WebFebruary 03, 20267 min

Commissioning an Online Shop: Realistic Costs in 2026

1,500€ to 50,000€ — the spreads are huge. Here's an honest breakdown of what actually costs what.

Having an online shop built costs between 1,500€ and 50,000€ in 2026 — depending on ambition and platform. Anyone who doesn't understand what they're buying in that range either pays too little (and gets unusable results) or too much (and pays marketing overhead). Here's the honest breakdown.

Entry: 1,500–4,000€

Shopify theme set up, standard pages configured, simple product structure. Works for tests, dropshipping or very basic assortments. Limited in design and features.

Mid-tier: 4,000–12,000€

Customized Shopify or WooCommerce setup, multiple payment methods, shipping configuration, basic filters, SEO optimization. The right range for most SMBs.

Premium: 12,000–30,000€

Fully custom design, custom features (configurators, B2B pricing, ERP/CRM connections), performance optimization. Worthwhile when the shop targets 100k€+/year revenue.

Custom solutions: from 30,000€

Headless commerce with Next.js frontend, custom backend, multi-shop, international logic. For ambitious projects with 500k€+/year target revenue.

Don't forget recurring costs

→Hosting/platform: 0–300€/month depending on system.
→Payment fees: 1.5–3% per transaction plus fixed costs.
→Apps/plugins: 50–300€/month realistically.
→Maintenance and updates: 100–500€/month depending on complexity.
→Marketing (ads, SEO): usually the largest expense, often multiples of development cost.

Conclusion

Anyone serious about an online shop should plan for 8,000–15,000€ plus 200–500€/month recurring. Anything below is a toy, anything much above must be justified by real revenue. More on system choice in Shopify vs WooCommerce.

Web6 min