“How much does it cost to build an eCommerce website?”
The internet and even our query inbox is flooded with this question. Well, this question clears the air that eCommerce business is still received young & many talented merchants are willing to transform their mom and pop shop or brochureware into a revolutionary eCommerce store of their dreams.
If you are that diligent merchant, congrats, you are on the right track.
Looks like you are already convinced why eCommerce business is a buzzword, and which is why you're looking for eCommerce website quotations right? Now, let’s help you analyze what is eCommerce website cost you need to anticipate while starting out or slowly scaling your existing business to the next level.
So how much does it cost to build an eCommerce website --- you keep asking? Well, there is no definite answer to this. But if we have to answer it in probable figures, we would say:
Well, the number isn’t definite because a lot of factors are cooked together to achieve a fixated eCommerce website quotation. Wondering what could be those factors? Here are the following factors that help define the actual e-commerce website prices.
From experience of working with retailers & merchants of all sizes, we know what all factors are there that define the eCommerce website cost. The cost of each store project varies & depends on certain factors like your business type, features, timeline, and other setup factors. If you thought eCommerce website quotations are same for everyone, then probably didn’t think through the following factors:
If you are interested in knowing the eCommerce website design cost you need to pay to get full ownership of an eCommerce store, then continue reading.
Here is the complete breakup of eCommerce website design prices for businesses at scale.
Note - This is an estimated range and not some set-in-stone eCommerce website design cost. The actual e commerce website prices may vary depending on your retail business needs and budget.
Initially, when you are starting your budgeted eCommerce business, you can go with the basic low-cost eCommerce website and scale it once you start seeing the right traction & revenue base through it. You can anytime move towards a store with a more advanced level store. You can start slow and still make big with a professional eCommerce development agency like us!
Here is the complete understanding of eCommerce website design cost factored based on different attributes like eCommerce platform design, type, features, functionalities, integrations and so many other things that are considered important.
Cost for paid template : $140 - $180 + $1000-$5000 (with customizations)
Custom eCommerce development from scratch: $10,000 to $75,000.
With open-source platforms like Shopify, WoCommerce, BigCommerce, you surely can find free templates, but these free designs won’t get you that right traction, as they will lack vitality, your brand's personal touch. You need cutting-edge, customized, brand-oriented designs that are professional & modified as per the audiences’ taste.
It is best to go for paid themes, as they are more upbeat & more professional. So if you dig up some Shopify themes, they would cost you starting from 140 to 180 dollars. With a little bit of personalized touch & branding efforts, you will additionally have to pay $500-$1000. Whereas, if you are wanting quite wide-sized customizations from scratch, then you may expect to pay up to $5000.
Whereas, if you are planning to have a mom-and-pop shop moved from offline to the online front with complete customized design & development from scratch, you can expect to pay between $10,000 to as big as $75,000. This cost with a professional development company would be worth it as the design & UX would be something you want your audience to have.
You have two options - basic features or advanced, some customized features. In both cases, your e commerce website prices may differ.
Cost of eCommerce with Basic Functions
The basic functions of a website include your much-need features like payment processing, shopping cart, product management, and others without which your users can’t complete the product discovery and purchases.
If you go for little to big customization around these basic functions, you may have to anticipate costs between $5000 - $15000 on store managements like Shopify or WoCommerce.
eCommerce website cost based on Advanced Functions
There is no limit to having functionalities in your eCommerce store. You can go and expand your requirements with advanced functionalities like automated discount and coupon generation, personalized product suggestions, multi-lingual stores, and more. The more functions you have, the more will be the price. You can expect to pay $5,000 to $12,000 as extra, other than you pay for basic.
Databases are very important for eCommerce stores, as they contain the product, customers, and employee details.
Database integration can streamline your website & make it more personalized for your shoppers by making all the business information available in one place. This integration can help your users in auto entering the credit card details, their username or password to login shopping accounts & other details.
This will help deliver users the most personalized shopping experience. Such integration of databases can cost between $15,000 to $20,000 per integration. Depending on the company who is doing it, tools they are using, etc.
In eCommerce websites, you can add multiple media options like images, videos, stock or real photos, graphics, infographics, and make those text-y descriptions more valuable to read & respond for your customers.
Having a customized set of media & graphics is a must to get that edge over competitors, and going for this routine can cost you $250 - $10,000 --- depending on how big your website & your exceptional requirements for creatives are.
