Short answer: how much does an ecommerce website cost?
An ecommerce website costs roughly €2,000–€6,000 for a small, theme-based store, €6,000–€20,000 for a custom-designed store with invoicing, shipping integrations and a few thousand products, and €20,000–€60,000 for an integrated store with ERP sync, marketplaces or B2B pricing, and €40,000–€150,000+ for a fully custom platform with configurators. On top of the build, budget €100–€500 a month for hosting, maintenance, apps and plugins, plus 1.5–3% of revenue in payment fees.
These are market estimates for European and UK agencies and freelancers in 2026, not a price list. The rest of this article shows what pushes a project from one band to the next, so you can read any quote critically.
Why does the cost of an online store vary so much?
The visible part of a store, the homepage and product pages, is rarely what drives the price. Five things do.
Catalogue size and complexity. 200 simple products with one price each is an afternoon of importing. 8,000 products with variants, supplier feeds and finishes that change the price is a data project. Products that need a configurator (fabric × size × finish) can double the build.
Integrations. Every system the store talks to adds work: your ERP or accounting software, couriers, marketplaces such as Amazon or bol.com, an email platform, a product information feed. A one-way order export is simple. Two-way stock and price sync with conflict handling is not.
Design. A configured theme costs a few days. A custom design built around how your customers buy (comparison, delivery dates, trust signals on mobile) costs weeks, and usually earns it back in conversion.
Compliance and markets. Selling into Germany means an Impressum, a clear withdrawal policy and an order button labelled along the lines of "zahlungspflichtig bestellen". The European Accessibility Act has applied to most online shops serving EU consumers since 28 June 2025 (microenterprises providing services are exempt), which means accessible forms, contrast and keyboard navigation. Multiple languages, currencies and VAT rules multiply the content and testing.
Who builds it. A freelancer in Eastern Europe, a studio in Cluj or Kraków and an agency in London or Amsterdam can quote the same scope at day rates from roughly €300 to €1,000. Check what the day rate buys: seniority, project management and support after launch.
What does an ecommerce website cost by type of store?
The table below shows typical 2026 ranges. They are estimates based on public agency pricing and our own quotes, excluding VAT.
| Type of store | Typical scope | Build cost (estimate) | Monthly running cost (estimate) |
|---|---|---|---|
| DIY on a hosted platform | Theme, up to 100 products, you set it up | €0–€1,000 | €30–€150 + apps |
| Small theme-based store | Up to 500 products, card payments, one courier, SEO basics | €2,000–€6,000 | €50–€200 |
| Custom-designed store | Up to 2,000 products, invoicing, two couriers, email automation | €6,000–€20,000 | €100–€350 |
| Integrated store | ERP sync, marketplaces, multi-language, B2B accounts | €20,000–€60,000 | €250–€1,000 |
| Fully custom platform | Configurators, large catalogue, custom checkout, AI features | €40,000–€150,000+ | €500–€3,000 |
Two numbers in that table are worth a second look. First, the jump from "custom-designed" to "integrated" is mostly integration and data work, not design. Second, the running cost of an integrated store is driven by sync jobs, monitoring and support, so a cheap host is a false saving there.
What is usually missing from a cheap quote?
Low quotes are not always wrong, but they often leave things out. Compare quotes against this list:
- Catalogue import from your existing files, with categories and attributes mapped
- Legal pages, cookie consent with Google Consent Mode v2, and checkout wording for each country you sell to
- Payment provider setup, including refunds and webhooks tested on a live transaction
- Shipping rules, courier label creation and tracking emails
- Invoicing or accounting export (and e-invoicing where your market requires it)
- GA4 ecommerce events, Google Merchant Center feed and Search Console
- 301 redirects from your old URLs if you are replacing a store
- Staging site, training and a defined support period after launch
- Who owns the code, the hosting account and the domain
If a quote is silent on three or more of these, the real price is higher than the number on it.
Shopify, WooCommerce or a custom build: which fits your budget?
