Five marketplaces. One super-app.
Zera unifies Jobs, Goods, Services, Events, and Community inside a single mobile platform. One profile. One wallet. One reputation score. Engineered end to end by the Code Encoders team for a nationwide US launch.
Every layer, one team. Architecture, Figma design, engineering, and production deployment, all handled in-house by Code Encoders, with no external vendors at any stage.
Role
Architecture to production, in-house
Platform
Flutter, iOS & Android
Backend
NestJS
Data layer
MongoDB, Redis
Infrastructure
Firebase, AWS, Vercel
Payments
Stripe Connect
Subscriptions
RevenueCat
Messaging
Twilio
Market
United States
Overview
Not a feature. A full product built from zero.
Most marketplace apps pick a lane: goods, or jobs, or services. Zera set out to do the opposite: give US users one app for everything they buy, sell, hire, attend, and belong to, without asking them to juggle four separate logins and four separate reputations.
Code Encoders owned Zera end to end: architecture, Figma product design, engineering, build, and production deployment, all done in-house with no external vendors or agencies at any stage. Mobile engineering was led by Shahzaib, backend and platform engineering by Toseef, with the wider Code Encoders team supporting infrastructure and delivery.
The Platform
Five verticals. One identity.
Every vertical runs on the same profile, the same wallet, and the same reputation score, so trust a user earns selling furniture carries over when they book a handyman or sell a concert ticket.
Jobs
Full-time, part-time, and gig listings with applicant tracking.
Goods
Buy and sell listings with rich media and category search.
Services
Local service providers, bookings, and direct hiring.
Events
Listings with built-in QR ticketing, no third-party app needed.
Community
Neighborhood-level discussion and local connection.
The Landscape
The US market has no single-app answer.
Craigslist covers goods but feels frozen in place. Facebook Marketplace has scale but shallow job listings. Fiverr owns services and stops there. TaskRabbit handles tasks but skips events and community entirely.
| Craigslist | FB Marketplace | Fiverr | TaskRabbit | Zera | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Jobs | |||||
| Goods | |||||
| Services | |||||
| Events | |||||
| Community | |||||
| Unified identity |
The Build
One connected system, not five bolted-together apps.
Every vertical shares the same design system, the same API layer, and the same data model. That's what makes one profile and one wallet possible across all five.
Mobile
One app, five verticals
A single Flutter codebase powers iOS and Android across 200+ screens, sharing one design system end to end.
Backend
One API layer
NestJS services handle listings, bookings, ticketing, and messaging behind a single, versioned API.
Data & Caching
Built for speed
MongoDB holds the core data model. Redis handles caching and session speed wherever milliseconds matter.
Infrastructure
Cloud-native from day one
Firebase covers auth and real-time features. AWS handles storage and media. Vercel and verified DNS run the web presence.
Payments & Growth
Money and messaging, handled
Stripe Connect powers the wallet and every transaction. RevenueCat manages subscriptions. Twilio handles SMS and verification.
Engineering Deep Dive
Search that works from day one, not after a year of listings.
The Problem
Early search matched full listing titles with a contains-anywhere pattern. It missed obvious results, slowed down as the catalog grew, and had nothing useful to show for a brand-new app with a thin category.
The Fix
Code Encoders rebuilt the pipeline on MongoDB Atlas Search with an edge n-gram index: listings are tokenized into unigrams and bigrams, stopwords filtered, and matches anchored to the start of each term. Redis caches results across three tiers, from an hour for common short prefixes down to sixty seconds as a fallback, with a scheduled job refreshing the hottest prefixes every 30 minutes. On mobile, a 250ms debounce with request-order protection stops the UI from flashing stale results mid-type. A seed dictionary fills thin categories so a new user's first search never hits an empty screen.
Signature Feature
The Heat Map.
Every seller sees live demand across their category and location, not just their own listings. It's the one feature no direct competitor ships at launch, and it turns Zera from a listings app into a decision-making tool.
Trust & Monetization
Built to be trusted with money.
A marketplace only works if people trust it with their transactions. Every layer below was built into the platform, not added after launch.
One wallet
Stripe Connect powers every payment across all five verticals from a single balance.
One reputation
A single score follows a user whether they're selling furniture, offering lawn care, or hosting an event.
Buyer & seller protection
Dispute, refund, and return flows are built into the transaction layer itself.
QR ticketing
Event organizers issue and scan tickets natively, with no third-party app required.
Referral system
A built-in referral loop drives organic growth from the first day of launch.
Platform fee
A transaction fee on every completed sale funds the platform alongside Feature Ads.
Feature Ad Pricing
3 Days
$10
7 Days
$20
14 Days
$50
30 Days
$100
Where It Stands
Live infrastructure. Launch-ready product.
Domain zeramobileapp.com secured and verified
Marketing site deployed and live on Vercel
Google Play listing configured under Lifestyle
Search infrastructure hardened for real-listing scale
Positioned for a 2026 launch across iOS and Android
FAQ's
Frequently Asked Questions
Zera is a five-vertical marketplace super-app (Jobs, Goods, Services, Events, and Community) that unifies them under one profile, one wallet, and one reputation score, instead of forcing users to juggle a separate app and identity for each category.
Yes. Code Encoders owned Zera end to end: architecture, Figma product design, engineering, build, and production deployment, all done in-house with no external vendors or agencies involved at any stage.
A Flutter mobile app for iOS and Android, a NestJS backend, MongoDB and Redis for data and caching, Firebase and AWS for infrastructure, Vercel for the web presence, Stripe Connect for payments, RevenueCat for subscriptions, and Twilio for messaging.
A live demand heat map that shows every seller real-time demand across their category and location, not just their own listings, turning the app from a listings tool into a decision-making tool.
Search runs on MongoDB Atlas Search with an edge n-gram index and a three-tier Redis caching layer, with a 250ms debounce on mobile and a seed dictionary so a new category never returns an empty search result.
Live infrastructure and a launch-ready product: the domain and marketing site are live, the Google Play listing is configured, search is hardened for real-listing scale, and the app is positioned for a 2026 launch across iOS and Android.
Ready to Transform Your Business?
Let's discuss your project and explore how we can help you achieve your goals. Get started with a free consultation today.