Mulasa.com Marketplace Review and First Impressions.
I had never heard of the Mulasa Marketplace until Mulasa Mulasa on YouTube posted a comment on the Best Places To Sell Online in 2014 video.
It is not uncommon for individuals to make comments and post links on YouTube videos hoping to drive traffic to their online store, or eBay page. It is rare however for a legitimate marketplace to post such comments, especially on a YouTube channel that actually reviews marketplaces.
All comments posted on YouTube with a link are automatically marked by YouTube as possible spam and have to be approved for public viewing by the channels administrator. The person who posted the comment and link will see their comment when revisiting that channel, however no one else sees it until the channel administration approves it.
Because Mulasa is a marketplace that posted on my recommendations video (that was actually recorded at the end of 2013 and is now in need of many updates) I decided to approve their comment and the Mulasa.com link on the video and do a written first impression review.
When I review a marketplace or storefront for YouTube, I use the same standards that I used over the 14 years I reviewed products and stores on Epinions.com. I start off by simply looking at the history and reputability of the company. Who are they? Where are they located? Are there any signs that bring up initial concerns or red flags? How long have they been in business? What are their terms of service? Are there any registered complaints online about the product or service?
If a company or product passes the first series of initial investigation (Mulasa.com did not), then I begin preparations to set up a store on that marketplace or storefront for a year. I locate groups, forums or communities of other sellers and ghost them over the year to learn what kind of complaints, concerns, sales, customer support is being provided.
Finally, I evaluate that marketplaces sales in the store I set-up and those of its communities over fourth quarter (the holiday/end of year), and I conduct statistical checks on that websites visitor traffic that occurred for that year. If everything looks good, then I recommend it. If it fails anywhere during the process, I delay my review and do additional research to see if others are experiencing the same.
Mulasa.com failed during my first 15 minutes of the initial review of its website. There are simply to many very basic red-flags that immediately came up suggesting that this marketplace is risky business.
Mulasa.com is not SSL Encrypted
For starters, this "marketplace" is not encrypted and has no SSL attached to it.
SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is the standard security technology for establishing an encrypted link between a web server and a browser. This link ensures that all data passed between the web server and browsers remain private and integral.
The way to tell if a website is SSL encrypted is by the beginning of its web address. An encrypted (i.e. safe) website will begin with Https:// and a non-encrypted website starts with Http://
What this means is, Mulasa.com is not safe or secure to process any information of a confidential type, including personal and financial information, because that information is not being handled in a secure manner and is not encrypted between your web browser and the host server Mulasa.com is located on.
Mulasa.com has a short history
According to the domain registrar where Mulasa.com name is leased from and the Internet Archive, Mulasa.com history as a marketplace is only a year old at the time of this initial review - launched in December 2014.
The Internet Archive shows only 7 entries for this domain website, the first in 2004, 2011, 2013, 2014 and 2015. Before 2014, the website is registered and located as a Marketplace in China called ECShop.
Under normal circumstances, a marketplace being located in China does not indicate it is non-safe (Alibaba is safe for instance). After-all, web domain names get leased and retired every year. Mulasa.com with it's current registrar that is located in Florida only shows when it was first registered with the registrar. Obviously, Mulasa was transferred to the new registrar in the United States, either by the person or entity ECShop in China, or it may have been purchased for three years by someone in the USA. That's not uncommon at all.
Mulasa.com used to be ECShop in China
Non-Transparency
Mulasa.com is does not conduct business in a transparent manner. While Mulasa's "About" section states that it is a business located in Florida, there is no way to verify this information.
The only real suggestion that Mulasa.com might be located in Florida is that the Privacy Proxy service and registrar are located in Florida. This would be a perfect way for a company in China trying to hide its true identity to mask where it is really located.
Using a Privacy Proxy is an illegitimate technique for a real business. Its a way to hide the name, personal or business address, real phone number, e-mail address, who manages the technical issues for that domain and website, etc. Legitimate marketplaces do not use a proxy service to hide their information. At the very least, a marketplace should at the very minimum have a DBA (Doing Business As) business license and present a PO Box.
