30 Of The Best Marketplaces To List Your Business For Sale

• DaltonsBusiness.com
• RightBiz.co.uk
  
• BusinessesForSale.com
  
• Business-Sale.com
  
• DealOpportunities.co.uk
• BusinessForSale.com
  
• BusinessBroker.net
• BizBuySell.com
• Bizquest.com
• Bizmart.com
• Enterprise Europe Network
• Merger Network
  
• MyBizdaq.com
• Business-Opportunities.biz
• RightMove.co.uk
• LoopNet.com
• Flippa.com
• DPOUSA
• Other players
• Pretenders
  
• M&A databases for larger businesses (restricted to subscribers - free subscription here)
  
• Numerous other options (restricted to subscribers - free subscription here)
  

Daltons is the oldest and most established portal in the UK and has been around in print form since long before they were on the web.

They charge £159 pm or £339 for six months (as at time of writing).

Daltons is popular with sellers of shops; retail establishments and stores; restaurants; take aways; cafes; pubs; manufacturers and light industrial businesses; fashion, beauty, hair dressing salons; newsagents; post offices; service businesses; construction, manufacturing & automotive businesses; nurseries, child care and play centres ... and numerous others.

This is our recommended option for UK based sellers of small businesses. They also host a small directory of business transfer agents and business brokers on this site.

RightBiz is a well established listing portal and is our second choice. The charges are lower than for the previous company, and it does seem to generate fewer responses to ads, but given the cost of £49 pm or a flat £139 till sold, we think it's worth taking a chance especially if you've already invested in putting together sharp, professional copy for your teaser ad.

From our experience, the average small business that is reasonably priced can expect to see 1-3 enquiries per month during the first six months.

BusinessesForSale.com has more of an international feel as it operates in a several countries outside of the UK (though not as big in the US as some of the other sites mentioned below). This claims to be the world's largest site for listing businesses and has been around since the mid-nineties.

Fees at the time of writing this article were approx £170 pm with a discount for longer term bookings (£299 for six months).

From our experience, the average small business listing that is reasonably priced can expect to see 2-6 enquiries per month from a listing in BusinessesForSale.

I know, 2-6 is not exciting! But it's not like you're selling a brand new iPhone in eBay for £1! If you want more prospective buyers you'll need to hire a business broker (and not just any broker but one who proactively hunts down prospective businesses, not one that advertises and sits back. These brokers will charge a large upfront fee of tens of thousands of pounds! You can find out more about what they do differently here). BusinessesForSale host a small directory of business transfer agents and business brokers on this site.

Business Sale Report is one of the UK's oldest and best known listing firms having started as a fax-back service in 1995 and later becoming a print publication.  

It typically lists UK businesses for sale with annual revenue of £300k and above with the majority falling into the £1m - £5m range. It is free to submit a business for sale listing here.

Updates of new businesses added each month by private vendors and brokers are also posted out in the mail to the active buyer members and included in a daily email alert service.

As with some of the previous firms such as BusinessesForSale, they have a large database of registered buyers to whom they send your ad ... though figures aren't available for the efficacy of their list (how many businesses are actually sold to buyers on their mailing list).

Their sister site, BizSale.co.uk, is for smaller businesses with revenues of less than £500K and selling prices of less than £250K. There is a membership fee of £5 per month. Your listing stays on their site till the business sells.

Update (2020): After this domain was bought by BusinessesForSale.com they initially set up a redirect to send traffic to their BusinessesForSale.com domain. But then they changed their mind and built a standalone marketplace on this domain with costs of $169 (dollars) to list for a month and $299 to list for a year ie. reverting to what it was before (but with $299 now covering you for only a year).

Previous information we had on this page for this domain:

BusinessForSale is not to be confused with BusinessesForSale.com which is owned by a completely different company. BusinessForSale is one of the smaller listing sites but does have thousands of listings of UK businesses (and businesses from various other countries). The problem is that some of these listings are ancient. In 2018 we discovered that this site had listings dating back to 2015 despite the fact that some of those businesses had long since been sold, closed down or had gone bust! For example, they had over 50 listings by a Manchester based business broker called Urban Locks despite the fact that the Urban Locks company has been dormant for several years!

Charges are based on the country the business is in and the period for which you're buying a listing. Prices are in US Dollars with costs of $169 for a 30 day listing and $299 for a unlimited time listing (i.e. till the business is sold). Perhaps this "unlimited time listing" accounts for the huge clutter of out-of-date listings on their site.

My insider information suggests that this domain name was originally offered to Dynamis, the owners of BusinessesForSale.com, but when they refused the (rumoured) £250,000 price this domain was used for the creation of a new business listing service to compete with the original BusinessesForSale website.