The platform choice changes how the cost is split between build and running costs more than it changes the total.
Hosted platforms (Shopify, BigCommerce, Wix). Low build cost and little maintenance. You pay a monthly plan: Shopify's UK pricing in October 2026 is £25 (Basic), £65 (Grow) and £344 (Advanced) a month on monthly billing, with Plus from £1,800, and a transaction fee of 2%, 1% or 0.6% if you use a payment provider other than Shopify Payments. Apps for reviews, subscriptions, bundles or B2B often add £50–£300 a month. Good fit for standard catalogues and teams that want no servers to think about.
WooCommerce. Free, open-source software on WordPress, so there is no platform fee or revenue share. You pay for hosting, premium plugins (often €50–€300 a year each) and someone to keep updates, backups and security in order. Card fees with WooPayments start at 1.5% + £0.25 for UK cards and 1.5% + €0.25 in the Netherlands and Germany, and you can use Stripe, Mollie, Adyen or PayPal instead. Good fit for most small and mid-sized stores, especially with custom design and integrations. We compare the two in detail in WooCommerce vs custom ecommerce and Shopify vs WooCommerce cost over three years.
Fully custom (PHP, React, Node.js). Highest build cost, lowest constraint. It pays off when you sell configurable products, run B2B price lists per customer, sync tens of thousands of SKUs with an ERP, or when plugin conflicts and slow admin screens are already costing you staff hours.
A practical rule: if your catalogue, checkout and fulfilment look like most other shops in your sector, start on WooCommerce or Shopify. If the way you sell is the thing that makes you different, price a custom build.
How to budget an ecommerce website, step by step
Use these steps before you ask anyone for a quote. They take an afternoon and they make every quote comparable.
- Count your products and variants. Write down the number of SKUs, how many have variants, and where the data lives today (spreadsheet, ERP, supplier PDFs). Data is the hidden cost of most launches.
- List the systems the store must talk to. For each one, note the direction and the frequency: stock from the ERP every 15 minutes, orders to the ERP instantly, invoices back to the customer, labels from the courier.
- Decide what sells for you. Note the two or three features competitors do badly and you want to do well: delivery dates, a configurator, trade accounts, a fast mobile checkout. Spend the design budget there.
- Pick your markets. Each country adds languages, currencies, payment methods (iDEAL in the Netherlands, PayPal and invoice payment in Germany), shipping zones and legal text.
- Set a running-cost ceiling. Decide what you can spend each month on hosting, maintenance, apps and support. It narrows the platform choice faster than any feature list.
- Ask for a fixed quote on a written scope. Hourly estimates for an undefined scope are how budgets double. A short discovery phase that produces a specification is worth paying for on anything above €15,000.
Typical first-year budget for a small store
Here is an illustrative first-year budget for a 400-product store on WooCommerce, built by a studio. Your numbers will differ, but the shape is typical.
| Line item | First-year cost (estimate) |
|---|---|
| Design and build | €2,000–€5,000 |
| Catalogue import and clean-up | €0–€800 (often in the build) |
| Managed hosting and maintenance | €900–€1,800 |
| Premium plugins and licences | €100–€500 |
| Payment fees on €150,000 revenue at ~1.8% | ~€2,700 |
| Domain, email, transactional email service | €50–€200 |
| Total excluding payment fees | €3,050–€8,300 |
Payment fees are often the largest recurring item once a store is trading, which is why the provider and the plan matter as much as the build price.
Where you can save money, and where you shouldn't
Some savings are real. Others turn up later as lost orders or emergency invoices.
Safe places to save:
- Start in one language and one country. Adding a second market later is a module, not a rebuild, if the store is set up with translations and tax classes from day one.
- Use a good theme for content pages. About, delivery and returns pages do not need bespoke design. Product, category and checkout pages do.
- Prepare the product data yourself. If you can deliver a clean spreadsheet with SKU, title, price, stock, category, attributes and image file names, import becomes a fixed, small job.
