Ecommerce Website Cost: What You Will Really Pay to Build an Online Store
Updated: 1 day ago
✅ Reviewed by Federico Donadio
A professionally built ecommerce website costs between $4,300 and $7,850 for a small store of about 25 products. It runs around $10,000 once you add a large catalog or a POS integration, and $15,000 to $33,000 when custom code is involved. Building it yourself costs a monthly platform plan and your time. Those numbers come from the stores we build at Kendall Development. What moves you up or down that range is rarely the design. It is your catalog, your integrations, and how much SEO work the project needs.
How Much Does an Ecommerce Website Cost to Build?
Here is how ecommerce website development price breaks down by build type, based on our own projects.
Build type | Typical cost | Best fit |
DIY on a platform plan | $29 to $159+ per month on Wix | Testing an idea with little or no budget |
Professional build, Wix Editor | $4,300 to $5,000 | First store, up to 25 products |
Professional build, Wix Studio | $6,800 to $7,850 | Same scope, more advanced design |
Large catalog or POS integration | Around $10,000 | Established retailers with hundreds of products |
Custom-coded store | $15,000 to $33,000 | Custom interactions or a custom shopping experience |
Large migration with full SEO | Up to $60,000 | High-traffic stores that cannot afford to lose rankings |
For context outside our own work, Wix's cost guide puts agency and custom builds at $5,000 to $25,000 or more. If a quote lands far below that, look closely at what is missing.
What an Ecommerce Web Design Price Should Include
A number means nothing without the scope behind it. Our base ecommerce build covers:
Six pages, including the homepage and shop pages
25 products uploaded and organized
Basic SEO setup: heading structure, meta titles and descriptions, image optimization, and basic keyword research
Sales tax setup, done manually or with a third-party app
Shipping setup, usually Wix's native solution with UPS, USPS, and FedEx, or Shippo when a store needs more
Payment setup and a mobile-ready checkout
One hour of training so you can run the store yourself
A store at this scope takes 30 to 45 days to build. Each product beyond the included 25 normally adds $36.
It is a one-time fee. You hold your own Wix account and premium plan, and we do not charge monthly maintenance. I do not think an agency should control a client's hosting. If the relationship ends, your store should not be at risk.
What Really Drives Ecommerce Web Design Cost
Products, categories, and variants
In my experience, the catalog drives the price far more than the design. Every product needs photos, a description, a category, and often variants like size or color. A store with 25 simple products and a store with 700 products across dozens of subcategories are different projects. That is why we price extra products individually, normally $36 each, instead of guessing at a flat number.
Design scope
On most stores we design the homepage and one or two dedicated landing pages. Product and category pages follow a consistent layout, which keeps design hours predictable. The price rises when you want custom-coded interactions on the homepage or in the shopping experience.
Integrations and custom features
Connecting a POS system, accounting software, or a shipping platform takes setup and testing. These integrations are often what makes a store easier to run, so they are usually worth the cost.
SEO scope
Basic SEO is included in every build. A migration is a different job. Moving a store that already ranks means mapping every URL, redirecting it, and protecting the traffic you have. That work can cost more than the design itself.
Two Real Projects and What They Cost
A West Palm Beach gourmet market with 700+ products synced to Square POS
Mama Bella Gourmet Market sells prepared foods, wine, and specialty groceries in store and online. We built the site on Wix Editor and connected Wix Stores to their Square POS, so products, prices, categories, and stock stay in sync. A sale in the shop lowers the stock on the website, and the reverse. Delivery, local pickup, and shipping all run through Wix.
The project cost around $10,000. The 700+ products were not the expensive part, because they already lived in the POS. The work was organizing categories and subcategories into a menu people can use, setting up the POS connection, and optimizing product images and SEO. A large catalog nobody can find their way through gets traffic and no sales.
A 400+ product WordPress migration for a Colorado seed retailer
This store had more than 400 products and over 20,000 monthly visitors in high season. Moving it from WordPress to Wix was like surgery, because every ranking page had to survive the move.
The total was close to $60,000. Only $6,000 of that was design. The other $54,000 was migration and SEO work. The following season, the store's conversion rate rose by more than 120%. That is one project, not a promise, but it shows where the money goes on a migration.
The Costs Most Ecommerce Quotes Leave Out
The mistake I see most often is a quote that covers design and product upload and nothing else. Nobody tells the owner about the costs below until the store is live.
