eCommerce Cost for Website Design and Development in 2020

How the Choice of Platform Affects eCommerce Cost
Start Selling on TemplateMonster
Final Thoughts on eCommerce Cost

Currently, many people have appreciated the advantages of Internet technologies. Online shopping is one of those significant advantages we love so much. From a technical perspective, opening an online store means publishing a site with photos and descriptions of products that users can add to the cart and order. Well, it sounds quick and easy, does not it? But the web shop's effective functioning is possible if all the project elements are in complete harmony and strict according to the business plan. Many various factors matter and eCommerce cost for website design are on every entrepreneur's mind.

How much does an eCommerce website cost? An online store is an analog of a physical retail shop but in a digital environment. When you open a brick-and-mortar shop, you rent a room, make repairs, buy equipment, hire staff, run advertising campaigns, and so on. In the online version, expense items are similar. When dealing with a webshop, you are busy choosing a convenient platform, reliable hosting, attractive web design, etc.

eCommerce price of a website is a tricky moment since it depends on many factors. For an adequate assessment of an Internet resource's cost, you need to consider many parameters and functional features of the site. What business goals you have, which platform you prefer, how intricate your web design and functionality should be - all these issues matter a lot. Let's shed some light on this matter and check the cost of building a commercial web resource based on the most popular platforms.

How the Choice of Platform Affects eCommerce Cost

Its convenience and capabilities determine the popularity of each platform. At the moment, there are more than 1500 platforms available on the market. But of course, there are leaders among the platforms. First, you need to know about the industry leaders, evaluate their strengths and weaknesses, and get an idea of your eCommerce website cost. Let's go.

Shopify

Price: Starts from $29/month

Free 14-day trial period

If you are taking your first steps in online trading or getting a small and profitable online store, then the Shopify platform is the right solution. Many business owners like this beautiful and convenient CMS, making it possible to start a business online and improve an already successful offline project. There is no need to worry about hosting since you will get an unlimited one with the package.

Shopify store offers an excellent choice of free and premium responsive themes. If you are interested in 3-rd party ready-made Shopify themes, you will need to be ready to pay $100-$160. You will get fully responsive, SEO-friendly, and advanced feature-rich items. In case you are a fan of a unique custom design, your paycheck may rise to $20.000.

OpenCart

Price: Open-source and free

OpenCart is a simple and intuitive system designed for users who cannot boast of any programming skills. It is ideal for running webshops as the functionality was originally crafted for commerce. OpenCart's popularity is associated with accessibility, simplicity, and useful functionality for small and mid-size projects. You can download OpenCart for free on the official website of the company. All updates come for free, so we recommend updating it promptly to work effectively.

Free hosting is not suitable for OpenCart stores. Attempts to save money on hosting will lead to the fact that the site will work slowly. Therefore, choosing the right hosting for your site will make your business much more efficient. The average cost is $10-$250 per month.

Anyone can customize and extend web store functionality using ready-made templates, modules, and plugins. Pay attention to OpenCart themes as a perfect solution to build a site with no hassle. They come with modern design, high-customization opportunities, and easy installation. Expect the eCommerce price range from $67 to $100 per item. Those who prefer custom website design should be ready to spend $10.000-$20.000.

PrestaShop

Price: Open-source and free

Due to the multi-language support, open-source, and quite feature-rich functionality, PrestaShop webshops look excellent and work quickly. PrestaShop uses the Open Software License, so basically, it is free. Note that at the stage of installing the theme and selecting modules, the financial eCommerce costs increase significantly. A quick and convenient hosting provider will charge you from $3 to $200 per month.

When creating a large functional store, you should expect expenses for a large number of modules. From this point of view, PrestaShop is not so popular as competitive platforms. Still, the market offers a great choice of PrestaShop themes that include premium add-ons, modern layouts, and professional technical support. Be ready to pay $75-$160 on average.

WooCommerce (WordPress eCommerce)

Price: Free plugin

WordPress is a well-known CMS tested by millions of users with proven effectiveness. The authority and usefulness of the system have no doubts. WooCommerce plugin is a WordPress add-on, not a standalone platform. The plugin contains all the necessary elements for the store: product cards, order forms, etc.

Note that poor hosting will destroy the speed of the lightest and most optimized site. eCommerce price for hosting starts from $8 per month and depends on your web shop's size and functionality. Among the tariffs are both inexpensive, high-speed, and powerful, and those to cope with high load and traffic.

