E-commerce website costs: A detailed pricing guide

Whether it’s a simple website con­tain­ing just a handful of products or a powerful e-commerce platform, the cost of creating an e-commerce website depends on many factors. Find out how online shop costs broken down in detail and what should you expect.

What are the setup costs for an online store?

To suc­cess­fully sell products online, you need the right software. This is a sig­ni­fic­ant factor when it comes to cal­cu­lat­ing the cost of an online store. When looking for a solution, it’s important to think about your specific re­quire­ments, and in par­tic­u­lar, the following factors:

Design

Are you happy with a classic design with a simple header, nav­ig­a­tion bar, filters and product pages? Or do you want to be able to customise specific features? If you want a custom design, you’ll need to pay an agency or freel­an­cer to create your site. You also need to make sure the shop software you pick is com­pat­ible with the design.

Features and func­tion­al­ity

Even the simplest, most af­ford­able e-commerce solutions come with basic features like a nav­ig­a­tion system, filters and a shopping basket. However, if you have special re­quire­ments, you’ll either have to opt for a high-per­form­ance (often more expensive) solution or have these features in­di­vidu­ally pro­grammed. The most complex and expensive sites are those that include a product con­fig­ur­at­or that lets customers customise their order.

Content

Do you plan on selling 10 products or 1,000? Are you going to have to write product de­scrip­tions and take photos yourself (for example, if you’re selling homemade products), or will the provider take care of this?

People often un­der­es­tim­ate the cost of creating content for an online store. You’ll need at least one good photo of each product, probably more though. You’ll also need com­pel­ling product de­scrip­tions and detailed in­form­a­tion (known as master data and at­trib­utes) for each item. Some sellers prefer to hire a freel­an­cer or spe­cial­ised agency to create content for their site. The latter often has the advantage of several people working together on images and text, making the processes faster and less prone to errors. Agencies can offer quicker turn­around times and high quality as they usually have a whole team of content experts on hand.

It’s even more cost-effective if you sell products that you don’t man­u­fac­ture yourself, and the man­u­fac­turer provides the cor­res­pond­ing product content.

Although the number of products and type of content have no direct impact on which store system you choose, they are linked to the next two factors. As such, they do influence system choice, and, in turn, your e-commerce website costs.

Product data man­age­ment

Many store systems allow you to manage and update your photos, product de­scrip­tions and other data directly in the backend. However, if you’ve got a lot of content to manage, it might make more sense to import it as a CSV file or connect a database, such as an En­ter­prise Resource Planning (ERP) system.

Support for multiple languages

Are you going to be selling your products abroad? If so, you’ll need to create and store content in several languages. Even if all your customers are in English-speaking countries, you might still want to create different versions for the US, Australia and New Zealand, for example. Make sure that the software you choose lets you configure different languages.

Payment and shipping options

Some solutions also offer built-in tools for in­teg­rat­ing online store payment methods and shipping options, including invoicing and shipping directly in the backend. Al­tern­at­ively, you can opt to integrate external point-of-sale systems and shipping software.

Domain and hosting

You also need to consider the costs for the domain and hosting of your store. Domains are usually allocated via domain re­gis­trars, such as IONOS. You pay a monthly fee for the use of the domain name, no matter how big your online store is. Most domain names only cost a few pounds per month, however, popular domain names can cost much more.

There are two options for hosting your store. You can either host the website yourself or get a hosting provider to do it for you. If you host your store yourself, you are re­spons­ible for everything related to server operation. This includes pur­chas­ing the necessary hardware, operating costs, con­fig­ur­ing and main­tain­ing the hardware and software, cy­ber­se­cur­ity and ensuring the avail­ab­il­ity of the website. If you opt for a hosting provider such as IONOS, these tasks are largely taken over by the provider meaning you only have to worry about the business side of things.

What software costs are there when setting up an online shop?

If you want to open an online store, there are three basic options to choose from: an online store builder or ready-made online store which you pay a monthly fee for, a flexible open-source solution, many of which have a basic free version, or a pro­pri­et­ary e-commerce platform or en­ter­prise solution available through a licensing agreement.

Com­par­is­on of online shop solutions and costs

You can also find extensive in­form­a­tion on the in­di­vidu­al solutions in our detailed com­par­is­on of different online store software, including the main ad­vant­ages and dis­ad­vant­ages of each.

