Having an Online Shop Built: Costs, Platforms and What You Actually Need
If you want to have an online shop built, the first honest truth is this: the shop itself is rarely the most expensive or most difficult part. The real cost comes from everything around it - product data, payments, shipping, taxes, legal obligations and ongoing operations. This article puts the platforms in context, gives realistic cost ranges and helps you decide what you really need and where you can save.
The Three Routes: Shopify, WooCommerce or Custom Development
There is no single best shop, but rather three sensible routes - depending on how many products you have, how specialised your processes are and how much you are willing to pay each month.
- Shopify is a hosted all-in-one solution. You pay a monthly fee (roughly 30 to 350 EUR depending on the plan) and in return get hosting, security, updates and a huge app store. Ideal if you want to start selling quickly and would rather not run your own IT. Downsides: transaction fees when using external payment providers, dependence on the platform, and apps that cost money every month and add up.
- WooCommerce is a plugin for WordPress. You own everything yourself, have full control and pay no licence fee for the system. In exchange, you (or your service provider) take care of hosting, backups, updates and security. A good fit if you are already on WordPress, want to connect content and shop, or need specific customisations.
- Custom development means a shop built exactly around your process. This only pays off when standard systems hit their limits - for example with very large product catalogues, complex configurators, B2B pricing logic or deep integration with ERP and warehouse systems. For a normal shop with 50 or 500 products, custom development is almost always the wrong and most expensive route.
We run seven of our own brands in production, including a cosmetics product portal with around 177,000 products. From that experience we know: as soon as data volumes or filter logic grow large, it is the clean data structure that decides between success and frustration - not the pretty theme. For small catalogues, by contrast, exactly this complexity is unnecessary.
What Does It Realistically Cost?
Blanket advertised prices are dishonest, because the effort depends heavily on the scope of features. As a rough guide for a shop built professionally:
- Very small shop (few products, standard theme, one payment method): a lean setup in the range of a one-pager to a multi-page project is often enough (around 2,000 to 8,000 EUR), depending on design and data maintenance.
- Mid-sized shop with CMS (multiple categories, content pages, shipping and tax logic, several payment methods): usually in the mid four-figure to lower five-figure range.
- Special features or custom logic (configurator, B2B tiered pricing, ERP integration): from around 9,000 EUR upwards, and correspondingly more for larger SaaS or platform builds.
What matters most are the ongoing costs that many people underestimate: hosting, domain, SSL, any app subscriptions, payment fees (usually around 1 to 3 percent plus a fixed amount per transaction) and maintenance. Factor in these monthly items from the start - a cheaply built shop with no maintenance budget quickly becomes more expensive than a solidly planned one.
What You Really Need - and What You Don't
Many shop projects fail not because of missing features, but because of too many. Focus on what actually generates revenue:
- Clean product data: good images, clear descriptions, correct prices and stock levels. This is work that no service provider can fully take off your hands.
- Working payments and shipping: two or three payment methods are enough at the start. More tends to confuse customers.
- Legal compliance: imprint, privacy policy, right of withdrawal, terms and conditions, cookie banner, correct tax rates. In Germany this is mandatory and not an optional extra.
- Mobile performance: the majority of your customers buy on their phone. A fast, simple checkout beats any elaborate design.
What you usually do not need straight away: a fully integrated ERP, custom development, dozens of apps, a forced customer account or elaborate personalisation. You can add such things later once your shop is running and you have real numbers - before that, they are pure cost drivers.
Fixed Price Instead of the Hourly Trap
If you want to have an online shop built, look for a clearly defined fixed price with a fixed scope of work. That way you know in advance what you are getting, and you avoid the classic hourly trap where every change is billed all over again. A reputable provider will also tell you when the cheaper standard platform is perfectly sufficient for you - and won't talk you into an expensive custom solution you don't need. It is exactly this honesty that saves you the most money in the end.