While choosing an eCommerce website platform, it is ideal to look at the payment processing cost of each gateway too. Knowing this can help you reduce your cost per transaction and instead earn more.
Here are the estimated transaction costs for the biggest store management platforms in average US dollars.
Note - All these costs do not include the relevant bank charges.
Discover Your Exact Costs Now – Get a Custom Quote in Minutes!
Apart from choosing a custom design, there are certain other eCommerce website design costs that you need to additionally bear to keep your store up and running. Basically, the following are important costs that you will have to bear monthly or yearly.
Choosing the right domain name is very tricky. As you have to choose something affordable yet a name that speaks volumes about your brand. You can get the domain name at a cheap price of $2 and which could go up to a maximum of $25 a year.
Well, the price of a domain name depends on the platform you get it from. There are several platforms you can get it from like - GoDaddy, Bluehost, Namecheap, etc. It also depends on what unique extension you are willing to get other than DOT COM. The other extension could be .org, .co.uk, .us, .shop or so.
Once you have your eCommerce website domain ready, you need a host to operate your web. You can do the self-hosting but it will cost you somewhere between $80-$730 p.m or up to $10,000 p.a.
The cost of hosting varies by factors like your website’s:
There are 3 types of hosting that you can choose from based on your budget & explicit choice:
Your eCommerce services would be better able to get affordable web hosts either through sharing by finding the low budget 3rd party web hosts or by getting you cloud hosting provided by store management platforms like Shopify or BigCommerce.
Though SSL certifications are very cheap, they are very important to keep your website secure & safe from malicious intent over the web. Even search engines like Google take SSL as a ranking factor, which makes it more evident why they are so important.
Talking about cost, the SSL certificates are likely to cost between $20-$70 per year. Also, make sure that there are certain hosting platforms that offer SSL as a part of their offerings, so you won’t have to buy it additionally.
eCommerce website maintenance cost is applicable if it’s logged into the service level agreements with your eCommerce development professionals.
Just like a house or a road needs timely repair, your website too needs timely maintenance to keep it afloat & running smoothly. The eCommerce website maintenance could include:
Website maintenance cost could seem like a costly overhead, but it’s important as a minute of website downtime could make you lose plenty of customers & revenue. So talking about the cost, the eCommerce website maintenance can be somewhere between $15,000-$30,000 per year. The cost can vary & depend on what you consent to in your SLAs.
When you have made your mind about going more than free websites, there you need to identify the development vendors, who would help you pull out your custom eCommerce store, and its allocated costs.
When it comes to choosing the vendor for doing the job, you certainly have 3 options:
Boutique eCommerce Development Company
eCommerce development company with experience, a good hand at quality, seasoned resources can help you build a desired online retail store from scratch. With professionals, you get a complete suite of solutions under one hood, from development to designing to marketing. The eCommerce development price with these rock-solid companies may vary depending on your budget, project size, timeline, etc.
Don’t worry it won’t cost fortunes. You may start from as low as $5000 to and go as big as $60,000+ (if you are approaching quite exclusive & unique designs & features).
The best thing about deploying work to a unified agency is that they have collective resources for design, development, marketing, who work in sync and end up making a custom eCommerce store of your dreams, that too at your budget. They even keep you in a loop to tally the preferences & show the progress.
Plus, if you work with a talented eCommerce development team like us, we are ready to tweak the pricing plans, based on what elements you pick & drop. Yes, we give you full liberty to customize our eCommerce website quotations. Want free quotes?
Freelance eCommerce Developers/Designers
You can approach freelance eCommerce developers too for having your custom eCommerce store made. Though freelance eCommerce developers may cut down on the cost and would charge you less or equal to $15,000, there are hundreds of risks associated with them. Like:
In House eCommerce Development Team
They may charge you similar to freelancers between $15-$90 on an hourly basis, but having them instated might add additional overhead to your pocket, which would include infrastructure cost, taxes, or any legal pay.
In the constant war between outsourced eCommerce development company v/s freelance or in-house eCommerce developers, choose what’s more affordable and fits your time, efforts, project scope & requirements. Tell us in the comments, what would be your preference?
“Indulging in marketing is a mere choice but is also a necessity in this era ruled by social media & Google searches.” You might see internet marketing as a costly outlay but it is a worthwhile endeavor.
Common online marketing is likely to include a bouquet of services like SEO, PPC, content marketing, brand management, influencer marketing, social media & email marketing. This is necessary to promote your store & make it reach a vast audience.
