How much does a custom online shop cost? When it pays off versus a platform

To start selling online, a shop platform is almost always the best option: it is set up in days and the monthly fee is affordable. The question comes later, when the shop grows and stops fitting the way your business sells. This guide helps you compare with numbers rather than hunches.

What you pay with a platform

• The monthly plan fee, which rises with features and sometimes with sales volume.
• Commissions per sale, from the platform itself or its payment gateway.
• Paid plugins or apps for every need that isn’t included.
• Your team’s time on workarounds: exporting orders, reconciling stock, redoing settings after an update.

What you pay with a custom shop

An upfront investment to build it and a maintenance fee afterwards. In return, the shop does exactly what your business needs, with no platform commissions or chains of plugins, and the code is yours.

The features that drive the price

• Catalogue: number of products, variants (sizes, colours), personalisation or configurators.
• Pricing: price lists by customer type, volume discounts, trade sales with their own terms.
• Logistics: click and collect, several warehouses, shipping by zone or weight.
• Integrations: POS, ERP, invoicing, marketplaces or carriers.
• Payments: payment gateway, instalments, subscriptions.

Examples at today’s prices

These amounts come from the same estimator our assistant uses, with today’s rates. Use them as an order of magnitude; describe your shop to the assistant to get a fixed price for yours.

Signs a custom shop suits you

• You pay for several plugins for things your business considers basic.
• Stock in the physical shop and online doesn’t match and someone fixes it by hand.
• You sell to trade customers and the platform can’t handle their prices or terms.
• Commissions and fees add up each year to an amount comparable to building something of your own.
• Every platform update breaks something you had adapted.

How to compare properly

Add up what the platform costs you over three years (fees, commissions, plugins and team hours) and compare it with the quote for building the shop plus three years of maintenance. If the difference is small, stay on the platform; if the custom shop comes out the same or better and also solves the problems above, it is time.

How we build custom shops and applications