High-quality design and individual themes will fully meet your requirements, but if your budget is limited, it is better to pick up a quality, ready-made solution. WooCommerce themes are a perfect choice to launch your website with no hassle. TemplateMonster marketplace offers beautiful ready-made solutions at $70-$130 per item.

Magento

Price: Open-source and free

Websites of international brands actively use this platform as this CMS is excellent for large projects and extensive online resources. Community Edition is free to download. The installation will cost several thousand dollars, and you will need to renew the license every year. Thanks to the almost inexhaustible tools, this platform allows you to develop ideal sites for online stores.

Magento is suitable for companies with more than 500 products looking for a powerful and full-fledged platform in the long term. This solution gives you complete freedom in personalization and access to the developer forum. Magento themes are available at $70-$200. Top-rated hosting providers support Magento stores and offer their plans starting from $5 depending on the package. Custom eCommerce website design will start from $10.000 and up.

VirtueMart

Price: Open-source and free

VirtueMart is a Joomla CMS extension specifically designed for creating, organizing, and running an online store. VirtueMart allows you to create a webshop of any subject for the sale of any real goods. You can download the latest version of the component, localization, and additional modules and plugins for VirtueMart on the official website.

One of the disadvantages is the ‘slowness’ of the work. If you decide to use VirtueMart, choose a reliable paid hosting service; otherwise, your online store will work quite slowly. Hosting providers offer their plans starting from $7 and up depending on the package.

When talking about eCommerce website design cost, VirtueMart templates are an excellent catch. On average, a premium template will cost you $100-$150 per item. Each solution is crafted by professional designers following all the modern web development tendencies.

ZenCart

Price: Free and open-source shopping cart software

If the main thing for you is advanced product management functions, then this platform will suit you. Users can create discounts, special offers and monitor the availability of products in stock. This open-source platform has more than 150000 members in the developer community. ZenCart works with any hosting company; you need to evaluate the strengths, weaknesses, and expectations to choose the best one. The minimum price starts from $3 per month.

For a unique web design, you need to develop your design layout or contact a specialized company. Creating your design requires experience in PHP, HTML, and JavaScript programming. Well, ZenCart templates are here to help to simplify this process for you. Be ready to spend $65-$140 for a professional template optimized for Zen Cart engine functionality. They are well-documented and feature a dropdown category module, HTML banners, social icons, etc.

MotoCMS eCommerce

Price: $49/month for an annual subscription

Free 14-day trial period

MotoCMS is a SaaS platform for creating online stores. The website constructor provides a user with flexible SEO settings, including language and regional attributes setup, selecting URL indexing priorities in the site map, and enabling an external file sitemap.xml, settings for permalinks, etc.

You can use MotoCMS eCommerce for free, but you need to buy a MotoCMS template for $119 on average with no subscription. Are you looking for website building interface updates? Then you should purchase a monthly subscription for $60 or an annual subscription at $49 per month. The template support is guaranteed for one year from the date of purchase. Moreover, you need to choose any local trusted hosting provider if hosting services are not included in your MotoCMS premium subscription plan. $3.95 is the minimum cost of hosting services you will need to pay per month.

BigCommerce

Price: Starts from $29.95/month

Free 15-day trial period

BigCommerce is a universal eCommerce platform with many useful features that make it easy to create and maintain an online store. It offers users a complete set of tools for creating online shops. Payment gateway integration, advanced marketing tools, reliable hosting, and security to support the web resource are among the benefits.

The user does not need to buy hosting, domain, understand programming, or design. All you need to do is register, choose the necessary subscription plan, and a suitable online store template. Premium BigCommerce themes will cost you $150-$180 per item. Built-in HTML, CSS, and Javascript, the ready-made themes are fully responsive and SEO-friendly.

____

It does not matter which platform is your perfect choice; you should still keep in mind the following expenses if you decide to go ahead with any additional services:

The website installation service starts at $49.
Setup services are offered from $99 to $800.
You can hire a developer per hour (2-5-10-hour packages are available at $49-$99-$179, respectively) to implement any web development ideas.
On page SEO services are available at $149-$499 depending on the package.
Social media brand building service will cost you $75.

Check out the prices for more popular services to get a better idea about eCommerce website costs.

