A marketplace is a good place to find spare work and a poor place to build a business, because it owns the two things that make a shop valuable: the price and the customer. Your quotes should happen on your own website first, with a marketplace as an overflow, not the other way round.
That is the short version. The longer one depends on what a marketplace actually does for you, and what it costs.
What a marketplace does
Xometry, Protolabs Network (formerly Hubs) and Craftcloud all sit between a buyer and a set of shops. The buyer uploads a file, sees a price and orders from the marketplace. The marketplace then passes the job to a shop.
They differ in who sets the price:
- Xometry prices the job itself. Its partner page says every job on a partner’s job board “comes pre-quoted”, priced by its instant quoting engine from market data and machine learning (Xometry). The shop decides whether to take it.
- Craftcloud describes itself as a real-time price comparison of print services, so partner shops compete on price in front of the buyer (Craftcloud).
- Hubs, in its earlier form, let member shops set their own prices and charged a service fee on each order: 12.5 % as standard in 2015 (Hubs).
In every case the marketplace is the shop the buyer thinks they bought from.
Why marketplaces are winning buyers
Because they answer at once. An engineer who uploads a part and gets a price, a lead time and an order button in a minute has had a better experience than one who sends an e-mail and waits a day. Xometry’s marketplace revenue grew 45 % year on year in the second quarter of 2026 (Xometry Q2 2026), and in the first quarter it announced a partnership to put its pricing inside Siemens’ design software (VoxelMatters).
Buyers also prefer to serve themselves. In a 2025 Gartner survey, 61 % of B2B buyers said they prefer an overall rep-free buying experience (Gartner). Marketplaces deliver that. Most independent shops, quoting by e-mail, do not.
The trade-off, line by line
| Marketplace | Your own website | |
|---|---|---|
| Who sets the price | The marketplace, or a price comparison against other shops | You, from your own costs |
| Who owns the buyer | The marketplace | You |
| Repeat orders | Go back through the marketplace | Come to you |
| Cost of finding the buyer | The marketplace’s share, inside the price | Your website, search, reputation |
| Speed of answer | Seconds | Seconds with an instant quote; hours or days by e-mail |
| What you learn | The jobs offered to you | Every enquiry, including the ones you lost |
| Volume when you start | Immediate, if your capabilities match | Slow until people know you |
The last row is the real case for a marketplace. A new shop with idle machines and no customers can get work on day one. The other rows are the case for not depending on it.
The arithmetic of a share
How much a marketplace keeps varies by platform and is not always published, so take this as a worked example with assumed numbers, not a quote of anyone’s terms.
Suppose a job you would price at €400 on your own site reaches you through a marketplace at €320, 20 % less, and your cost to make it is €260.
| Direct | Marketplace | |
|---|---|---|
| Price to you | €400 | €320 |
| Cost to make | €260 | €260 |
| Contribution | €140 | €60 |
In this example the marketplace job contributes less than half as much. That can still be worth taking: €60 on a machine that would otherwise stand idle is €60 more than nothing. It is not worth taking at the expense of a direct job, and it is never worth building the business on, because the buyer’s next order goes back through the marketplace too.
Where a shop’s quotes should happen
On its own website, with three conditions.
- The answer has to be as quick as the marketplace’s for the parts you make every week. If a buyer can get a price from a marketplace in a minute and from you in a day, knowing you is not enough. An instant quote on your own page closes that gap. Quotometry is one way to do it, priced from your own machines, materials and rates.
- The page has to show you understand the part: processes, materials, limits, lead times, real photos. A marketplace wins on convenience; you win on being specific.
- Complex parts still need a person. A request form beside the instant quote, with a promise of when you will reply, keeps the work an instant quote cannot price.
Use the marketplace as overflow: a source of jobs when the machines are idle, priced and tracked separately, so you always know what that work contributes.
Something marketplaces have tried themselves
Hubs once offered member shops an order widget for their own websites, priced with each shop’s own settings, at a 7.5 % fee instead of the standard 12.5 % (Hubs, 2015). The idea was sound: shops wanted to quote on their own site, with their own prices, under their own name. The difference today is that a shop can do that without a marketplace in the middle at all, which is the point of having the quote on your own page: no other shop is ever offered your buyer.
A short checklist
- Track marketplace jobs and direct jobs separately: price, cost, contribution.
- Measure how quickly you answer direct enquiries, and compare it with a marketplace’s minute. The cost of a slow quote does that arithmetic.
- Make your own website answer routine parts instantly; see selling manufacturing services online.
- Read every marketplace’s partner terms on contacting buyers before you rely on it.
- Review the mix every quarter. If more than a small share of your margin comes through one marketplace, that marketplace has become your sales department, and it is not working for you.
Questions people ask
Is it worth joining a manufacturing marketplace?
It can be, as a way to fill spare machine time, especially for a new shop with few customers of its own. Accept that the marketplace sets or shapes the price and keeps the buyer. Track the margin on marketplace jobs separately, and keep your own website and quote fast enough that buyers who know you have no reason to go through the marketplace.
Can I take my marketplace customers direct?
Read the marketplace's partner terms before you try. Many restrict contacting buyers met through the platform. The lasting answer is to win different customers directly: local firms, repeat business accounts and buyers who search for your process and region, with a quote on your own site that is as quick as the marketplace's.
Quotometry prices every part from your own machines and rates, on your website, in seconds.