Real-World Project: Marketplace Built Entirely on Serverless Frontend
We built ArtisanHub – a thriving digital marketplace connecting craftsmen with global buyers – using 100% serverless frontend architecture. This case study reveals how we achieved 99.99% uptime, handled 25,000+ daily users, and maintained development costs under $300/month without traditional servers.
Why Serverless for Marketplaces?
Marketplaces face unique challenges that serverless architecture solves perfectly:
For Example: Flash Sale Event
When a popular potter launched a limited collection, traffic spiked to 15,000 concurrent users. Our serverless architecture automatically scaled to handle the load without performance degradation, while costs remained predictable at $47 for the event.
Technology Stack
The complete serverless stack powering ArtisanHub:
Architecture Overview
Core Workflows
- Product Discovery: Static pages with Incremental Static Regeneration (ISR)
- Personalized Recommendations: Edge functions with real-time user profiling
- Checkout Process: Serverless functions handling payment processing
- Seller Dashboard: Dynamic content with on-demand revalidation
Key Implementation Challenges & Solutions
Challenge: Real-Time Inventory Management
Preventing overselling when multiple users purchase simultaneously
Solution:
Implemented inventory locks using Supabase’s real-time capabilities with WebSocket connections. Serverless functions handle lock acquisition and release within milliseconds.
Challenge: Seller Uploads Processing
Handling large image/video uploads from sellers globally
Solution:
Direct-to-CDN uploads with Cloudinary integration. Serverless functions trigger background processing (thumbnail generation, metadata extraction) via AWS Lambda.
Challenge: Search Across Millions of Products
Delivering fast search results without dedicated search servers
Solution:
Implemented edge-optimized search using Typesense hosted on serverless infrastructure with search indexes updated via change data capture.
Performance Benchmarks
Serverless architecture delivered exceptional results:
| Metric | Serverless | Traditional |
|---|---|---|
| Page Load Time | 0.8s avg | 2.3s avg |
| Checkout Completion | 3.2s avg | 5.7s avg |
| Monthly Hosting Cost | $287 | $3,200+ |
| Deployment Frequency | 42/week | 3/week |
Cost Breakdown
Monthly expenses for 25,000 daily users:
- Vercel Pro: $99
- Supabase: $85
- Cloudflare Workers: $32
- AWS Lambda: $41
- Stripe Payment Processing: $30 (fixed)
- Total: $287/month
For Example: Black Friday Traffic Spike
During Black Friday, traffic increased to 82,000 daily users. While traditional infrastructure would require emergency scaling (costing $2,500+), our serverless costs only increased to $421 for the month, with zero downtime.
Development Workflow
Our serverless-native development process:
- Feature branches with isolated preview deployments
- Automated testing via GitHub Actions
- Progressive rollouts using feature flags
- Real-time monitoring with distributed tracing
- Daily production deployments with zero downtime
Lessons Learned
Key insights from building a production serverless marketplace:
Do:
- Implement aggressive caching strategies
- Design for stateless operations
- Use edge computing for personalization
- Establish granular monitoring
Avoid:
- Long-running operations in edge functions
- Over-fetching from databases
- Complex state management on client
- Vendor lock-in without abstraction layers
For more on optimization, see our Serverless Performance Guide.
Getting Started Template
We open-sourced our marketplace starter kit:
# Clone the repository git clone https://github.com/serverless-servants/marketplace-starter # Install dependencies npm install # Set environment variables cp .env.example .env.local # Deploy to Vercel vercel deploy
