- E-commerce
- Custom SaaS Development
- AI Business Automation
- DevOps
A county-wide marketplace, and the subscription business under it
Local businesses were spread across social pages, out-of-date directories and word of mouth. We built the marketplace that puts them in one place, and the subscription platform that makes running it a business rather than a hobby.
- Client
- Pitt County Deals
- Industry
- E-commerce
- subscription tiers, live on Stripe
- 4
- channels: email, SMS and WhatsApp
- 3
The problem
A local directory is easy to build and almost impossible to keep alive. Listings go stale, businesses stop caring, and there is no revenue to pay for the work of fixing either. The graveyard of dead county directories is large and it all failed the same way. So the problem was never the listings page. It was building something a business owner would log into again next month, which means it has to do something for them: bring bookings, capture leads, reach their customers. And it had to charge for that, from day one, with a free tier real enough that a business lands on it rather than leaving.
What we built
A full marketplace with a business platform underneath it. Owners get a profile, a services menu with prices, deals, events, online bookings, a lead inbox for quote requests, review replies, a customer list, and email, SMS and WhatsApp campaigns to reach them. Four Stripe subscription tiers gate that surface, with a permanent free tier as the floor: churn demotes a business rather than evicting it, so a lapsed subscriber keeps a live listing and stays reachable. Residents get search, an events calendar, bookings, favourites, loyalty and a wallet of saved offers. Behind it is the unglamorous half: an approval workflow for new businesses, a full administrative back office across every model, scheduled jobs driving reminders and digests, delivery logging for every message sent, and error monitoring on the paths where silence would be expensive.
What changed
The platform runs the local marketplace it was built for and now ships as a licensable product: the same system, rebranded, for operators who want it in their own city. The design decision that carries the most weight is the free tier. It is a permanent floor rather than a trial, which means the platform accumulates inventory whether or not a business is paying, and inventory is what makes the marketplace worth visiting, which in turn is what makes the subscription worth buying.
Built with
- Next.js
- TypeScript
- MongoDB
- Stripe
- Firebase Auth
- Twilio
- Cloudinary
- Upstash