A site is not just a platform where you can sell products. This is your real store, so it must be well-designed, convenient, and built with the modern technical requirements in mind.

As you can see, it is complicated to give a clear answer to the question, ‘How much does it cost to start an eCommerce business?’. Let’s break down and calculate the critical expenses (avoiding marketing costs) for traditional eCommerce.

	Small project	Mid project	Large custom project
License	< $500	< $1000 - $5,000	> $5,000
Hosting (monthly)	$350	$500	$1,000-$2,000+
Design	< $3,000	$5,000 – $10,000	$10,000-$150,000+
Development	< $500	$2,000 – $5,000	$10,000 – $150,000+
Setup	< $3,000	$2,000 – $5,000	$2,000 – $10,000+
Monthly maintenance	$500+	$1,000 – $2,000	$2,000 – $5,000+
Total	< $11,000	$15,500 – $29,000	$30,500 – $422,000+

Here you can see the prices of ready-made website templates by the CMS we discussed.

CMS	Min	Ave	Max	Dev’s price per hour
Shopify	$118	$139	$160	2 hours - $49; 5 hours - $99; 10 hours - $179
OpenCart	$67	$91	$91	2 hours - $49; 5 hours - $99; 10 hours - $179
PrestaShop	$75	$139	$160	2 hours - $49; 5 hours - $99; 10 hours - $179
WooCommerce	$70	$94	$127	2 hours - $49; 5 hours - $99; 10 hours - $179
Magento	$68	$179	$180	2 hours - $49; 5 hours - $99; 10 hours - $179
VirtueMart	$89	$139	$140	2 hours - $49; 5 hours - $99; 10 hours - $179
ZenCart	$64	$139	$140	2 hours - $49; 5 hours - $99; 10 hours - $179
MotoCMS Ecommerce	$119	$119	$119	2 hours - $49; 5 hours - $99; 10 hours - $179
BigCommerce	$152	$152	$179	2 hours - $49; 5 hours - $99; 10 hours - $179

Start Selling on TemplateMonster

eCommerce website design cost is affordable enough if you go with the TemplateMonster marketplace. TemplateMonster provides webmasters with ready-made, professional site templates, allowing you to launch web projects with no advanced technical skills quickly. The marketplace’s collection has many products that are suitable for small companies, startups, and large ones in any niche.

Become an Author

If you design eCommerce templates, you can join the community and become an author of the marketplace. Despite the growing popularity of marketplaces, owners of micro and small companies often do not consider this option for themselves. Try your skills and become a member of the community! The price range for a website template starts at $67 minimum and reaches the maximum at $180, depending on the platform.

When a product is developed, it is essential to correctly go through one of the last stages and set the new product's selling price. What parameters affect the eCommerce cost of your website template? Here are a few criteria to keep in mind:

Check the average price level for the industry. If your price is significantly higher or lower than the competitors' one, you will either have to change your profit expectations or look for ways to minimize your expenses.
Evaluate a unique feature set of your products. Check out the item's functional peculiarities and decide if they are competitive enough to play with the price.
Calculate the expenses you had when working on a template - count the number of working hours, and the funds spent on premium digital items for the template.

Learn more about how to set a price for your templates and increase your profit. Today, any author can decide on the price and whether to sell items exclusively or non-exclusively.

Whether you produce and sell Shopify themes or any other eCommerce solutions, do not hesitate to create your account at templatemonster.com. Add your personal information along with the project uploaded, and wait for the marketplace experts’ feedback. Complete these simple steps to start getting a stable income right now. The site has an audience of 2 million people per month. Try this huge potential for sales and personal brand development.

Final Thoughts on eCommerce Cost

There are two misconceptions about online shopping. First - you do not need any financial investments to get started, so even a schoolboy will start his store. Second - opening an online store is impossible without large initial investments. The truth is somewhere in the middle.

Building an online store is a long process that requires clear goals and requirements and a specific budget. eCommerce website cost depends on a bunch of various factors. When talking about web design, the choice is limited to two options: either buy a ready-made template or develop a custom design from scratch. If you want to save on eCommerce startup costs, a pre-styled template is a perfect solution. The TemplateMonster marketplace offers beautiful collections of various website templates. Moreover, if you design the themes for online stores, you can grab numerous benefits from being an author of the TemplateMonster marketplace. If you have already tried opening your online store, please share your experience in the comments.