Key takeaways
- Design finishes in days. Adding products takes weeks, and it is the line item nearly every quote omits.
- Payment processing is the only cost that grows with success. Model it at your real volume.
- Quotes differ mostly on scope, not skill. Ask what happens in week two after launch.
- Cheaper up front usually means you own less: the platform sets the terms.
Three quotes for "an online store" can read $0, $2,500 and $30,000. All three are honest. They are describing different things, and the brief rarely makes clear which one you actually need.
The four levels, and what you get
Do it yourself on a hosted platform
Up front: nothing beyond a subscription. Ongoing: monthly fee plus transaction fees.
A template, configured by you. This genuinely works, and plenty of real businesses run on it for years. The honest tradeoffs: your store will resemble others using the same template, you are subject to the platform's terms and pricing changes, and every hour you spend configuring is an hour not spent selling.
A freelancer
Up front: typically a few hundred to a few thousand.
Someone configures a theme properly, sets up payments and shipping, and hands it over. Good value when the brief is genuinely "a decent store", which is most briefs.
The risk is continuity. Ask what happens when you need a change in six months, because the answer is frequently that the freelancer has moved on and the next person has to learn what was built.
An agency build
Up front: five figures.
Custom design, custom templates, integrations with whatever you already run, content, testing, and someone accountable after launch. Worth it when the store is the business rather than a channel, or when it has to talk to an ERP, a POS or a warehouse system.
Custom platform
Up front: six figures and up.
Almost nobody needs this. It is for genuinely unusual commerce models that no existing platform expresses. If someone proposes it for a normal catalogue of physical products, get another opinion.
| DIY | Freelancer | Agency | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Time to launch | Weeks, your time | 1 to 4 weeks | 6 to 16 weeks |
| Looks distinctive | No | Somewhat | Yes |
| Someone accountable after launch | No | Sometimes | Yes |
| Integrations | Off-the-shelf only | Limited | Yes |
| Products entered for you | No | Rarely | Sometimes |
The line item almost everyone forgets
Look at the last row of that table.
Design and build finish quickly. What takes weeks is putting products in: titles, descriptions, prices, images, variants, categories, stock. A 2,000 product catalogue entered by hand is not a task, it is a month, and it is almost never in the quote.
This is why so many stores sit at "nearly ready" for a quarter. The site is finished. The shelves are empty, and stocking them is nobody's job.
Ask explicitly: who is entering the products, and is it in this price? If the answer is "you send us a spreadsheet", find out who is making the spreadsheet. That is usually the largest single block of hours in the whole project, and it is the most easily automated.
It is also the part that does not need to be manual. A supplier or existing catalogue can be read and imported in minutes rather than weeks, which is covered in how to stock a new store in under an hour.
Launch stocked, not empty
We build the store and populate it from your supplier's catalogue before handover, so what you receive is a shop rather than a theme.
What it costs after launch
The build is the visible number. These are the ones that continue:
| Cost | Typical shape | Grows with sales? |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting | Monthly, modest | Slowly |
| Domain | Annual, small | No |
| Platform subscription | Monthly | Tiered |
| Payment processing | Percentage of every sale | Directly |
| Paid plugins or apps | Monthly, accumulates | Sometimes |
| Maintenance and updates | Monthly or ad hoc | No |
| Keeping the catalogue current | Time or subscription | With catalogue size |
Payment processing is the one to model properly. A percentage sounds trivial next to a build fee, but it is the only line that scales directly with success, and at volume it dwarfs everything else on this list. Work it out at your expected turnover before choosing a platform, not after.
If you are in a restricted category, solve payments before you commission a build, for reasons covered in moving your store fast when a platform shuts you down. A finished store you cannot take money on is worse than no store.
What to ask before you sign
- Who enters the products, and is it in this price? The biggest hidden block of hours.
- What happens in week two? Is a fix included, billed hourly, or not offered?
- Who owns the code and the hosting account? It should be you.
- What is the monthly cost at my expected volume? Including processing fees, not just subscriptions.
- What is explicitly not included? The fastest way to make two quotes comparable.
The honest summary
For most people starting out, a well-configured store on an established platform, with the catalogue imported rather than typed, is the right answer. It launches in days, costs a fraction of a custom build, and can be replaced later once you know what your business actually needs.
Spend the money you save on traffic. A modest store with customers beats a beautiful one without them, and you can always rebuild a store that is making money.