Website builders and hosted platforms at a glance

Online store builders and hosting solutions are ideal for small business owners with limited web expertise. The software is designed to be user-friendly and comes with a range of basic features. There’s also usually a support team on hand to help with any questions. As well as the actual store, the plan often includes a domain and/or a standard website, and hosting. The cost of this type of solution starts at around £30 per month, plus any content creation and setup costs for the e-commerce website.

Open-source solutions at a glance

Open-source solutions are wide­spread and powerful solutions for small and medium-sized store owners with more specific ideas about design and function. One of the most popular options is to run an online store on a WordPress site using a plugin like Woo­Com­merce, which is one of the most popular options available. Open source typically means it’s an almost free or very cost-effective shop solution. However, many plugins and features come with expenses, either for purchase or custom de­vel­op­ment. Nev­er­the­less, this option comes with an ex­cep­tion­ally high level of design flex­ib­il­ity.

It’s difficult to calculate all the different costs in advance, but for a medium-sized store, you can expect to pay a few thousand pounds in initial costs (design, con­fig­ur­a­tion, content, and so on). Running costs on the other hand are very low, and sometimes even non-existent.

Pro­pri­et­ary store solutions at a glance

This kind of software is aimed at big companies running large-scale e-commerce websites, i.e., brands with an extensive product portfolio, huge customer database and/or complex system re­quire­ments such as inventory man­age­ment and shipping software or a returns portal. OXID eShop and Magento are both popular choices. At the lower end of the price scale you have Shopware and at the higher end SAP Hybris Commerce.

Different providers offer different payment models. For some, you pay a one-time fee to purchase the software, and for others, you pay a monthly licensing fee. Entry-level plans start at a few thousand pounds, but for the most powerful solutions, you can easily pay upwards of £20,000 – and keep in mind, this doesn’t include setup or content creation costs!

What other costs are involved in creating an online store?

Besides the costs for the online store software, initial setup and content creation (if necessary), there are several other areas where costs can arise when opening an online shop.

Design

If you don’t use a ready-made template, design costs for a site and all its subpages can quickly escalate, reaching several thousand pounds.

External systems

Even if you’re just starting out in the e-commerce world, you might want to invest in advanced features from the get-go. Bear in mind that pur­chas­ing, setting up and con­nect­ing external systems for inventory man­age­ment, checkout, shipping, marketing, customer service and so on can be very expensive. Software packages for inventory man­age­ment and shipping alone can cost anywhere from a few hundred pounds to more than £30,000. The more expensive options include features like invoice gen­er­a­tion, reminders and tools to manage product and customer data.

Storage and shipping

If you’re producing and shipping products yourself, you’ll also need suitable storage fa­cil­it­ies and packaging materials, and you may need to hire staff. Al­tern­at­ively, you can arrange for this to be done by a ful­fill­ment company or drop­ship­ping provider.

Legal advice

Every country has its own rules and reg­u­la­tions regarding data pro­tec­tion and consumer rights, and things get even more com­plic­ated if you’re selling overseas. Be sure to seek expert advice on things like cookie banners, the col­lec­tion and pro­cessing of customer data and documents such as your Terms & Con­di­tions and privacy policy.

Marketing

If you’re running an online store, you also need to consider search engine op­tim­isa­tion, ads and other online marketing strategies. Depending on your target audience, needs and budget, you might be able to handle the marketing yourself, or you might want to outsource this to a freel­an­cer or agency.

Main­ten­ance and running costs

Whether you’re running your store alone or with the help of a con­sult­ant or agency, there is always something to be done, whether that’s adding new product data or features or fixing bugs. Make sure you budget enough time—and money—for this from the outset, es­pe­cially if you’re a beginner. You can always adjust things later on when you have more ex­per­i­ence.

Staffing costs (in-house, freel­an­cers and agencies)

Another decision you’ll need to make that affects costs is whether you’re going to run your store by yourself or with the help of a freel­an­cer or an agency. There are ways to cut online shop costs here:

• If you’re tech-savvy, you can take care of some of the pro­gram­ming, design and content yourself, and then hire a freel­an­cer to do the remaining tasks. Al­tern­at­ively, you could hire someone to take on the whole project and you would just act as a co­ordin­at­or.
• Freel­an­cers often charge less than agencies and can provide a one-to-one service for as long as you need.
• If you need the help of several different experts, it might be better to go to an agency as they’ll be able to pull together a team and co­ordin­ate things for you.
• You could of course recruit your own team to build and run your store, but don’t forget that re­cruit­ing and managing staff will take time and money.