How Much Does an Online Shop Cost? An Honest Guide

Ask three people to quote for an online shop and you can get three numbers thousands of pounds apart, with nobody explaining the difference. Here it is: what a shop really costs, what pushes the price up, and what we charge, with numbers.

The short answer

• Do it yourself on Shopify: from £19 a month on the Basic plan billed annually, plus a theme, paid apps and your own hours.
• A freelancer: from around £1,000, with hosting and maintenance usually on top.
• An agency: £3,000 to £8,000 or more, plus a monthly support fee.
• With us: if a catalogue with WhatsApp orders is enough, it is a website from £49 a month plus £150-£300 setup; if you need a real shop, a fixed written quote before any work starts.

And one question worth asking before you request a single quote: whether you actually need a shop. Plenty of businesses sell perfectly well from a normal website with orders over WhatsApp, for a lot less money.

How much does an online shop cost?

There are three ways to get one, and each costs something very different. These are rough market prices, so you can compare the quotes you get:

• Build it yourself on Shopify, Wix or WooCommerce. The cheapest option on paper: Shopify's Basic plan is £19 a month billed annually, or £25 month to month, plus whatever theme and paid apps you add. What does not appear on the invoice is your time: loading products, setting up payments and delivery, and writing the legal pages.
• Hire a freelancer. A basic online shop starts around £1,000, with hosting and maintenance usually on top.
• Hire an agency. Anywhere from £3,000 to £8,000 or more, plus a monthly support fee. You get a team behind you, but it is a lot of money for a small business.

Then add what it costs to keep the shop open: hosting, maintenance and a fee on every sale. Stripe, for example, charges 1.5% + 20p per standard UK card payment. A shop is not a one-off cost; it is a job that carries on every month. We break down the running costs of any website in the real annual cost of running a website.

What pushes the price up

When two quotes for "an online shop" are thousands apart, it is almost always down to these five things:

• The catalogue. Ten products with the photos already taken is a different job from three hundred in several sizes and colours. Every variant is a listing that has to be created, photographed, described and kept up to date. If you are not doing the photos and descriptions yourself, they go in the quote too.
• Payments. Card, PayPal, Apple Pay or bank transfer: every method is one more integration and a different fee.
• Delivery. Click and collect or your own local delivery is the simplest thing to set up. Nationwide shipping with rates by weight and zone is not, and shipping abroad brings customs and tax rules of its own.
• Connections to other software. Syncing stock with your shop till, passing orders to your accounting software, or selling on Amazon as well. Each connection is work, and sometimes another monthly fee.
• Languages. A shop in two languages doubles the product listings, the legal pages and the order emails.

And one part is not optional: the legal side. Selling online adds terms of sale, a delivery and returns policy, and the 14-day right to cancel that consumers buying online get in the UK and the EU.

Do you need an online shop, or just a website?

An online shop earns its keep when you sell products people buy without needing to talk to you first: a deli shipping speciality food, a boutique with its own stock, a shop with a catalogue people browse and add to a basket. If your customers want to pay and check out on their own, at any hour, a shop is the right tool.

If you sell a service (an electrician, a hairdresser, a builder, a restaurant, an accountant), you almost never need a checkout. Nobody puts a bathroom renovation in a basket; a renovation firm needs a portfolio and a quote request, which is what a renovation company's website is for. Your customer wants to see that you are trustworthy, understand what you offer and get in touch. For that, a clear website with an easy enquiry or booking button beats a shop every time, and costs a lot less: see what a small business website costs.

And if you sell products, but only a few or only now and then, there are lighter options before you build a full shop:

• A catalogue with orders by WhatsApp or a form. Show your products on your website and let people order with a message. No checkout, no card fees, no stock system. For a bakery that lives on cake orders, that is all it takes.
• A payment link. For one or two products, or to take a deposit, a payment link from Stripe or your bank does the job without a full shop.
• Catalogue first, shop later. Show what you sell, see how many people ask, and add the basket and checkout when the volume justifies it.

A good website can grow into a shop when you are ready. It is far easier to add a checkout to a site that already works than to rescue a shop that was overbuilt from day one.

What it costs with us

We build simple online shops, with a catalogue, payments, delivery and order management, as part of our small business web design service. And we tell you in numbers what you need, even when the answer is the cheaper option:

• If a catalogue with WhatsApp orders is enough, that is a website, priced as a website: from £49 a month plus £150-£300 setup, with design, domain, hosting, maintenance and changes included. No long contract, and you see the finished site before you pay the setup fee.
• If you need a real shop, with a basket, card payments, delivery and order management, we give you a fixed quote, in writing, before any work starts: the price we quote is the price you pay. We also tell you what costs come afterwards (payment fees, delivery and maintenance), so there are no surprises.

To put the quote together, tell us these five things:

1. What you sell and how many products, counting sizes and colours.
2. Whether you already have photos and descriptions, or they need doing.
3. How you want to take payment: card, PayPal or bank transfer.
4. How you will deliver: collection, local delivery or shipping nationwide.
5. Whether you need it in a second language, and whether it has to connect to anything you already use.

Ask for your quote through the form or on WhatsApp. If we think a normal website will do, we will tell you before we sell you a shop.

Frequently asked questions

How much does a basic online shop cost?

Around £1,000 and up with a freelancer, or £3,000 to £8,000 or more with an agency, plus maintenance and a fee on every sale. Doing it yourself on Shopify costs less at first, from £19 a month, but you put in the hours. With us, a simple shop gets a fixed quote based on your catalogue, payments and delivery, and if a catalogue with WhatsApp orders is enough, it is a normal website from £49 a month.

Shopify, WooCommerce or a custom shop?

Shopify is quick to launch and there is nothing technical for you to maintain, but you pay a monthly fee and an extra fee if you do not use its own payment processor. WooCommerce has no platform fee, but it runs on WordPress and someone has to keep it updated. Custom only pays off when the standard tools do not fit the way you sell. We compare those two approaches in WordPress or a custom website.

Is Instagram or a marketplace enough instead?

They can help you sell, but you do not own them: they take a cut, change the rules or bury your reach. A website or shop you control is an asset, and the two work best together. More on that in whether you need a website if you have Instagram.

Not sure whether you need a shop or just a good website with an order button? Tell us what you sell and we will recommend the simplest thing that works, not the most expensive.