“How much does an online store cost?” is the first question almost every business owner asks us — and the honest answer is “it depends”. That’s not very helpful when you’re planning a budget, so in this article we break the price down into parts. You’ll see typical ranges for 2026, the factors that make a store cheaper or more expensive, the costs people usually forget, and a few ways to save money without ending up with a store you’ll have to rebuild in a year.
The figures below are ballpark numbers based on our own projects and on what European and Ukrainian studios quoted this year. Your project may land higher or lower — but you’ll know why.
The short answer
Most online stores fall into one of three groups:
| Type of store | Good for | Typical budget | Timeline |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter store on a ready-made template | First online sales, up to about 100 products | $1,500–5,000 | 2–4 weeks |
| Custom-designed store | Growing brands, 100 to 5,000 products | $6,000–20,000 | 6–12 weeks |
| E-commerce platform | Wholesale, marketplaces, complex pricing and many integrations | $25,000 and up | 3–6 months |
The gap between the first and the last row isn’t about “expensive developers”. It’s about how much of the store is built around your business — and how much of your team’s work the store takes over.
What actually drives the price
Design: a template or your own
A ready-made template is the quickest way to launch. It looks decent — but so do hundreds of other stores built on it. A custom design takes longer: we study your customers, build the pages around your products and make sure the brand feels the same online as it does on your packaging. For brands that sell on emotion — cosmetics, coffee, fashion, furniture — a custom design usually pays for itself, because more visitors turn into buyers.
Catalog size and product complexity
Fifty products with one price each is a very different job from 3,000 items with sizes, colours, bundles and wholesale prices. The more filters, variants and special rules you need, the more time goes into the catalog. Product builders, personalisation (engraving, custom sizes), subscriptions and separate prices for different customer groups all add work.
Checkout, payments and delivery
Checkout is where money is made or lost. A one-page checkout, popular payment methods (cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay, pay-in-parts) and a delivery picker with real branches and prices take effort to set up, but every unnecessary step you remove means more completed orders. In Ukraine that usually means Nova Poshta and Ukrposhta; in Europe, local couriers and parcel lockers.
Connections to accounting, CRM and warehouse
This is the part that saves the most time later — and the part that most often surprises owners in the estimate. When orders go straight into your accounting system, stock updates itself and customers appear in your CRM, your team stops copying data by hand. Each connection is a small project of its own, so choose the ones that remove real manual work.
Moving from an old site
Moving products, customers, order history and search positions from an old store deserves care. Lose the old page addresses, and you can wipe out in a week the search traffic you spent years building.
Languages, currencies and markets
Selling abroad means translations, prices in several currencies, local taxes and delivery rules. Plan for it from day one, even if you launch in one country — adding it later costs more.
Costs people forget about
Launch day is only the beginning. When you plan your budget, include:
- Payment fees — usually a small percentage of each order, charged by your bank or payment provider
- Hosting, domain and security — from a few dozen to a few hundred dollars a month, depending on traffic
- Support and updates — regular updates, backups and small improvements; most stores need a few hours a month
- Photos and product descriptions — good content sells, and it’s rarely ready when the store is
- Marketing — a store without visitors is a beautiful shop on an empty street. Plan for ads, search, email and, increasingly, visibility in AI assistants
A good rule of thumb: for the first year, keep at least 20–30% of the launch budget for support, improvements and promotion.
How to save without cutting corners
- Launch with the essentials. Start with the catalog, checkout, payments and delivery. Loyalty programmes, product builders and personal accounts can come in a second stage, once you see how real customers behave.
- Don’t reinvent what already exists. Payments, delivery and email marketing all have proven ready-made services. Save custom work for what makes your business different.
- Prepare content early. Photos, descriptions and prices are often the real reason a launch slips by weeks.
- Automate the most painful task first. If a manager spends two hours a day retyping orders, that connection will pay for itself faster than any visual effect.
- Choose a system your team can run. If every price change needs a developer, you’ll pay for it every month.
Questions to ask before you sign
- What exactly is included in the price — and what isn’t?
- Will we be able to add products, change prices and run promotions ourselves?
- Who owns the store, the design and the data?
- What happens after launch: support terms, response time, monthly cost?
- How will the store connect to our accounting, CRM and delivery services?
- Can you show us a similar project and its results?
If a studio answers these clearly, you’re in good hands. If the estimate is one line with one number, ask for a breakdown.
The bottom line
A small store on a ready-made template can start selling for a few thousand dollars. A store that is built around your brand and takes over your team’s routine costs more — but it also earns more and frees up hours every week. The right question isn’t “how cheap can we go?” but “what will this store do for our sales and our time?”
Want a realistic estimate for your store? Tell us what you sell, how many products you have and which systems you already use — we’ll come back with a clear breakdown and options for different budgets. Tell us about your project — hello@daxive.com.