Where to sell an online business: the marketplaces, compared honestly

Start with the question the marketplaces will not ask you

Every marketplace optimises for its own deal flow, which means it is happy to list you even when you are the wrong fit. Before you compare fees, answer three things for yourself: how large is the business in annual profit, how much of its value is in the technology versus the audience, and would the buyer need you after the sale. A five-figure content site with a loyal readership and a fifteen-year-old design is a very different asset from a young SaaS with growing users and no revenue, and the platforms treat them differently.

Acquire.com

Built for SaaS and, to a lesser extent, e-commerce, mostly US-centric, with a buyer base that pays for access. At the time of writing, sellers pay a success fee in the mid single digits plus a monthly listing subscription, and buyers pay an annual membership. It works well for software with recurring revenue and clean metrics. An old German directory or a content site rarely gets attention there, because the buyers came for software.

Flippa

The largest marketplace by volume and the most open door. Anything from a domain to a seven-figure shop gets listed, which is the strength and the problem. Volume means many low-quality listings and many tyre-kickers, so a serious seller has to do the filtering that the platform does not. The success fee steps down with deal size, from around ten percent for small deals. Flippa is the right place if you want maximum exposure and are prepared to answer a lot of questions from people who will never buy.

Empire Flippers

A curated brokerage rather than an open marketplace. Empire Flippers vets every business, rejects most applicants, and prefers assets above a six-figure price. The success fee sits around fifteen percent for smaller deals. If you qualify, the process is professional and buyers are serious. If your business is small, unusual, or not in English, you will most likely not get in, and the time you spent applying is gone.

Microns and Tiny Acquisitions

Both serve the small end: micro-SaaS, side projects, tools with a few hundred users. Fees are modest and the buyer base is indie-minded. They are the honest place for a young project that has traction but little revenue. Expect low prices, fast decisions, and buyers who want to operate the thing themselves rather than fund it.

nexxt-change and DUB in Germany

nexxt-change is the free succession exchange backed by German public institutions. It is aimed at offline businesses looking for a successor, from bakeries to engineering firms, and it lists digital businesses only incidentally. DUB is the commercial German counterpart with a broader remit; listings are free, advisers pay for tooling. Both are worth a look for an older German business with staff and a physical footprint. For a pure web asset, neither has the buyer base that understands search traffic, affiliate revenue or hosting costs.

A direct sale, or a specialist exchange

Many small digital businesses change hands without any platform: a competitor, a supplier, a former customer, or an operator who has been watching the niche. The upside is discretion and no fee. The downside is that you negotiate against someone who knows the market better than you, with no valuation to anchor on. A specialist exchange fills that gap when it does two things the generalists do not: read the metrics from the source instead of from a deck, and put a person between the numbers and the buyer. That is the model we run at Deimann Exchange, with a free valuation before any listing and a fee only when a sale closes.

How to choose

If the business is software with recurring revenue above a low six-figure price, Acquire.com or Empire Flippers will treat you well. If it is small and young, Microns or Tiny Acquisitions match the buyer type. If it is old, German-speaking, and earns from search traffic or leads, the generalist platforms will misprice it, and you are better off with a specialist or a direct sale anchored on an independent valuation. Whatever you pick, get the valuation first. It costs nothing on most serious platforms, and it protects you from the one mistake that cannot be undone, which is selling for the first number someone offers.