Business to Business is all about Quality, Commitment & Trust. I have researched & have been associated with some top names in the b2b industry for past few years. B2B usually requires extensive level of commitment which is why it is necessary to either be a sole warrior in building your own brand recognition or make things quickly happen in the industry like making an impact through a top rated B2B portal. Portals that help globally have more authority than the ones operating on a domestic level only
My personal research & experience concluded these to be the top 5 b2b portals you should go for in USA:
1. Alibaba
Chinese owned and launched in 1999, Alibaba.com is the world’s largest global e-commerce platform for small and medium sized businesses around the world.
The platform, which serves more than 18 million buyers and sellers from more than 240 countries and regions, showcases products ranging from raw materials to finished goods in more than 40 industry categories.
Like all these marketplaces, Alibaba doesn’t sell products and services itself, instead, it runs a platform that connects B2B buyers and sellers. Alibaba is free to join and makes most of its sales from commissions and advertising.
It is the go-to English-language platform for cross-border trade of goods and helps small/medium businesses worldwide expand to overseas markets.
The platform, which serves more than 18 million buyers and sellers from more than 240 countries and regions, showcases products ranging from raw materials to finished goods in more than 40 industry categories.
If you are a seller, you can display up to 50 products/services for free or if you get the Gold membership you get a really nice mini-site to display unlimited products or services. If you are a buyer, post what you need in a ‘Request for Quote’ and let sellers come to you.
Alibaba Group, the parent company is expected to go public later this year in the world’s biggest listing since Facebook inc’s debut in 2012. A recent Reuters poll put Alibaba’s market value at around $140 billion and the value of the IPO at $15 billion.
Simply put, this business is huge!
2. eWorldTrade
Fairly new to the B2B industry, eWorldTrade has earned a good enough reputation quickly. A subsidiary of Reckon Media LLC, a firm that provides digital media and technological services, based in the US. eWorldTrade itself has its operational unit around the world.
It is the only B2B marketplace currently offering up to 10 leads free of costwhen you sign up to it. This has been a huge selling point for businesses, and this can be seen through its fast growth in only a few years. Most of its manufacturers are from China however, it also has businesses from the USA, India, Malaysia, and Pakistan partnered with it.
3. ThomasNet
Previously called ‘The Thomas Register of American Manufacturers’ ThomasNet.com is a leading online platform for B2B seller discovery and product sourcing, and is visited by more than 1.8 million buyers every month. For over a century, Thomas have connected manufacturing and industrial buyers and sellers.
Today buyers worldwide including engineers, purchasing agents, facilities managers and more, come online and use ThomasNet for product sourcing and supplier discovery, mainly in the USA.
This free online platform combines semantic product search technology with information rich company profiles enabling educated supplier selection. It is a large and increasingly global marketplace that promotes 650,000 distributors, manufacturers and service companies within 67,000 industrial categories.
Thomas is more than a directory, allowing you to individually ask companies for quotes. Unlike alibaba it doesn’t allow you to publish a general “Request for Quote” from everyone, but it is still very useful. The domain authority of this site speaks for itself.
4. IndiaMART
IndiaMart is India’s largest B2B marketplace with a 60 percent market share according to IAMAI.
IndiaMART has 1.5 million sellers and attracts 1.6 million daily visitors, which compared to ThomasNet’s 1.6 million monthly visitors, is huge. Never underestimate how big the Indian market is.
Like Alibaba, IndiaMART provides Basic and Premium membership services in which sellers can create their own homepage. showcase products online, source and contact global buyers, reply to buying leads and post offers to sell.
The model and functionality is almost identical to that of alibaba and like Alibaba, IndiaMART allows sellers outside of India to promote themselves.
5. EC21
Established in 1997 in Korea, EC21 is one of the world’s top 10 largest online B2B marketplaces. Like Alibaba it is truly global and has one million buyers and over 600,000 enquiries are exchanged every month. It started as an online trade board of the Korea International Trade Association (KITA) and in 2000, EC21 Inc. was spun off.
EC21 currently operates 3 different B2B marketplaces, EC21 Chinese, EC21 Korean, and EC21 Global which has 8 different linguistic user interfaces.
EC21 is headquartered in Seoul and has 8 regional sales offices throughout mainland China along with offices in Vietnam, Turkey, India, Italy, Russia and Pakistan
Like Alibaba, EC21 provides Basic and Premium membership services in which sellers can easily create their own homepage, showcase products, reply to request for quotes and locate and contact buyers.
For a detailed list of top b2b websites you can have a go through this article