The Best Service Marketplace Theme In 2021?

Want to build a task marketplace like TaskRabbit, Airtasker, or Thumbtack? 

Great idea! In just a decade since its inception, TaskRabbit has empowered 148,000 individuals to grow their income and skills. Airtasker creates over 1.4 million tasks each year. And Thumbtack is doing its own thing to help local professionals find work.

ExpertHive is a clean, modern WordPress theme that wants to make it easy for you to launch your own on-demand task marketplace – one that offers a similar experience and functionality as these task sites. 

The theme’s developers claim that it’s already packed with all the features needed to build an on-demand services marketplace, so you won’t have to buy anything else to get your site going. This made us curious to try it out ourselves.

Is ExpertHive as complete as its creators say? Does it deliver a marketplace with all the necessary bells and whistles? Can it really help me build a site like TaskRabbit? 

 We’ll be answering these questions and more in this comprehensive ExpertHive Review.

ExpertHive On-Demand Services Marketplace Theme Review

ExpertHive is a lightweight yet feature-rich WordPress theme for building a two-sided services marketplace. It allows you to create a site where buyers can post their job requests and sellers can list their services. The theme is powered by HivePress, the multipurpose directory plugin that’s already used by 3,000+ active WordPress sites.

 Key features include:

• Requests & Offers to facilitate customers in posting their requests and enabling experts to list services they offer.
• Commissions & Payouts for setting up a default commission rate and a payout threshold for taskers and experts. 
• Messages & Reviews to help customers communicate with taskers and leave reviews about their services.
• Custom Fields & Categories that make it easy to customize the marketplace to your liking.
• WooCommerce integration to help you process payments. 

And more.

Besides, you can use any of the premium or free add-ons available for HivePress to expand your marketplace’s functionality. 

Unlike other themes, ExpertHive saves you the need to download expensive third-party extensions or plugins. You can combine different HivePress extensions to create a niche marketplace with unique functionality. 

ExpertHive costs $79 for a lifetime single-site license. The purchase also includes 12 months of premium support, automatic updates, and a 30-day money-back guarantee.

For the sake of this review, we purchased ExpertHive so that we can give you a full scope of what it’s capable of.
Easy Installation and Handy Plugins 

ExpertHive installs the same way as any other premium WordPress theme. You simply go to your WordPress dashboard, select Appearance > Themes, click Add New > Upload Theme, and then select the ZIP file.

Once installed and activated, ExpertHive will suggest installing some plugins, such as HivePress Blocks and HivePress Messages. We installed all of them, as they’re meant to complement the site-building process. 

And to further simplify things, ExpertHive developers have recorded a screencast about how to import its demo content. Although it’s possible to start designing your marketplace from scratch, we actually recommend using pre-made content so that your site starts off looking exactly like the live ExpertHive demo.

ExpertHive suggests using the free one-click demo import plugin for importing demo data. After installing it, navigate to Appearance > Import Demo Data and then click the Import Demo Data button, as seen in the screenshot below.

Site Customizations

Being a modern theme, ExpertHive is fully compatible with the WordPress block editor and customizer. Know what that means? It means you can tweak everything using drag-and-drop and the familiar WordPress blocks. Also, whatever you edit will reflect on the front-end of the site. 

With the WordPress customizer, you can switch fonts, change the main colors, background images, customize menus, and so on.

Additionally, ExpertHive allows you to build your own layouts depending on the page functionality and purpose. You can do this by adding a new page from your WordPress backend. The theme offers the following blocks by default:

• Listings
• Listing categories
• User registration form
• Vendors
• Vendor search form
• Requests
• Requests search form
• Listing tags
• Reviews

ExpertHive also offers shortcodes for those using the Classic TinyMCE editor. These give you more control over your site’s design. If you’re a more advanced user, you can customize ExpertHive directly from the CSS.

Marketplace Features

Although ExpertHive’s site customization features are great, it’s the marketplace features and monetization capabilities that make it truly stand out.

For example, ExpertHive and HivePress plugins combine to offer you:

Listings

Allow any registered users to list their services and feature specific listings on your homepage, as well as add, edit, or remove the existing listing categories.

