What is Europages, and how can an exporter use it?

What Europages is

According to its own help center, Europages is a B2B marketplace in Europe that helps professional buyers find suppliers, manufacturers, dealers and service providers, and gives suppliers visibility for their products and services. Company profiles show a business's product portfolio and current contact details. It is free for buyers, and suppliers can be listed with a standard profile. Once published, profile and product content is automatically translated into the languages of Europages' 21 country-specific domains, for example europages.co.uk in English and europages.com.tr in Turkish.

Who runs it: Europages' terms of use name VISABLE S.A. as the publisher of the website, while the help center footer reads Visable GmbH. Visable's About page says Europages was founded in 1982 as “Euredit”, went online in 1995, and that Visable owns the marketplaces Europages and wer liefert was (wlw). According to the help center, Visable and Alibaba.com formed a partnership in November 2023, and Visable continues to operate as an independent company.

Europages gives no single figure for its size: its home page says 2.2 million B2B providers and 1 million buyers a month, its request-for-quotes page says 2.6 million registered suppliers, and its terms of use say about 2,500,000 companies. We did not measure any of them; read them as the company's own statements.

Can you register from outside Europe?

A supplier profile is free, but registration goes through a review, and a company based in a non-European country that is not eligible can be declined. The help page does not say which countries are eligible. The Basic information step lists a VAT number as mandatory, and the help page does not say which tax IDs it accepts for companies outside the EU, so ask customer care before you register. Suppliers based in Türkiye appear in the directory (in a search for “seeking distributor”, the Supplier country filter lists Spain, Turkey, France, Italy and Germany as its top five), but that says nothing about countries such as India or Brazil; the registration review decides.

Why a registration can be declined

• Product blocklist: weapons, content that promotes or glorifies violence, erotic content, pharmaceuticals, drugs and prohibited substances, animal-derived products excluded by Europages (for example mink oil), tobacco products and political content.
• Dubious listing: doubts about the company's authenticity, such as technical irregularities on the website or unreliable or unprofessional information.
• B2C: the platforms are for B2B transactions only, so a company that sells to individual customers is not accepted.
• Non-permitted country: the company does not operate in permitted countries, or is based in a non-European country that is not eligible for registration.
• Non-verifiable: no website or a website that does not work, too little information about products or industry, a missing site notice or privacy policy, or no commercial register entry; companies based in Germany, Austria or Switzerland must also provide the required imprint.
• Duplicate listing: if your company is already on the platform, a second profile is not approved.

Using Europages as an exporter, step by step

According to the help pages, the supplier's route is that a buyer finds you, or that you answer a request in the Request Hub. You can search the directory for distributors and wholesalers; Europages' help center for buyers describes messaging as the way buyers communicate directly with suppliers.

Listing your company: from registration to products

1. Open the supplier registration page (the “Become a supplier” button on the home page) and register your company; the help center says registration is free.
2. Wait for the registration review. It can take up to 48 hours, and longer over weekends, public holidays or busy periods. You are told the decision by email, and a profile that is not approved is taken offline.
3. Fill in the basic information: logo, company name, VAT number, address and main contact email. The company name cannot be changed after registration (contact customer care), the country is assigned automatically and cannot be edited, and everything in the Basic information section is publicly visible on your profile.
4. Define your business: number of employees, company type and business sector are mandatory, and the founding year is optional. You can add further contact persons: first name, last name and email are mandatory, function or department is optional.
5. Add your products and services one by one, with an Excel template, by importing from your website, or by importing from your online shop. A manual product needs a title, a product category, a description (between 100 and 5,000 characters) and keywords (up to 15); you are asked to upload at least one product image, and the price is optional.
6. Add images and documents: you can upload up to 10 company images and select certificates from a list. The help pages reserve video links and PDF documents for “customers” only, and name the Business, Premium and Professional packages for showing product documents.
7. Wait for changes to go live: profile changes are usually visible within a few minutes, while large files such as catalogues, images and videos can take until the next day. Imported products are published only once they pass a completeness threshold.

