To promote a business, the creation of an e-commerce site is a key factor to consider. Selling online is becoming increasingly popular and has many advantages. However, in order to create a successful e-commerce site, it is important to plan an adequate budget.

What is the cost of creating and maintaining an e-commerce site?

There are two types of websites

  • showcase websites and
  • e-commerce websites.

A showcase website is designed to present products or services to attract the attention of customers, while an e-commerce site allows users to buy directly online.

E-commerce sites offer many advantages to customers, such as 24-hour online availability from anywhere, on a computer or smartphone.

Major online brands have seen an explosion in sales over the past few decades, as Amazon has shown. To boost your business considerably, create your own e-commerce site.

Creating your e-commerce site

There are several options for creating your e-commerce site: using a specialised e-commerce CMS, using an open-source CMS, or making a custom site.

CMS, or content management systems, allow you to design, manage and update your website dynamically. The best known CMS are Wix and WordPress (with woocommerce or prestashop), but there are many others, such as Shopify, Jimdo or Prestashop, which are specialised for e-commerce sites. However, if you sell many products, it is advisable to choose a customised e-commerce solution.

Advanced e-commerce solutions

To create an advanced custom website, you can opt for an open-source CMS such as Magento or Drupal, or make a custom website. Open-source CMS can be cheaper and save you time, but require a minimum of web development knowledge. If you want a more complex site, it’s best to have a developer who knows several web languages, such as PHP, MySQL, JQuery, etc. For a unique and feature-rich e-commerce site, you will need a custom solution.

How much does an e-commerce site cost?

Now that the basics are set, let’s get to the heart of the matter: the budget. For the creation of a website, you must take into account, among other things: the design, the host, the maintenance, the update and the optimisation of the site. And there are other costs as well.

Design and development 

Depending on the content of your website, the budget can be doubled. For a classic e-commerce site, you should expect to pay between 2,000 and 5,000 euros. For a more complex website, you will need to budget €20,000, €30,000 or even €50,000.

Hosting 

Depending on the services offered by your host, the price of hosting an e-commerce site can vary between 1 and 200 euros per month, depending on the site’s traffic, the number of pages and products, but also on the quality of the host. However, rest assured that you will easily find quality hosts for 5 or 10 euros per month (but be careful about SEO and the optimisation of your site).

Choosing a good host is important for the visibility of your website. For an e-commerce site, we advise against free or cheap hosts that can alter your SEO.