Paid Listings

With the Paid Listings extension, you can create and sell various listing packages with different options so experts can pick the best option for listing their services.

Vendors

Manage individual expert profiles, including adding new custom fields and search filters (such as location).

Requests

Allow customers to create their own requests with extra details like budget, due date, and time range. It’s also possible to add custom fields and search filters in the same way as for listings or vendors.

Messages

Let buyers and experts communicate with each other.

Tags

Allow experts to create category-based tags to make it easier for buyers to find relevant listings.

Favorites

Enable customers to compile a list of their favorite listings so that they’re encouraged to come back and order services from the same taskers

Testimonials

Display testimonials from experts to grow trust in your marketplace.

WooCommerce

ExpertHive is integrated with WooCommerce for processing payments and managing orders, so you can use any of the payment gateways available for WooCommerce.

There are also more free and premium ExpertHive extensions, but these nine should be enough for incorporating key marketplace functionalities into your website.

Commissions & Payouts

One of ExpertHive’s best features is that it allows you to apply a default commission rate. You can set one overall commission rate for all experts or offer a slightly higher commission to taskers who perform well. Alternatively, you can charge customers a certain amount for each expert’s services.

Moreover, the theme gives you the ability to receive payout requests from taskers at any point. And there’s also an option to set a minimum threshold if you prefer taking that route. With the threshold, experts will need to reach the minimum amount before requesting a payout of their earning.

Actual Appearance 

ExpertHive’s extensions and features are impressive, no doubt, but can we say the same thing about its appearance? You bet. ExpertHive fairs well in the aesthetics category too. 

Homepage

The main page invites visitors to perform a keyword search. It also lists the service categories for which experts are currently available, followed by a list of the most trusted and skilled experts. At the top, there are links to Services, Requests, and Expert Pages, and buttons for listing service and posting requests. Keep in mind that you can easily customize this layout or the menu items or even build your own layouts from scratch.

We also like that there’s a featured box/section explaining how the site works. You can customize this to your liking, but the default headings look usable.

Services Page

The services listing page displays all of the available services with pagination and a few sorting options. There’s also a bunch of handy filters on the left, along with an option to search by category, send private messages, or add listings to favorites.

Clicking a listing opens up the expert’s profile with more information about their service. Here, buyers can reply to the listing, see the expert’s rating and reviews, and check out related listings created by other vendors. 

Requests Page

The Requests page is designed to facilitate people wanting to post their own requests. Interested experts can browse these requests and make an offer. Buyers can see offers from multiple vendors, as well as view the profile of each vendor. 

Clicking “View Profile” will take them to the vendor page, where they can view the vendor’s listings, contact the vendor directly or view any of the available vendor details.

Post a Request Page

This page has a dedicated form to let buyers submit new requests. There’s a field for title, budget, due date, time range, and description. You can also add custom fields depending on your marketplace niche and requirements. After filling in these details, buyers can click the submit request button to make their service listing live.  

List a Service Page

This page allows experts to create a service listing in any of the present categories. The expert just needs to click a specific category and then fill out the details required on the next page. 

There are fields for title, hourly rate, availability, warranty, tags, and description. As a marketplace owner, you can also customize fields in this form depending on the marketplace niche. Once filled, the vendor can click the submit listing button to publish their listing on the site. Buyers can then view and reply to the listing. 

Community and Customer Support

Powered by the creators of an open-source plugin, ExpertHive has a helpful community of site owners sharing their thoughts and showcasing what they’ve built with this theme. 

Customers also get one year of industry-leading support directly from the developers, folks who’re familiar with all the nitty-gritty elements and can address any problems in the best and most effective manner possible. 

You can request support via email or through the community forum, where other marketplace owners also hang out.

Final Thoughts

There you have it – everything you need to know about ExpertHive and what it brings to the table. 

With the on-demand economy bigger than ever and expected to grow further, now is the best time to build a services marketplace to connect task experts with service seekers. But rather than building everything from scratch, you can simply use ExpertHive to create your own two-sided services marketplace. 

For just $79, ExpertHive offers a complete on-demand marketplace site in a box, with great video tutorials and support that simplifies the whole setup process.

Give it a shot. Who knows, you might end up with the next killer p2p service website. 

Try ExpertHive