"How much does an online store cost?" has the same problem as "how much does a house cost?" It depends entirely on what you are building. But there are recognisable tiers, and once you know which one you are in, budgeting becomes much easier.
The tiers
Tier 1: template store. Shopify or WooCommerce with a premium theme, light customisation of colours, fonts and layout, standard checkout, up to a few hundred products loaded from a spreadsheet. Suits a new brand or a small product range. This is the low end of the market, typically a few thousand pounds when done by an agency, less if you do much of it yourself.
Tier 2: custom-designed store. Bespoke design, custom page templates, a properly planned product structure, conversion-focused checkout, email flows, SEO setup, integrations with accounts and courier, migration from an old store with redirects. This is where most established UK brands sit, and where the range is widest because scope varies.
Tier 3: complex or headless. B2B portals with trade pricing and account terms, product configurators, multi-currency and multi-language, headless front ends, deep ERP integration. Larger budgets, longer timelines, and usually a phased build.
What drives the price
- Design. Template versus bespoke, and how many rounds of revision.
- Products. 50 products with clean data is quick. 5,000 with variants and missing images is not.
- Migration. Moving from an old platform means products, customers, orders and, critically, URL redirects to protect search rankings.
- Integrations. Accounts, stock, ERP, courier, marketplaces. Each one is a piece of work. See what is system integration.
- Special features. Subscriptions, B2B pricing, configurators, bookings, multi-currency.
- Content. Product descriptions, photography and page copy, if you need them written or produced.
Ongoing costs to budget for
The build is a one-off. These are not:
- Platform fees. Shopify subscription and any transaction fees, or hosting for WooCommerce.
- Apps and plugins. Reviews, email marketing, subscriptions, search. Small monthly fees add up.
- Payment processing. A percentage of every sale, whichever gateway you use. See payment gateways compared.
- Maintenance. Updates, security, backups, small changes. More for WooCommerce than Shopify.
- Marketing. The store does nothing without traffic. Budget for SEO, ads or email from launch. Our SEO for small business and Google Ads cost guides will help.
How to get comparable quotes
Write a brief. List your products (roughly how many, with variants or not), your must-have features, the systems the store needs to connect to, whether you are migrating, and what you want to happen after launch. Send the same brief to each agency. Our guide to writing a software brief works for stores too.
Then compare what is included, not just the total. Design rounds, product upload, migration, redirects, training, warranty and support are the usual gaps.
Platform choice affects cost
Shopify projects tend to be faster and more predictable. WooCommerce projects offer more control but usually need more ongoing maintenance. We compare them in Shopify vs WooCommerce for UK businesses.
Getting a number for your store
We quote every store individually after a free discovery call, and the quote is fixed for the agreed scope. Read about our eCommerce service or request a quote.
Key takeaways
- A template store on Shopify or WooCommerce with light customisation sits at the low end; a custom-designed store in the middle; headless or complex B2B at the top.
- The main cost drivers are design, integrations, migration from an old store and the number of products.
- Ongoing costs (platform, apps, hosting, maintenance, marketing) matter as much as the build.
- Get quotes against a written brief so you are comparing the same thing.
Frequently asked questions
Need help with ecommerce development?
eSolution Hub is a UK company with its own engineering team in Lahore. Every project starts with a free 30 minute discovery call and a written quote. Read about our ecommerce development service or request a quote.
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