Incoming requests: Request Hub and Messages

The Request Hub is where suppliers find and answer verified requests for quotes from professional buyers. According to the help page, you choose “Request Hub” in the main menu and then “All buyer's requests”; requests can be sorted by time or recommendation and filtered by buyer location and category, and requests that match your company best are shown first. You open the details with “View” and write your answer with “Respond to request”: pricing, delivery conditions, or a question for more information. The buyer's name and company details stay hidden until you reply, and after you reply the conversation moves to your Messages inbox.

If your company is also listed on wer liefert was (wlw) or Alibaba.com, the help page says matching requests from those platforms also appear in the Request Hub. Direct messages and requests for quotes are collected in the Messages section and can be filtered by type. Response rate and response time play a role in how your profile ranks: companies that answer quickly and reliably can place better in search results.

How much of the Request Hub a free profile gets is unclear. The help page limits access to logged-in Europages suppliers, while Visable mentions a free Request Hub for “europages customers”. The pages we read do not separate a free profile from a package for this feature; check your account after registering, or ask Europages customer care. The home page offers a “Test it for free” button for the Request Hub without saying whether that is a trial or permanent access.

Membership types and cost

According to Europages' help pages, you can register your company for free and be listed with a standard profile. Paid service packages come on top of the free listing; they are described as helping to increase visibility, strengthen your company presentation and raise your chances of receiving qualified buyer requests. For scope and pricing you are pointed to Europages' contact form or email address. The help pages name Business, Premium and Professional packages but give neither their scope nor their price, so no price appears here either. Top Ranking sits in the help center's Packages and Services section and the Alibaba.com profile is described as part of a package; the pages do not say which package includes boosted products or Website Leads.

• Boosted products: according to the help page, boosted products and services show up higher in search results than products without a boost.
• Top Ranking: one of the top three positions in the search results for a chosen category; each customer can reserve one Top Ranking position per category and per country, subject to availability.
• Website Leads: you install Europages' pixel code or Google Tag Manager template on your own website, and Europages advises updating your privacy statement; a visit is then shown on your profile when its IP address can be linked to a company, and visits that cannot be linked are not shown.
• Alibaba.com profile: as part of a Europages package you can activate your company profile on Alibaba.com; your visibility there depends on the membership package you choose, with European or worldwide coverage.

On contracts, Visable's help center says the notice period is generally one month before the end of the minimum contract term or of any later 12-month renewal period. Unless agreed otherwise, a contract that is not terminated in time renews automatically for another 12 months; the terms in your individual contract documents always apply, and some additional services can have different notice periods.

Searching Europages for companies

1. Open an edition such as europages.co.uk; the search bar lets you choose between products and suppliers.
2. If you know what you need, type a specific term (“concrete screws”); to get an overview of the market, type a general one (“screws”). Terms separated by spaces narrow the results to entries that match all of them, so the more terms you add, the fewer results you get. To broaden a search, put an asterisk before, after or inside a term without spaces; according to the help page, adding one after “screws” can also bring in related terms such as “concrete screws” and “anchor screws”.
3. Use the filters on the results page: supplier country, supplier type (manufacturer/producer, customer-specific manufacturer, distributor, service provider, wholesaler), employees, a “Verified” company profile, and distance from a location. Each result shows the company's type, its employee range and usually its delivery scope (for example “Worldwide”); the number of certificates appears on some results only.
4. Open a company or product page. The contact form button is in the top-right corner; the phone number and the website link, if available, are at the bottom of the page. According to the terms of use, when you use messaging or the contact form, some of your personal information, including your email address, may be visible to the company you contact.
5. If you are not after one specific company, post a request for quotes (“Get quotes”): you give the supplier type, what you are looking for, detailed requirements, delivery location, estimated quantity and your company details, and Europages passes the request to the suppliers it considers a match. Europages describes the service as free, and you need an account to read the replies. The request for quotes is for requests only; Europages writes that offers sent through this form are usually rejected by its quality assurance.

What Europages gives and what it does not

Where Alvara AI fits

Alvara AI is a tool for manufacturers and exporters that finds buyers abroad. You enter your website address; it reads what you sell and lists matching overseas companies with their decision maker and a verified email. For each buyer with a contact person it also writes an email draft; it does not send anything on its own, you send the draft yourself. Alvara AI gets buyer details from each company's own website, from data providers, and from inferences it draws from both, and next to every fact there is a link to its source. It does not search Türkiye's domestic market.