The fee allows users to host up to 500 products. Existing HCBA members will receive three free product listings as a means of introducing them to the system.
It is not just the business owners who are getting things cheap. Turner said Hamilton's willingness to be the first city to host a central online hub meant they secured the system at a very reasonable price from Wellington-based company Storbie.
"My research can't find any one else in New Zealand who has anything like it, with multiple businesses working from one site.
"It cost $5000. There will be the normal hosting costs but that was the only one-off price."
Turner said she had approached local companies before Storbie, but a similar system was quoted to cost as much as $60,000.
"We got such a good price because we were brave enough to say 'yes, we will do it'. We are the trail blazer and Storbie will be pushing it," she said.
She said one of the system's central premises was to provide customers the online experience they crave, while still buying locally and supporting local businesses.
The new site will piggy-back from the existing HCBA website, taking advantage of the 17,000 hits the site already receives every month.
"The biggest advantage is we will be able to leverage off each others traffic."
It is not only retail stores that will benefit from Hamilton Central Marketplace. Ms Turner said hospitality businesses and professional services like lawyers, accountants, mechanics and hairdressers could also use the coupon function to attract new custom.
Storbie CEO Shane Bartle said Hamilton had been charged only a token because the company saw the Marketplace as an opportunity to demonstrate their capability and product.
"We are excited that Hamilton is the first but we are wanting to take this idea all over New Zealand. We are in talks with other cities and towns but Hamilton certainly has the jump on it," he said.
He said he expected online marketplaces to become far more common in future, and that they would not only be shared by companies in a similar geographic area, but also between those in the same industry.
The Marketplace is part of a wider strategy to revitalise the Hamilton CBD, which has suffered as business shift to suburban malls.
In a report to Hamilton City Council's Business and Investment Subcommittee recently, HCBA suggested the tide had begun to change on the exodus.
CBD vacancy rates had decreased from 9.8 per cent to 9.3 per cent with several new participants entering the market and more sites undergoing refurbishment or redevelopment.