What a Privacy Proxy Service does, is provide an unrelated name, address, phone number and e-mail address to individuals who want to hide their true identity. In this case, Perfect Privacy is providing the mask to hide Mulasa.com's true identity. Perfect Privacy is located in Florida and only suggests that Perfect Privacy is actually located in Florida. Whoever created the Mulasa.com website could be anywhere in the world. Again, because Mulasa was formerly ECShop in China, and the Mulasa website owner information is hidden by a Proxy Privacy company, it should be assumed, that its owners are still in China and the domain was transferred in September 2014 to the web address company in Florida to appear as a US based company. Any company website using a privacy proxy should be considered potentially fraudulent unless other sources are available to prove the company is legitimate.
Mulasa.com Support and Contact Information.
The next red-flag is Mulasa.com's support and contact information. For support, only a simple and basic contact form is provided and nothing else. No phone number, no e-mail address. While it is possible that Mulasa uses a third-party API based customer support internal ticket service, there is no indication of that being the case.
If you need to contact anyone at Mulasa, good luck! No where on this marketplace is there any information about Mulasa being a company or a legitimate business. No owner name, no business address, no phone numbers, no e-mail, no information about where the company is actually located (other than the privacy proxy service) or any other kind of information a legitimate marketplace provides. There is also no information about Mulasa being run by a single person (Sole Proprietor), or a group of people (Limited Liability Company), or an entity (Corporation).
No information about the country, province, state or county the company is located in.
No business license number.
Also, keep in mind, because Mulasa does not use SSL on its website, none of the information you provide to it via it's contact form or website is encrypted.
Terms of Service / Legal Terms
A red-flag that the majority of sellers who might visit this marketplace in hopes of receiving "free listings with no commissions", is what its terms of service say and do not say.
First, mentioning that any legal issues will be handled via Arbitration instead of a court lawsuit would fool most online sellers into believing that its legal terms are legitimate. But to the trained eye, there is something very specific missing, that I have mentioned several times in this marketplace review. What is missing? There is no indication of the jurisdiction of the arbitration or that the terms of service will be enforced, or in other words, the website has no information about where this company is actually located.
A legitimate terms of service will indicate the state, province and country where all arbitration and legal matters must be resolved. Because each state and/or country has different laws that protect a customer and a business, that has to be indicated on a legitimate marketplace website for transparency purposes. Otherwise, there is no real way you could enter into a legally binding agreement, because you would have no way to know what laws affect you.
(Note, after replying to the YouTube post by Mulasa Mulasa, and while writing this blog review. Upon returning to the Mulasa website to conduct a photo capture two hours later; the TOS now includes Florida as the state that Arbitration must occur in, however, because no company information is available, and the previously mentioned red-flags exist; as a reviewer I still do not believe it.)
The legal terms and TOS appear to be information from other marketplace websites, modified for Mulasa and not written by an attorney or legal counsel. It lacks legitimate legal verbiage, uses limited verbosity, doesn't include specific legal content or rights that a legitimate marketplace would use in order to protect itself, or validate the rights of the seller. It also lacks legal content for those making purchases through the website, other then general terms.
Up until recently, this website didn't even have a contact form or terms of service information on the website. The photo below shows this marketplace earlier this year.
Payment Gateways
Mulasa offers two payment gateways - PayPal and 2CO. While I am familiar with PayPal and Stripe, I have never heard of 2CO before, nor come across any marketplaces using it. On YouTube Mulasa suggested that only PayPal existed, but while looking around its marketplace, I came across 2CO.
Its listing page appears to be built with the option for Mulasa to add a fee for payment in the future, if it should ever desire to do so. Currently this built-in plug-in option is set to offer Free Listings with up to 6 photos per listing.
Its listing page appears to be built with the option for Mulasa to add a fee for payment in the future, if it should ever desire to do so. Currently this built-in plug-in option is set to offer Free Listings with up to 6 photos per listing.