BusinessBroker.net is another US business listing site. They charge $100 for a two month listing, but don't seem to have a large UK audience. At the time of writing they had just five listings in all of Europe (with two in the UK).

Bear in mind that if your business is an online business that's not geographical restricted - for example, a popular website that makes all its money from advertising -  the business may appeal to US buyers. That said, there are better places to list online businesses. Traditional MLS like this one may not represent the best use of time and effort. Better locations would include the likes of Flippa below, and the sites we've got listed in the subscriber-only section at the bottom of this page.

BizBuySell is one of the largest listing sites in the world, but with a US focus. Their site has no search facility for non-US businesses. Their charges are "from" $50 per month. (See, also, Bizquest and Loopnet below.)

If you're selling a technology business / online-only business, see our notes in the previous entry.

BizQuest used to charge between $60 and $100 per month but as of Oct 2017 it has "merged" with the above BizBuySell under their BrokerWorks banner.

Prior to the merger, business brokers in the US generally preferred to use BizBuySell over Bizquest but now, at an increased fee, a listing in one of these sites gets published on both sites.

2020: Their fees for a monthly listing are $59.95 for a basic listing and $84.95 for a "Showcase Ad".

Bizmart is another US site, but has a link on their homepage leading to listings for UK businesses.

And they do have a lot of UK businesses on their site!

However, this is probably as a result of a syndication deal i.e. a deal they have with UK based firms to reproduce copies of listings advertised in the UK. From our analysis, they don't get a great deal of UK traffic.

Enterprise Europe Network  is funded by the European Union and claims to be the "world's largest support network for small and medium sized businesses (SMEs)". It spans 3,000 experts across 600 member organisations in more than 60 countries.

It aims to put business in contact with other business to encourage cross border activity, joint ventures, investment etc. It also claims to have Europe's largest database of business opportunities. This database is accessed via their search page.

You cannot list your business opportunity directly in their database, you need to contact one of their "Network Partners".

MergerNetwork (now called DealStream) is a US site that styles itself as a "social network for business professionals" but it hosts listings of businesses for sale organised by US state and, in fact, listing businesses for sale is what the site was originally about. There is a section for UK businesses as well, but it's fair to say that this site's main audience isn't prospective buyers of UK businesses.

MyBizdaq was originally Bizdaq.co.uk. They rebranded at some point, perhaps because of confusion with a completely different business at Bizdaq.com. MyBizdaq was founded in 2014

MyBizdaq is more than a listing site - it claims to be a new way to sell businesses by dispensing with the brokers, accountants and solicitors involved in a typical sale. Business owners are guided by the platform on everything. The site values their business for them and assists with templates to create a listing.

Vendors accept offers on the MyBizdaq platform itself, sign contracts there and complete the transaction at MyBizdaq. MyBizdaq charges £95 pm* (or £390 for six months) and claim that their listings are syndicated to other listing sites such as DaltonsBusiness, RightBiz, RightMove and BizBuySell.

They experimented with various levels of fees. They were charging fees at inception, then dropped to free listings for a while to try and attract a few more customers, then moved back up to paid and changed prices several times.

Update, Dec 2019: Fees were modified in 2019 to £495 as a one off fee to keep your listing on their site till your business sells. The fees were further modified later in 2019 to offer two options. Option 1: £495 + VAT till sold and £1,000 + VAT at the point of sale and Option 2: £695 + VAT till sold (with no additional fee payable on completion). The company has had a change of owners and change of directors this month.

Update April 2020: The fees have now been changed to a one-off, no time limit cost of £249 + VAT or a monthly fee of £39 + VAT. Both have a 0% commission on successful sale.

However, we're not sure about the whole idea of commoditising the sale of businesses. It may to the advantage of the smaller business, but larger businesses would benefit from having professional expertise and input into the whole sale process. The difference in price a good adviser can achieve is typically several multiples of the fees they charge.

MyBizdaq may be a good way for a micro business (sub £100K turnover) to test the market for a month or two. MyBizdaq has several common features to OwnerSellers.com (a free service). Ownersellers claim to push your listing across to Zoopla, Primelocation, BizBuySell, RightBiz and StartinBusiness.

From the 2017-18 accounts submitted to Companies House, it looks like this business is yet to become profitable. Update: In the 2018-19 accounts they seem to have made an even bigger loss.

The whole concept here is new and untried so we watch with interest to see if the owners can make the project work.

Business-Opportunities.biz is a US based site and tiny compared to the likes of some of the sites above. It may even be a one-man band. They don't quote prices and invite you to fill in a form if you want to "advertise".

RightMove, while best known for listing residential properties, also lists commercial properties.  However, you cannot list directly with RightMove and you need to go through an agent.

