Short answer
The cost is made up of the platform (subscription or development), design, preparing the product catalogue, payment and delivery integrations, the connection to inventory and accounting, and running costs — subscriptions, fees, hosting and maintenance. A simple store on an off-the-shelf platform is cheaper; a custom platform costs more but has no platform limits.
One-off costs
- Platform setup or development.
- Design — a template or custom.
- Catalogue — product import, images, descriptions.
- Integrations — payments, delivery, inventory, accounting.
- SEO basics — structure, product page descriptions.
Running costs
- Platform subscription or hosting.
- Payment fees.
- Plugin and app fees.
- Maintenance and security updates.
- Marketing.
How to choose for your budget
If you’re just starting and don’t have many products, an off-the-shelf platform is a sensible choice. As revenue grows, with many products, several sales channels or special business logic, calculate what the platform’s limits and the manual work are costing you. Often the integration with inventory and accounting gives the biggest savings — see how to connect an online store to inventory and accounting.