At this point, I can not recommend any this marketplace to sellers. Shoppers apparently are limited to around three stores. Perhaps in the future, when the owner(s) of Mulasa, take steps to provide a SSL secure website, verifiable business information, transparency of ownership, legally contracted terms of service, contact information on its website, more support options etc. I might be able to verify its legitimacy and conduct a complete review of it as a marketplace. Until that time, there are simply to many red-flags.
History of Sales on Mulasa.com
Checking through the products for sale, it appears there are perhaps only 1 or 2 sellers registered on this marketplace. To be fair, I did several searches for generic search terms for products that shoppers look for on all marketplaces, Shoes, Shirt, Candy, Video, Phone, Cosmetics. The most search results I was able to retrieve was 3 listings, none of them were related to the search term used.
I was unable to locate Mulasa at any of the sources that I use to research marketplaces, customer experiences, sales history, website traffic or even backlinks for this marketplace. No BBB record, no Alexa rating, No Quantcast Traffic, Semrush shows no activity on this marketplace as shown in the graphic below.
The Bottom Line on Mulasa.com
Mulasa Mulasa on YouTube (assuming this is the owner of the Mulasa marketplace website) reached out to my channel on YouTube, posting a link to its marketplace on one of my marketplace review videos,. They suggested that Mulasa is the only free marketplace online, this fortunately not accurate.
While doing additional research on the Mulasa website for this written review for the How To Sell Online Blog, Mulasa Mulasa left me a follow-up message on YouTube from my original reply to his first comment in which I listed many of the same points included in this marketplace review.
While I have no vested interest in any company, now or during my 14 years doing reviews for Epinions.com. Mulasa implied they believe I work for eBay.com. The comment is signed Juan Medina in the YouTube post (photo above), though again, there is no way to verify the marketplace is being operated by anyone named Juan Medina living in Florida.
As with the Randy Dreammaker YouTube Marketplace Reviews, I can only provide the information that is actually publicly available to anyone, other than conducting internal research by selling on a marketplace and searching for community feedback. I can point out red-flags that appear in legal contracts, missing information, and conduct background history checks in multiple ways, but other than presenting my findings, it is up to you as the reader of this review to determine if they matter to you or not.
In the case of Mulasa, there are plenty of red-flags, the first being the lack of any kind of encryption, Anyone can rent a hosted website and use a script to run an auction store, marketplace or custom store on their host website, making it even more important for reviews like this to occur.
In all sincerity, I hope Mulasa is capable of further developing its marketplace, providing increased security, and taking steps towards creating a marketplace worth growing. My advice to Mulasa's owner is to work on the areas of your marketplace mentioned above, and if you are serious about developing your marketplace and lack the skills, background or finances, to consider teaming up with those who might be able to assist you in bringing your vision into reality.
I originally wrote this video review back in 2015 after the owner of Mulasa spam posted their store link on a few videos I had made about selling online. Unfortunately, in 2023, Mulasa no longer exists. It closed a few years ago. I figured it would. First thing that hurts this marketplace is similar to what helps hurt one of my favorite marketplaces, it's name. What in the heck is a Mulasa. Sounds like Molasses to me, or something middle eastern. If either of those were the targeted audience then it would have been fine, but it was targeting it self against eBay, Storenvy, Bonanza, eBlueJay at the time here in the US. Horrible name for a western marketplace.
In 2023 I recommend the following marketplaces in this order, depending on what you are looking for.
1. eBay (Easy to use, long history, international)
2. Mercari (Easy to use, more to offer than eBay, USA or Japan only, Good reputation)
3. EblueJay (Lowest fees, pay a one time joining fee and that's it, nice store lay out, unlimited listings, semi-customizable, Stripe Payments or PayPal, Low traffic)
4. Pick one of the many others, there are lots of marketplaces to sell on in 2023, WhatNot, Facebook, Poshmark, Instagram, Twitter, Storevny, Depop, Bonanza, etsy, Offerup, and others. Depending on what you sell one of these may be a better option, but overall they're all runner-ups.