"Ecommerce website" covers everything from a $30-a-month template store to a six-figure custom platform. That is why two quotes for what sounds like the same brief can differ by ten times - the word itself does not describe the work.
This guide breaks the number into the parts you actually pay for: the build, the platform, the payment processing and the running costs. By the end you should be able to read a quote and know what is missing from it.
The short answer: three realistic budget bands
- DIY, under $2,000 to launch. A Shopify or WooCommerce theme you set up yourself. This is the right call for validating a product or running a small catalogue - and it stops being the right call the moment your workflow needs something the theme cannot do.
- Template-based professional build, roughly $3,000 - $10,000. A premium theme configured and styled to your brand, with products, shipping, tax and payments set up properly. Most small businesses land here, and it is usually the best value on the list.
- Semi-custom to custom, $10,000 - $30,000 and up. Custom design, unusual checkout logic, ERP, CRM or inventory integrations, or a large catalogue that needs serious filtering and search.
Two things to note. These are build budgets, not total cost of ownership - the next section is the part most quotes leave out. And the bands overlap deliberately: a small catalogue with one awkward integration can cost more than a large catalogue with none.
The running costs that are not in the build quote
Platform subscription
Shopify's published plans start at $25 per month (about $19 if you pay annually), with Grow at $65 and Advanced at $399; Shopify Plus starts around $2,300 per month. WooCommerce is free software - you pay for hosting and a domain instead, which is cheaper on paper and more work in practice, because updates, backups and compatibility become your responsibility.
Payment processing - the line everyone forgets
Card processing on a US online store is typically around 2.9% + 30¢ per successful transaction; that is Stripe's standard published rate and most gateways sit close to it. On $20,000 a month in sales that is roughly $600 a month, every month - often more over a year than the site cost to build. Shopify also adds a surcharge if you use an outside gateway instead of Shopify Payments: 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow and 0.6% on Advanced. Worth checking before you commit to a processor.
Apps, plugins and integrations
Subscriptions, product reviews, advanced search, accounting sync, shipping rate calculators. Individually small, collectively a real monthly line item. Price them during planning rather than discovering them after launch.
Maintenance
Updates, backups, security and the steady stream of small changes a live store needs - a store is a system you operate, not a brochure you publish. We cover what that realistically costs in our guide to website maintenance costs.
What actually moves the price
In our experience the same handful of factors account for most of the variation between quotes:
- Catalogue size and product complexity. Fifty simple products is a different job from fifty products with size, colour, bundle and made-to-order options.
- Integrations with systems you already run. Accounting, inventory, fulfilment, CRM, a POS in a physical shop. Each one is real engineering.
- Custom checkout or shipping rules. Anything that deviates from the platform default costs noticeably more and needs more testing.
- Content and photography. Product images, descriptions and specs for a full catalogue take longer than people plan for, and they are usually on the critical path to launch.
- Migration from an existing store. Consistently the most underestimated item, because URLs, redirects, customer accounts and order history all have to survive the move intact.
Design is rarely the expensive part. Plumbing is. Our ecommerce web design page walks through how we scope that plumbing - platform, payments, shipping, tax and migration - before any design work starts.
Platform choice is the biggest single cost decision
Your platform sets your hosting, your integration options, your transaction fees and your ceiling for growth - and switching later is expensive enough that most stores put it off for years. Hosted platforms trade a monthly fee for far less operational work. Self-hosted trades lower fees for responsibility you either own yourself or pay someone to own. Neither is universally right.
The useful question is not "which platform is best" but "which platform fits the store I will be running in two years". Pick for that one, not for the one you are launching next month. If you are still weighing a store against a straightforward business site, our breakdown of how much a website costs is the companion piece to this one.
How to compare two ecommerce quotes fairly
Normalise the scope before you compare prices - most quote gaps turn out to be scope gaps rather than price gaps. Ask every vendor the same questions:
- What is the platform, and who pays the subscription?
- How many products are included, and who loads them?
- Which integrations are in scope, and which are "phase two"?
- Is migration - including redirect mapping from the old URLs - included?
- Who owns the accounts, the domain and the code at the end?
- What happens after launch, and at what rate?
A proposal that answers those six clearly is worth more than one that is cheaper and vague. Our small business website checklist is a good sanity check to run before you sign anything.
Frequently asked questions
How much does it cost to set up a Shopify store?
Budget it in two parts. The platform is a published subscription - Shopify plans start at $25 per month, with Grow at $65 and Advanced at $399 - and the build is whatever it costs to get your brand, your products and your shipping and tax rules onto it. A capable owner can launch a small catalogue on a paid theme for under $2,000; a professionally configured store usually runs $3,000 to $10,000. Card processing is a third, separate cost, at roughly 2.9% + 30¢ per successful US online transaction.
Is WooCommerce cheaper than Shopify?
On the invoice, usually. Over three years, not always. WooCommerce is free software, so instead of a platform subscription you pay for hosting, a domain and any premium extensions. What you also take on is responsibility: updates, backups, security and plugin compatibility are yours to manage or to pay someone to manage. If nobody on your team wants that job, a hosted platform fee is buying something real.
How long does an ecommerce build take?
Six to twelve weeks is normal for a professional build, and a DIY template store can be live in days. The bottleneck is almost never the development work - it is product data, photography and the decisions about shipping and tax that only you can make. Getting your product information ready before the build starts is the single biggest thing you can do to shorten the timeline.
Can I start on a template and move to a custom store later?
Yes, and for most businesses that is the sensible order: prove the products sell before paying for custom engineering. Just make the move cheap to do later. Keep your URL structure clean, own your domain and your platform accounts in your own name, and make sure you can export customer and order data. Migration is the most underestimated line in ecommerce, so the groundwork you do now is what keeps it affordable.
Getting a number you can rely on
There is no honest single figure for an ecommerce build. There is an honest range, once someone understands your catalogue, your integrations and your growth plan - and any agency that gives you a firm number before asking about those three is guessing.
If you want that range for your own store, tell us what you sell and what it needs to connect to, and we will scope it properly. You can see how we approach store builds on our ecommerce web design page, how we handle general business sites on our web design services page, or review our packages and pricing to get a feel for where our work starts.
