Freelancer Marketplace
A Bordeaux startup wanted to build a vertical freelancer marketplace focused on no-code developers — a niche they identified as underserved by Upwork and Malt. The core complexity was the payment flow: hold buyer funds in escrow, release per milestone, and handle disputes without a 20-person operations team.
Build something similar →The Challenge
A Bordeaux startup wanted to build a vertical freelancer marketplace focused on no-code developers — a niche they identified as underserved by Upwork and Malt. The core complexity was the payment flow: hold buyer funds in escrow, release per milestone, and handle disputes without a 20-person operations team.
Our Solution
Stripe Connect's managed accounts took the escrow complexity off the table — funds flow from buyer to Stripe-held escrow to freelancer, with the platform taking a 10% fee on release. Xano implemented the milestone release logic and dispute state machine. Supabase Realtime powered live bid notifications so freelancers see new projects without polling.
Designing the bidding workflow
The bidding flow has more states than it first appears: draft → posted → bidding open → under negotiation → accepted → in progress → milestone 1 pending → milestone 1 released → ... → completed or disputed. We modelled this as a Xano state machine with explicit allowed transitions — any attempt to jump states returns a 422 with a human-readable message. WeWeb reads the current state from Supabase and renders the appropriate action panel for each party, so a buyer and freelancer looking at the same project URL see completely different UI based on their role.
Stripe Connect and escrow mechanics
Stripe Connect's "destination charges" model means the buyer pays App Studio's Stripe account, funds sit in a Stripe balance, and Xano triggers a transfer to the freelancer's connected account on milestone approval. The platform fee is deducted at transfer time. We implemented a 48-hour release window after milestone approval: if the buyer doesn't dispute within 48 hours of marking a milestone complete, Xano auto-releases. This automated 92% of milestone releases without any manual intervention.
Real-time notifications with Supabase
When a buyer posts a project, all freelancers with matching skills receive an in-app notification within 200ms. We use Supabase's Postgres NOTIFY/LISTEN mechanism via the Realtime channel: a Postgres trigger fires on project insert, Supabase Realtime broadcasts to subscribed WeWeb clients, and the notification bell updates without a page refresh. For email notifications (bid received, milestone approved, payment released), we use Xano webhooks dispatching to Resend with transactional templates.
Three-month results
The marketplace launched with a curated cohort of 50 verified freelancers and grew to 500+ in the first month through referral incentives (€50 credit on first project). By month 3, €140K GMV had passed through the platform. The automated dispute resolution flow — a structured questionnaire that triggers fund freeze, evidence collection, and algorithmic scoring — resolved 92% of disputes without a human reviewer, keeping operations lean at two full-time staff.
Features delivered
Technology stack
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Get a free quote →The milestone escrow flow they designed saved us from hiring a head of ops. 92% of disputes resolve themselves — that was the number I couldn't believe until I saw the data.Julien M.Co-Founder, Freelancer Marketplace (Bordeaux)
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