Short version
Short answer: having an online store built generally runs from about €1,500 for a simple shop on a hosted platform with a standard theme to €25,000 and beyond for custom work with integrations. The number means little without the question behind it: what are you selling, how do customers order, and which systems need to connect? This guide walks through the market segments, what drives each price, and the costs that only show up in year two.
Ask ten agencies what an online store costs and you’ll get ten answers spread across tens of thousands. The strange part: none of them are lying. One shop puts a standard theme on Shopify and calls it a store; another builds an ordering platform around your inventory and accounting systems. That’s the difference between a bicycle and a delivery van, with matching price tags.
This article is the market guide I also wrote for what a website costs, now aimed at online stores: which segments exist, what drives each price, and which line items show up later. As with that guide: Straffe Sites doesn’t publish its own rates, because every store has its own scope. If you want a concrete number, a proposal after a real intake beats any average.
The short answer: market prices per segment
These are the ranges you’ll encounter in the market in 2026. Not a price list, a map for reading quotes.
| Segment | Market range | Fits | Watch out for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Build it yourself on a platform | €0–€500 per year plus your time | First test, small catalog, no revenue yet | You pay in hours; design, SEO and integrations stay with you |
| Template store from a starter | €1,500–€5,000 | Manageable catalog, standard checkout | Standard theme, limited freedom in brand and structure |
| Professional platform store | €5,000–€15,000 | Serious sales ambition, own look, UX focus | Apps and transaction fees keep running after launch |
| Custom online store | €15,000–€40,000 | Specific ordering flows, integrations without connectors | Ask about exit options and documentation |
| Complex platform or B2B portal | €40,000 and up | Multilingual, multichannel, ERP and inventory integrations | Only worth it if the store is the core of your operation |
Two things I keep seeing in practice. First: the step from segment two to three buys you attention more than anything. Anyone can install a theme; building a store where visitors understand what they’re buying is a different job. Second: the most expensive stores that cross my desk are the ones that started twice. A €3,000 wrong platform choice eventually costs €20,000 in rebuilds.
What drives the price of your online store?
Four factors do the heaviest lifting, in order of impact.
Catalog and structure. A hundred products in three categories is a different assignment than five thousand products with variants, filters, and per-location stock. Every extra layer in your checkout asks for design, build, and testing on every device your customers use.
Integrations. Accounting, shipping, inventory, an ERP system, a marketplace: as long as a ready-made connector exists, a platform is strong. When it doesn’t, the work shifts from configuring to building, and that shows in the price.
Design and brand. Going with a standard theme is the cheapest route and often fine. If you want the store to feel like your shop, with its own category pages and an ordering flow that matches how your customers choose, that’s design and engineering work.
Content and data. Someone has to write product copy, deliver photos, and think through categories. If you do that yourself, it takes a solid chunk off the build price. If the builder supplies it, it’s a full line item on the quote.
The cost structure behind the price
An online store isn’t a one-time purchase; it’s an ongoing operation. These are the items that keep running after launch.
- Platform or license. A SaaS subscription like Shopify is paid monthly; WooCommerce’s software is free but runs on hosting you arrange.
- Transaction fees. Your payment provider charges a fixed amount plus a percentage per payment. At a thousand orders a month, that’s a structural cost, not a detail.
- Apps and plugins. Platforms live on apps for reviews, email, shipping labels, upsells. One app is nothing; twenty apps is a second subscription stack that grows quietly.
- Hosting and domain. With WooCommerce and custom builds you pay for web hosting yourself; with SaaS it’s inside the subscription. The real difference is who’s responsible when things break.
- Maintenance. Updates, backups, security, small improvements. More on what that involves in the guide on website maintenance.
So always calculate an online store over two or three years. A €4,000 store with €300 a month in subscriptions, apps, and transaction fees costs more over three years than it sounds.
What you supply yourself (and why it cuts the price)
The build is half the work; the other half sits with you. Clean product data, photos that don’t each need editing, categories that make sense: those are hours the builder doesn’t spend and therefore doesn’t invoice.
In our projects we use AI agents to lighten that preparation: normalizing product data, drafting category proposals, setting up copy in your own voice. The agents do the repetitive work; people do the selection and the final check. That keeps build time within bounds without the store ending up generic.
Hidden costs: where quotes run over
Three items rarely sit at the top of the quote and show up anyway.
Migrating your current store. Moving existing products, customers, and orders is work, especially when the old export is messy. Ask up front what gets migrated and what’s manual.
The year-two apps. Platforms start cheap and grow with your usage. What begins as three handy apps is a stack of subscriptions you can’t miss after two years. Note down what each app costs and what it earns.
Rebuilding after the wrong choice. The biggest hidden cost there is. A store on the wrong platform doesn’t just move; you mostly rebuild it. That’s why “what does an online store cost?” is always followed by “what does the store that fits you cost?”.
Doing it yourself, outsourcing, or hybrid
The honest triangle looks like this. Building yourself works with a platform and patience; you pay in time and the store looks like the theme. Fully outsourcing gets you a store that matches how you sell, at the investment in the table above. The hybrid route — platform as the base, bottlenecks solved separately — is often the calmest in practice: you only buy custom work where it’s genuinely needed. Not sure you’re ready for an online store at all? Start with the broader question behind having a website built: without sales ambitions, a good informational site is often the better investment.
If you’re unsure about the platform choice itself, start with the question of what you sell and how you work today. More on how an online store project runs at Straffe Sites, from intake to management, is at e-commerce websites.
Conclusion
What an online store costs doesn’t hang on an average but on your catalog, your ordering flow, and your integrations. The ranges above help you read quotes; the cost structure helps you estimate the total bill over three years. The best thing you can bring to a conversation with a builder isn’t a number — it’s an honest picture of what you sell and how you work today. With that picture, a custom online store becomes a decision instead of a gamble.