Having a distinguished logo can cost you between $500 to $5000. But if you hire a full-time marketer, you can get all the exclusive marketing services at a cost between $1500-$7000.
Marketing cost again is very subjective & depends on the type of project, the market you have, your requirements, urgency to tap the market & more such exclusive needs.
The overall marketing expenses for eCommerce promotion may boil down between $1500 to as much as $10,000 (if you are scrutinizing every promotion method & latest Marketing automation tools).
Pro Tip to Save on Marketing cost - It takes quite a time for a store to become visible & start gaining good returns. If you are a business run on a budget, you may save money by targeting SEO than PPC, social media & email marketing campaigns, these would be enough to drive your customer reach & engagement.
So this was a complete guide on “How much does an ecommerce website cost”. Hope you found it relevant to your budget and next eCommerce project of.
Whether you are a small-scale merchant or an established retailer, in every way, you can take full ownership of modern, integrated & usable eCommerce stores as per your budget. The eCommerce website quotations can be as basic as $15,000 (when you are just starting) and go beyond $135,000 (when your functionality needs are endless but needful to grow). You can start from as low as $20,000 and gradually scale up your eCommerce website cost/budget by adding more usable features, functionality going down the road (once you start thriving!).
It just takes zeal to start an eCommerce business, rest there are pre-defined eCommerce development solutions, professionals, custom e commerce website price plans waiting to support every dream of yours. Setting up an eCommerce store is now possible & easy, you can start with any store management platform accommodating basic paid themes & integrations or go for complete customized eCommerce design with professionals around, the choice is yours.
If looking for such professionals for the cost of e commerce website development, we are here for your rescue. Our bouquet eCommerce website design company knows how to transform your “basic needs” into “remarkable selling eCommerce shop front”.
1. How much does an ecommerce website cost?
An ecommerce website design prices range between $5000 to a maximum of $2,00,000 (depending on the project size & scope). The more the functionality and feature requirement with the product range you have, the more will be the upfront cost of e commerce website development. Get your free eCommerce website price list now!
2. How long does it take to make a low cost ecommerce website?
Timeline to create a low cost ecommerce website can be somewhere between 3-6 months --- depending on the intensity of the project, the features, and product range. However, a project with more complex features & no. of product range may take up to 6-9 months or more to develop. Would you like to know how much time your eCommerce store would take? Let’s start with our free ecommerce website price list!
3. What factors influence the average cost of e commerce websites?
Here are the few factors which influences the average cost of e commerce website:
There are so many other factors behind the scene that in some way or other define the average cost of e commerce websites. Would you like to look at our flexible eCommerce website price list?
Hope you liked this article. If so, leave down your opinions about how you can relate to these aforementioned eCommerce website costs. And what is your preference in terms of hiring an eCommerce website development agency and self-owned developers?
Interested in our Web Design & Development Services?
P
It was a really good read. I know it is not possible to state possible figures for eCommerce. But this estimated range is quite enough for anyone to set their budget.
J
Thanks for sharing this blog. I recently started with an eCommerce business and had a basic website developed, the cost was a little up from what you stated in the cost for small businesses. I have realized you can have either a cheap or a costly website developed, it’s up to you what you want.
P
Thanks, me and my team were looking for someone who could help us evaluate our eCommerce project cost, and there we found you out. We would like to look into your eCommerce pricing plans, if possible.
O
Great article, can really relate with the information you shared. Saying this from my personal experience. I have consulted the multiple quotes & I could find similar prices only.
B
I think it is best to employ a design firm over freelancers. No hard feeling for freelancers though but eCommerce is a complex setup and should be done by the experienced professionals only. Just my opinion.
L
Even when we had our eCommerce store built with basic features, it did take us quite 4 months to have it made. Yes making an eCommerce store is a long process but surely is worth it. Btw nice article, can really relate with the price & timeline you mentioned.
C
Do you guys cover hosting and maintenance charges in the final eCommerce quotes only, or these come as additional overheads?
M
I am looking forward to setting up a multi-product line. Nothing as big as Amazon, but yeah similar to that. Would love to connect with your team and know what my project estimates would be. And thanks for such great information.
H
I have always loved the information you share. Again it was a good piece, you did explain the website ‘s price so well.
P
There are so many free themes over these management systems, are they worth it? Should we go for those templates or do consult paid themes?