Cost | What to expect |
Platform plan | $29 to $159+ per month on Wix |
Payment processing | Around 2.9% plus $0.30 per transaction with most processors |
Platform transaction fees | Shopify adds 2% on its Basic plan, dropping to 0.2% on Plus, when you use an outside gateway. Wix does not add a fee of its own |
Apps | Growing Shopify stores often budget $50 to $200 a month |
Shipping | Carrier rates, labels, packaging, and who absorbs the cost |
Sales tax | Setup time or a tax app subscription |
Chargebacks and payouts | Dispute fees and the delay between a sale and money in your account |
Later changes | We bill by task, usually $85 to $300 an hour |
This is why we spend time teaching clients how shipping settings, payouts, and chargebacks work. You should be able to fix a simple issue without calling us.
Wix vs. Shopify vs. WooCommerce: How the Platform Changes the Price
Feature | Wix | Shopify | WooCommerce |
Best for | Small and mid-size stores that also need a full website and business tools | High-volume, ecommerce-only selling | Owners with a developer on call |
Design | Full drag-and-drop freedom | Structured themes, easy to swap | Depends on theme and developer |
Starting plan | $29 per month to sell | $39 per month, or $29 billed annually | Free plugin, but you pay for hosting, security, and extensions |
Catalog size | Up to 50,000 products | Built for very large catalogs | Depends on hosting |
Apps | 800+ apps, with more built in | 8,000+ apps | Large plugin library |
Upkeep | Handled by the platform | Handled by the platform | Yours to manage |
We build exclusively on Wix, so weigh my opinion with that in mind. Wix and Shopify serve different purposes. Shopify is built purely for selling and handles huge inventories and global scale well. Wix is an all-around platform where you manage the website and much of the business in one place: orders, customers, stock, email campaigns, and invoicing, with AI tools built in. Shopify also includes a built-in AI assistant, so the difference I see is how much of the marketing and operations stack comes included before you start paying for apps.
Both checkouts are among the best optimized on the market. Where I find Wix stronger is SEO control and design freedom. BuiltWith counts close to 5.9 million live Shopify sites, more than 3.1 million of them in the United States. When that many stores start from the same themes, standing out takes real design work.
For a small or mid-size store, I no longer recommend WordPress with WooCommerce. Developers will tell you it is secure when it is well maintained, and they are right. The problem is that someone has to do that maintaining, and Wix and Shopify handle it for you.
When DIY Makes Sense and When to Hire
DIY is the right call when you are testing a new idea and have almost no budget. If you have $1,000, do not spend it on a designer. Build the store yourself and put that money into local ads to find out whether people want the product.
Hire a professional when the business is real and you have a budget set aside for the build. You are paying for the guidance as much as the store: shipping, taxes, payments, SEO, and the mistakes you will not have to make.
There is also a middle path for technical owners. You can build a custom front end with Claude Code on top of Wix Headless and let Wix run the ecommerce back end. It takes more skill than a template, but the store's operations stay secure and managed.
How to Compare Ecommerce Web Design Pricing Between Agencies
A $2,000 quote and a $20,000 quote are almost never pricing the same project. Ask each agency:
How many products, categories, and variants are included, and what does each extra one cost?
Who sets up shipping, sales tax, and payments?
What SEO work is included, and are redirects covered if I am migrating?
Who owns the hosting account, the domain, and the store?
Is there a monthly maintenance fee, and what does it cover?
Is training included?
What do changes cost after launch?
What I usually see is that the cheapest ecommerce website design price leaves out items two through four.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does an ecommerce website cost per month?
After the build, expect a platform plan, payment processing fees on each sale, and any apps you add. On Wix that starts around $29 a month plus processing. We do not charge a maintenance fee on top.
How long does it take to build an ecommerce website?
A store with about 25 products takes us 30 to 45 days. Larger catalogs, integrations like a POS system, and migrations add time.
Is it cheaper to build an ecommerce website myself?
Yes, upfront. You pay only the platform plan. The cost shows up later if shipping, taxes, or SEO are set up wrong, so DIY works best for testing an idea.
Do I own my ecommerce website after it is built?
You should. Confirm that the platform account, domain, and hosting are in your name. With us, you hold the Wix account from day one.
How much does it cost to migrate an online store?
It depends on how much search traffic you need to protect. Design is usually the smaller part. On our largest migration, design was $6,000 of a $60,000 project.
Is Wix good enough for a serious online store?
For most small and mid-size stores, yes. Wix supports up to 50,000 products, and we have built stores with 700+ products and live POS sync on it. If you need massive inventory and global multi-currency selling, Shopify is the better fit.
Getting an Accurate Price for Your Store
The fastest way to a real number is to share four things: how many products and variants you have, what platform you are on now, which systems the store has to connect to, and how much traffic you need to protect. With that, we can tell you where you land in the ranges above and what is driving it.
Book a Free Discovery Call and we will walk through it with you.
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