Infrastructure costs less than one hire. People are the real budget.
Because the heavy machinery is rented — Sharetribe runs the marketplace, Stripe runs the money, Cloudflare fronts the traffic — our infrastructure bill is a rounding error next to the people on the Team & Ops Plan. SSL is $0 at every phase (managed certs from Cloudflare / AWS ACM / Let's Encrypt — nobody pays for certificates anymore). Every figure on this page is deliberately estimated at the high end — we would rather come in under budget than ask twice.
Prove it
Sharetribe ($400/mo today — usage pricing lands Sept 2026, budgeted high) + hosting + wallet Postgres + Cloudflare + AI moderation + HubSpot seats + tax & chargeback reserves. High on purpose.
Feed it
Sharetribe usage model budgeted up, HA database, Cloudflare Business, AI assist + vision scaling with volume, tax automation.
Run it
Includes a $2K+/mo Sharetribe usage-contract assumption. Still a rounding error next to payroll below.
Every service, every dollar.
| Service | Covers | Vendor / tier | Pilot /mo | Growth /mo | Scale /mo |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marketplace platform | Listings, search, transaction engine, escrow timers, messaging, Console, their uptime & PCI burden. Heads-up: Sharetribe moves to API-usage pricing in September 2026 — current $400/mo is the known number; re-quote before contract and budget the usage model high | Sharetribe — $400/mo today; usage-based from Sept 2026 | $500 | $900 | usage contract — budget $2K+ |
| Front-end hosting | The Exchange app (Sharetribe web template, React/Node) — autoscaling containers, staging env | GCP Cloud Run or AWS Fargate/Amplify — match whichever cloud EEI already runs | $40–80 | $100–200 | $250–500 |
| Wallet + webhook service | Credit ledger API + managed Postgres (HA at scale), webhook workers | Cloud SQL / RDS + one small service | $60–120 | $150–300 | $400–700 |
| CDN · WAF · DDoS | Edge cache, bot protection, firewall in front of everything | Cloudflare Free → Pro → Business | $0–25 | $25–250 | $250 |
| SSL / TLS certificates | HTTPS everywhere, auto-renewing | Cloudflare / AWS ACM / Let's Encrypt | $0 | $0 | $0 |
| DNS + domain | exchange.fitmentindustries.com — subdomain on infra we own | Route 53 / Cloudflare DNS | ~$2 | ~$5 | ~$10 |
| Transactional email | Wallet receipts & ops notices (Sharetribe sends marketplace emails on their side) | Postmark / SendGrid | $15 | $50 | $150 |
| Shipping label API | Prepaid labels + tracking webhooks; carrier cost rides on the order | EasyPost / Shippo (~5–8¢/label) | ~$10 | ~$40 | ~$120 |
| Plate / VIN decode | Vehicle finder lookups (per-query pricing) | Same decode class we use at retail | ~$25 | ~$75 | ~$200 |
| AI assist — text | Spec-check triage, reply drafts, claim summaries, message moderation, fraud flags — the leverage behind the ops ratios | Claude API — pennies per listing/ticket | $50–100 | $200–400 | $700–1,500 |
| AI description generator | One-click seller descriptions from item + condition + photos — Gemini Flash-Lite (Google's cheapest), server-proxied, capped 10/page load & 100/day/IP | Google AI — fractions of a cent per generation, caps make it un-runaway-able | ~$10 | ~$25 | ~$50 |
| AI vision — image verification | Every listing photo through the vision API: catalog match ("is this really a TE37"), damage/rash detection vs. the condition report, DOT date reading off sidewalls, counterfeit tells | Claude vision API — ~1–3¢ per image, ~6 photos/listing | $25–50 | $100–200 | $300–600 |
| App store accounts | Apple Developer Program + Google Play Console for the mobile apps | $99/yr Apple + $25 one-time Google | — | ~$8 | ~$8 |
| Commission Junction | Exchange affiliate program + Team Stance commissions on the existing EEI CJ account; referral commissions are variable (% of affiliate-driven GMV) on top | Existing EEI contract — budget program/tracking overhead high | ~$250 | ~$400 | ~$600 |
| Birdeye reviews | Exchange profile on the reputation platform EEI already runs — review requests, monitoring, aggregate rating on-site | Existing EEI contract — budget an added profile/location high | ~$100 | ~$150 | ~$200 |
| HubSpot chat & CRM | Our existing HubSpot chatbot + live-chat on every Exchange page; tickets and CS pipelines in the instance we already run | Existing EEI contract — budget seats for new CS hires | ~$60 | ~$120 | ~$180 |
| Sales-tax automation | Marketplace-facilitator calculation & filings across states | Stripe Tax class — % of order volume | ~$100 | ~$350 | ~$1,000 |
| Chargeback & fraud reserve | Budget line for disputes that lose, friendly fraud, write-offs — hope to spend $0, budget like we won't | Reserve ≈ 0.3% of GMV, high-side | ~$150 | ~$500 | ~$1,500 |
| Monitoring & errors | Error tracking, uptime checks, log retention | Sentry + uptime service | ~$25 | ~$80 | ~$150 |
| Analytics | Traffic + funnel, joined into the EEI warehouse | GA4 + existing EEI stack | $0 | $0 | $0 |
| Backups & storage | Ledger snapshots, object storage, exports | S3 / GCS | ~$10 | ~$30 | ~$80 |
| Monthly total (deliberately high) | — | — | budget $1,600 | budget $4,000 | budget $7,800 incl. usage contract |
Recommendation: run it on whichever cloud EEI already operates. The price difference between AWS and Google Cloud at this scale is tens of dollars a month; the cost of a second cloud's tooling, IAM, and on-call knowledge is real. Cloudflare sits in front either way. Open question for the platform lead: what does EEI host on today (AWS, GCP, or colo)? That single answer locks the hosting rows above.