If you wish to list a commercial property at RightMove, for free, it may be worth investigating MyBizdaq mentioned earlier. Listing at MyBizdaq is at no cost and MyBizdaq claim that all their listings are syndicated to RightMove. So listing at MyBizdaq may have the effect of getting you a free listing at RightMove.

RightMove is best suited to Offices, Retail Premises, Leisure Premises, Hospitality (Hotels, B&Bs), Industrial Units, Warehouses, Land for Development etc., rather than traditional shops or services.

Loopnet is another US centric listing site for commercial property and makes big claims about the number of visitors it gets and the number of commercial properties listed on the site. It is free to list a business here.

Do a location based search on this site for businesses in London, and you'll get the amusing choice of the most famous Londons in the world:

a) London, Kentucky
b) London, Ohio or
c) London, Texas!

Feb 2020 update: Loopnet has a tie in with BrokerWorks (BizBuySell & Bizquest) to host Brokerworks' listings on their site.

Flippa.com is a large listing site for domains and websites i.e. online businesses only. It is the most expensive of all the options on this page but is quite popular among the sellers of smaller internet businesses (with selling prices from a few hundred to a few thousand). The occasional larger business worth a few hundred thousand dollars may sell here, but these are rare.

Flippa charge $29 as a listing fee with numerous upsells to get you to spend more and get your ad more visibility. It could cost you a three figure sum before you're done creating your listing. But the crunch comes if you find a buyer. Flippa take anywhere from 12% to 15% of your selling price as their commission (and, no, you can't escape that fee!)

The format is different, too. You list your business publicly and buyers bid against each other in an eBay type system. But they can also leave public comments on your listing and some of these comments can be very negative.

The Flippa platform has long been abused by sellers of template and other low-end websites with shill bidding not uncommon. While Flippa do take some action against shill bidders, the fact remains that Flippa are paid by sellers so are heavily seller biased.

Our sister site, a forum, has hundreds of threads about Flippa that are worth investigating.

DPOUSA.com is a new platform that promises "access to capital for all". You can seek either part or full funding (partial share of the business or complete sale), or even just attempt to find joint venture partners.

The cost to list on this platform is a flat $195 and they claim to have 30,000 investors (though figures like these are impossible to verify).

Existing listings on the platform have asking prices from about $200K to a few million dollars.

There are specialist UK sites for specific industries. CDG Leisure, for example, focuses on selling just restaurants and bars. DayNurseries lists, well, day nurseries. BuyACareHome is for residential care homes and 574 is for commercial properties.

There are numerous other players that are either not big enough, not UK based or otherwise unsuitable for the listing of micro, mini and lower mid market UK businesses.

These include GlobalBX, the Canadian EmeraldBB, the Australian BusinessforSale, BusinessNation (US),  Acquireo (US), BizTrader,(US) MergerPlace (US), BizBen (California only), BBF (Florida only), BizWorldUSA (US), BizSale (listing US businesses being sold by owner i.e. without a broker), VentureConnect (Canada), BSale (Australia) and others.

In the UK, there are some up and coming smaller portals such as Business Trade Centre and We Sell Any Company.

Sites for the sale of app based businesses - like SellMyApplication, AppBusinessBrokers and Ziipa - are also now beginning to make an appearance. Some sectors have their own specialised listing sites like PracticesForSale that lists just solicitor and accountancy practices.

And there are specialist global listing sites for some industries - for hotels, B&B and campsites, for example, there's BuyMyDreamHotel which includes listings from all over the world, including the UK.

For research purposes it may also be worth visiting BankerBay (for mid market transactions ie. more than the odd £5 million or £10 million) and smergers.

Some of the sites that seem to be general listing sites - like TurnerButler and NationwideBusinesses - are actually owned by brokers for the listing of their own clients' businesses and are therefore not included in this list. Sites like businessroute.co.uk haven't been included either, despite their thousands of listings, because those listings seem to be all copies of listings at businessesforsale.com.

There are numerous pretender (or fake!) marketplaces one needs to be cautious about. One such site is exitholding.com, first noticed on Aug 10th, 2019, which claims this: "We Sell More Large Online Businesses than Anyone in the World".

That's not quite true. Not remotely true. Their domain name was registered for less than a month when they were making that claim!

They do have several online businesses listed for sale on their site to give the impression they are well established, but the listings I checked were simply copied from website broker sites like QuietLight Brokerage and from other sites such as BizBroker24. Further, the photos and names posted on their "Team" page seem fake and don't correspond with similar names in LinkedIn.

There are numerous other pretender marketplaces that give the appearance of being old, well established marketplaces but that are best avoided.

For the larger businesses, with multi-million pound turnovers, there are Merger and Acquisition databases that work far better than the above listing sites. These are the databases that multi-nationals, financial institutions, private equity firms, HNW individuals, family offices and stock market listed companies turn to when they need to make an acquisition. Further information about M&A databases below.