How much does it cost to build an e-commerce website?
How much does it cost to build an eCommerce website? You must have guessed there is not a one-size-fits-all explanation. The prices could vary from $5 thousand to above $5 million, depending on the requirements. Also, make sure that you continue to invest money to increase the experience and function when the primary development is done (in addition to marketing). It is not a proactive or successful eCommerce plan if you wait until everything is outmoded and tackle it all at once. The answer to how much it costs to build an eCommerce website is described in the article below.
The range of prices could be from around $5,000 to millions of dollars, but let’s only use $350,000 as a general first-phase overhead limit. It is recommended to break work down into manageable pieces no matter the scope, and $350k is an effortless piece, even if the total project is much more significant.
To narrow the expenses down as per your requirement, read through the major areas that impact the cost below and look at the tables at the end of this article to summarize all the amounts.
E-commerce Platforms
The licensing costs may vary considerably for a similar functioning website depending on how complicated or straightforward the platform is. If you do not need any outside help, SaaS offers $20 to $30 per month at the lowest cost. More customizable and configurable offerings like Magento Enterprise are not intended to be set up by an amateur business. You will spend $5,000.00 with a decent vendor to set it up and do the initial training configuration at the lowest price.
E-commerce Web Design
Many platforms have design galleries and themes you can apply to your site. These are cheap and quick, even if they fail to dramatically set you apart from other companies or be the perfect fit for your business. For example, assume that you will spend from $0 to $250 to buy a theme and another $1,000 to $2,000 making small changes and customizations (less than a custom design, but not just a logo change either).
For custom designing, the sky is the limit! However, depending on the process’s depth, specifics, and requirements, a custom theme might cost between $10,000 to $100,000.
Custom E-commerce Programming and Functionality
Many platforms will provide extension support or module where functionality will be added to your website, developed by someone else (for a cost much lesser than you could have designed). Make sure that you see what extensions are open to writing custom code. You have to be prepared for some extensions to be poorly implemented or written. Before recommending to clients, our company constantly evaluates extensions for security, quality, features, and support. Apart from known extensions, system development can get costly quite promptly. A good team will generate code that is entirely secure, reliable, and tested. This can be more expensive than keeping it collectively as quickly as possible. Extensions might break when you update the core system, so poor code will cost you money even if it works initially.
E-commerce Web Hosting
Hosting is more foreseeable than other variables. Ensure you check the included limits for traffic, storage, products, orders, and customers. These solutions may start inexpensive and increase in cost as your profit and needs develop. You can plan for at least $20 – $250.
Hosting for an eCommerce system will start around $300 a month for proper support and service but presumably won’t provide absolute PCI compliance. For a busy and successful website with average demands for speed, redundancy, security hosted, and scale in a grid or cloud, hosting could cost upwards of $1,000 – $2,000 a month.
Cost of an E-commerce Website
Although there is no straight answer, how much does building an eCommerce website cost? This chart will give you some idea of the linked expenses that may be relevant to your situation:
| Particulars | Small Business | Mid | Large |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hosting (monthly) | $20-$60 | $60-$150 | $150+ |
| Design | < $1,000 | $1,000-$5,000 | $1,000-$5,000 |
| Custom Development | n/a | n/a | n/a |
| Setup/Config | <$250 | $0 – $1,000 | $0 – $2,000 |
| Training | $0-$500 | $0 – $500 | $0 – $500 |
| Maintenance | n/a | n/a | n/a |
| Total Setup* | < $2,000 | < $6,500 | < $10,000 |
| Total Annual* | < $1,000 | < $1,800 | $2,000 + |
* totals do not comprise other significant items to your site’s success, such as marketing and content creation, including product descriptions and photos.
Traditional E-commerce
| Particulars | Small (small catalog, no custom programming, off-the-shelf theme, light traffic) | Mid (small catalog, light custom programming, customized theme, medium traffic) | Custom (systems integration, large catalog, custom programming, custom design, high traffic) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Licensing | < $500 | < $5,000 | $5,000 – $100,000 |
| Hosting (monthly) | $350 | $500 | $1,000-$2,000+ |
| Design | < $3,000 | $5,000 – $10,000 | $10,000-$150,000+ |
| Custom Development | < $500 | $2,000 – $5,000 | $10,000 – $150,000+ |
| Setup/Config | <$3,000 | $2,000 – $5,000 | $2,000 – $10,000+ |
| Training | $500 – $1,000 | $500 – $2,000 | $500 – $5,000+ |
| Maintenance (monthly) | $500+ | $1,000 – $2,000 | $2,000 – $5,000+ |
| Total Setup* | < $11,000 | $15,500 – $29,000 | $30,500 – $422,000+ |
| Total Annual* | < $12,000 | $18,000 – $30,000 | $36,000 – $84,000 |
* totals do not comprise other significant items to your site’s success, such as marketing and content creation containing product descriptions and photos.
