and in transition.

Can I add roles to chat?

Sure. Ethora supports role-based chats, making it a perfect solution for marketplaces. You can add roles like “customer”, “buyer”, “seller”, “admin”, or others.

Does your SDK support push notifications?

Of course. This is a necessary feature that helps you keep users informed. Both mobile and web users can receive notifications for new messages or updates.

How long does it take to integrate?

You can build a basic chat in less than an hour. Depending on complexity, it can take days, but anyway, using the SDK is much easier and faster than building a solution from scratch. It will save you months.

Can disputes and support tickets be managed through chat?

Yes. The SDK supports admin-level monitoring and can integrate with dispute resolution workflows. Admins can join any conversation as a mediator, view the full message history between buyer and seller, and take actions like issuing refunds or freezing payouts. All messages are archived and searchable, which gives your team a clear audit trail for every case.

Can I add an AI assistant or a chatbot?

Sure. Moreover, AI integration doesn’t even require complex coding, and you can teach your agent on your website data (using a website crawler) and documentation (using a document indexer).

Does it scale for large peer-to-peer marketplaces?

Yes. Ethora is an enterprise-ready solution, which means it’s optimized for high concurrency and millions of users. It’s scalable and can grow when you need.

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Real-time messaging Multilingual support Escrow & support integration