- Launch with fewer features. Wishlists, loyalty points and product comparison can wait three months. Fast pages and a working checkout cannot.
Places where saving costs more later:
- Cheap shared hosting. A store that slows to 4–6 seconds on a campaign day loses the sales that campaign was meant to bring. It also drags down Core Web Vitals, which Google uses as a ranking signal.
- Stacking plugins or apps instead of one integration. Five plugins that each do part of a job conflict on updates. One integration built for your ERP or courier is cheaper to maintain.
- Skipping redirects on a replatform. Every old product URL that returns 404 loses its rankings and backlinks. Mapping redirects is a day or two of work; recovering lost traffic takes months.
- No support period. The first four weeks after launch are when real customers find real edge cases. Make sure someone is contracted to fix them.
Does it cost more to sell in the UK, the Netherlands, Germany or the US?
The build price for the same scope is similar. What changes is the local work around it:
| Market | Extra work to budget for |
|---|---|
| UK | VAT at 20% on prices shown to consumers, Royal Mail or DPD labels, UK-specific returns wording |
| Netherlands | iDEAL as a default payment method, PostNL or DHL labels, Dutch translations if you target local buyers |
| Germany | Impressum, withdrawal policy, legally worded order button, PayPal and invoice payment (Kauf auf Rechnung), DHL integration |
| US | Sales tax by state (usually via an app or service), USPS/UPS rates, card-first checkout with Apple Pay and Google Pay |
Selling into several of these from one store is common, but each one adds content, testing and payment setup. Price them as separate lines.
What does an ecommerce website cost with Raao?
We publish starting prices, in EUR and excluding VAT, and give a fixed quote after a free 30-minute discovery call. Most projects fit one of three packages:
| Package | Starting price | What is included |
|---|---|---|
| Starter | from €1,900 | Custom conversion-focused design, up to 500 products with import, card payments and cash on delivery, one courier, SEO setup, sitemap and GA4, cookie consent, 30 days of support |
| Launch | from €3,900 | Up to 2,000 products, two couriers, invoicing integration, abandoned-cart emails, GA4 ecommerce tracking and Meta Pixel, campaign landing pages, 60 days of support |
| Enterprise | custom quote | Fully custom build or advanced WooCommerce, two-way ERP sync, marketplace sync, B2B, multi-language and multi-currency, configurators, AI features, SLA |
Every store runs on cloud, dedicated or VPS servers we manage. Hosting and maintenance plans start from €89 a month and cover updates, monitoring, daily backups and development hours. There are no licence fees and no revenue share.
You can start with Starter and add modules later (extra languages, marketplace or ERP sync, B2B pricing, configurators) without rebuilding the store. Payment is 30% upfront, then milestones you approve on a staging site. Full details are on our pricing page and ecommerce services page. If you want a second opinion on a quote you already have, book a free 30-minute call.
How we did it for Kuiba
Kuiba sells premium Italian and European furniture, lighting, flooring and appliances. It is a good example of where an integrated, custom build earns its cost:
- The problem was data, not design. Products come in hundreds of finishes and sizes, supplier catalogues change constantly, and every order has to land in Microsoft Business Central. Off-the-shelf platforms could not price configurable products correctly.
- A product configurator with price matrices, finishes, dimensions and accessories means configurable products are priced correctly online instead of "call for price".
- Automated supplier imports for brands such as Bonaldo, Calligaris, Nardi and Miele, with AI-assisted category mapping, keep 10,000+ products from 25+ brands up to date without manual data entry.
- Orders go to Business Central automatically through the client's CRM layer, and server-side GA4, the Meta Conversions API and Google Merchant, Meta, TikTok and Pinterest feeds run from the same platform.
- One platform now serves online sales, showrooms, sales agents and designer partners.
If your store looks more like the first rows of the cost table, you do not need a build like this. If it looks like Kuiba's, the integration budget is where the return comes from.