What one order costs — the demo order, priced.
Using the walkthrough's real numbers: $825 accepted offer, $943.45 charged to the buyer with shipping and tax.
| Variable cost | Rate | On the demo order | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Stripe processing | 2.9% + 30¢ | ≈ $27.66 | Netted out of marketplace proceeds before payout |
| Stripe Connect cash payout | ~0.25% + 25¢ | ≈ $2.15 (cash path only) | Skipped entirely when the seller takes store credit |
| Seller KYC verification | ~$1.50 one-time | $1.50 per new seller | Stripe Identity, at first listing — not per order |
| Shipping label API fee | ~5–8¢/label | $0.08 | Carrier rate itself is buyer-paid on the order |
| BNPL merchant fees (buyer-optional, when enabled) | Affirm ~6% · PayPal ~3.5% + 49¢ · Katapult lease fee | $0 (card) · ≈ $57 if Affirm | Priced like retail — worn by margin/fees only on financed orders |
| AI assist | ~2–5¢/listing · ~1–3¢/ticket | < $0.10 | Spec-check + any support drafts for this order |
| Variable cost per order | — | ≈ $30 — about 3.2% of the charge | vs. the 8% cash-out fee, or credit that recycles into retail GMV |
On the cash path, the 8% fee ($66 on this order) covers every variable cost twice over. On the credit path we charge no fee at all — and the variable cost is even lower (no Connect payout), while $825 of spending power lands back on EEI retail shelves. Either way the marketplace carries its own weight per order; the fixed bill above is the whole overhead story.
Payroll, budgeted high.
Fully-loaded (salary + benefits + tools), matched to the dedicated net-new roles on the Team & Ops Plan, and rounded up on purpose.
| Phase | Dedicated team | Fully-loaded payroll (high) | Per month |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pilot | 4 net-new hires: Ops Lead, Support, Trust & Moderation, Seller Growth | budget $450K/yr | ≈ $38K |
| Growth | 6 dedicated FTE (T&S and moderation split; support ×2) | budget $700K/yr | ≈ $58K |
| Scale | 8–10 dedicated FTE incl. a dedicated engineer | budget $1.2M/yr | ≈ $100K |
≈ $40K/mo all-in ($38K people + $1.6K infrastructure), plus the one-time build below. Deliberately high — if the pilot's leaner ratios hold, actuals come in under and nobody has to re-open the budget conversation.
Getting to launch.
| Item | Estimate | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Build engineering | 2–3 devs × 10–12 wks — budget $200K high | The template port + four launch integrations — sized on the Team & Ops Plan |
| Legal | $8–20K | Marketplace terms, seller agreement, facilitator-tax review, 1099-K posture |
| Wallet security review | $10–25K | External pen-test of the credit ledger API before real money moves — non-negotiable |
| Mobile app wrap (iOS + Android) | 4–6 wks eng, post-launch | Capacitor wrap of the same mobile-first front end — native camera + push; details on the Architecture brief |
| Sharetribe configuration | $0 | Transaction process, search schema, seeder — already written, sitting in this repo |
| Design & brand | $0 | You're looking at it |
Illustrative planning figures, July 2026 — all deliberately high-side. Confirm Sharetribe's September 2026 API-usage pricing and Stripe Connect rates at contract. Money numbers match the demo's $825 / $943.45 walkthrough.
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