Why Marketplace automation has to run on your own computer
August 23, 2026
When people first look at MRKT Manager, a reasonable question comes up early. Why is this a desktop app in 2026? Everything else a dealership buys is a website you log into. Why does this one want a computer switched on all day?
It is a fair question, and the answer is not that we did not get around to it. It is a deliberate trade, and it is the most important design decision in the product.
The short version
Facebook automation only ever runs on your machine. The scheduling, the queue, the inventory, your settings and your billing all live in the cloud, and you can reach those from a phone in a customer's driveway. But the part that actually talks to Marketplace happens on your own computer, under your own login, on your own connection.
The cloud organises the work. The desktop does it.
Why it is built that way
Because Facebook can tell the difference, and it cares.
Think about what a cloud-based Marketplace tool looks like from Meta's side. A handful of server addresses in a data centre, driving activity on hundreds of unrelated Facebook accounts belonging to dealers in dozens of cities. Nothing about that resembles people using Facebook. It resembles exactly what it is, and it is not hard to spot.
The consequence is not theoretical. It is why tools in this category have a habit of working beautifully for a few months and then taking a whole group of customers down at once. The tool did not break. The shared footprint got recognised, and everybody standing behind it was caught in the same sweep.
Posting from the computer you already have does not clever its way around that problem. It avoids creating it. Your account, your machine, your city, your connection. The activity looks like a person at a dealership listing cars, because that is what it is.
What you give up
There is a real cost, and it is worth being straight about it.
The computer has to stay on. If it is asleep or shut down, nothing posts. That is the main reason to install it on a desk machine rather than a laptop that leaves at night.
Setup is not zero. You download and install something, and you get past the one-time warning Windows and macOS show for any app they have not seen before.
It is one more thing running. It updates itself, but it is still software living on a machine, which is more than a website is.
We think that is a good trade in a category where the failure mode is losing the account your listings live on. You may weigh it differently. The point is to weigh it before you buy rather than discover it afterwards.
What still works from your phone
Most of it, which surprises people who hear "desktop app" and picture being chained to a desk.
From any browser you can go through the whole lot, read the write-ups, fix a line, correct a price, approve listings, line up a batch, see what has already gone out, link up listings that did not match automatically, and handle billing and settings. That is all just the web app.
What you cannot do from a phone is the posting itself, or entering your Facebook credentials. Credentials have to go in on the machine that will use them, because a security challenge or a two-factor prompt can only be answered there.
The practical shape of a day: line things up whenever you have five minutes, wherever you are. Your computer works through the queue.
The part we will not build
One related thing worth saying plainly. The app does not read or send Facebook or Messenger messages, and it is not going to. Automating a Facebook inbox is a considerably faster route to losing an account than posting is, and no amount of care makes that surface safe. Anything we build around customer conversations lives in our own system, on information you put there yourself.
If another tool offers to answer your Marketplace messages for you, that is worth a hard look before you connect your account to it.
Wondering whether this would work on your lot? Paste your inventory page link into the dealership checker and find out whether MRKT Manager can read your stock. No account and no card to check.