The honest range
A do-it-yourself shop on a hosted platform typically costs a monthly subscription — commonly in the £25–£100 range, but check providers' current rates — plus your own time. A professionally designed and built small shop commonly starts in the low thousands and rises with product range and integrations. Large catalogues and custom systems go well beyond that. Treat every figure as a guide, not a quote.
The ongoing costs people miss
Platform subscriptions, payment processing (a percentage plus a fixed amount per transaction), apps and plugins, and maintenance all continue for the life of the shop. A shop that costs little to launch but hours to run each week isn't cheap — budget for the shop's life, not its launch day.
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What drives the build cost
Product count and complexity, delivery rules, stock or accounting integrations, and who produces the photography and product copy. Ten simple products and five hundred variants are entirely different jobs wearing the same 'online shop' label.
Where shops waste money
Buying features before products have sold. Commissioning a bespoke build when a hosted platform would do. And cheap builds with a checkout that leaks trust — unclear delivery costs, no returns policy, no real contact details. If you're at the starting line, our guide to selling online for the first time covers the foundations in plain English.
When bespoke is worth it
When the shop is your primary revenue channel, control and margins start to matter more than a monthly fee: no platform lock-in, no transaction add-ons, and features shaped around your products. That's the point where professional e-commerce development stops being a cost and starts being infrastructure.
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