How Much Does It Cost to Build an Ecommerce Website in 2024?

The global ecommerce market is growing. According to Forbes, it is expected to reach $6.3T in 2024 and $7.9T in 2027. The reason for it is that online shopping has become a strong habit among consumers. According to BigCommerce, over half of surveyed consumers in the US, UK, Italy, France, and Australia shop online at least once a week.

Advancements in digital technologies allow every company to provide a solid ecommerce experience for a reasonable investment. However, expertise in ecommerce development is crucial.

Let’s analyze key aspects of building ecommerce solutions and see how they affect ecommerce website development costs.

Ecommerce websites fall into four main categories that define their cost:

Which category your website falls into depends on the:

Here are the differences:

Cost: up to $15,000

For this money, you can start an online store that lets you:

A small website includes protection against bots, SEO optimization, and customized design when requested. You can run a small website on your own.

Cost: up to $90,000

Medium-complexity websites serve the needs of small and midsize businesses, ensuring visitors can:

Medium-complexity websites require regular maintenance, so you might need to hire a freelancer or opt for IT staff augmentation to keep the tech side in good shape.

Cost: up to $180,000

Complex ecommerce websites differ from medium-sized stores in their number of features, degree of customization, and ability to withstand the user load.  

Visitors to a complex ecommerce website expect a branded design, an elaborate UX, and uncompromised performance on any device. 

Complex websites tend to attract many visitors with long session times using product configuration tools, chatbots, or customer portals. As a result, you need to build a robust back end and infrastructure that can handle a high user load.

You might need several full-time developers working on your complex online store, which will result in high costs to create an ecommerce website of high complexity.

Cost: up to $300,000

Large custom platforms are an option for big retailers running several businesses or a network of stores across several locations. 

With enterprise-level ecommerce platforms, visitors benefit not only from rich functionality but also from the ability to switch to regional websites displaying offers in local languages and currencies. 

Scope of work on enterprise-level platforms also includes large-scale automation and integrations with other business software to ensure a smooth business process.

A dedicated development team is required to make changes on time. Moreover, several teams can work on the platform simultaneously, each focusing on a specific area (user experience, front end, back end, APIs, testing).

A development team must keep in mind a wide number of parameters when it estimates the costs to build an ecommerce website, including:  

You may receive free hosting if you choose an ecommerce platform such as Shopify, Wix, or Squarespace. However, in this case you will be tied to the hosting limitations of your chosen platform, which may result in difficult or expensive scaling. 

Using a self-hosted platform (WooCommerce, Magento, Prestashop, etc.) or a custom-built solution lifts these limitations. You can choose between the following hosting options:

The price of a domain name varies wildly:

The good news is that once you have a domain name, renewing it is quite cheap, costing about $10 to $120 annually.

The costs of building an ecommerce website need to cover the following essential project stages across the development lifecycle:

The workload distribution varies across projects. Your project may require intensive project management due to flexible requirements. Or, your focus may be on back-end development because of complex algorithms. 

Alternatively, the team might need to conduct more QA and testing than actual development because of multiple integrations with third-party services.

Maintenance costs are another crucial component of project expenses. Keeping your website up and running can cost you 15% to 20% of your initial ecommerce website development cost per year.

Please note that these are only ballpark workload/cost distribution estimates. Your project costs may vary.

Design plays a key role in convincing customers: 75% of visitors consider a well-designed website trustworthy, and you have only 50 milliseconds to convince them. 

You have several options to do this:

A well-thought-out UX is critical for successful conversion. It ensures visitors can easily navigate your website, find desired products/services, and complete a purchase within the fewest required steps.

Ecommerce platforms (Magento, Shopify, WooCommerce, Wix) provide basic built-in ecommerce functionality:

Advanced functionality is available through each platform’s marketplace:

The costs of basic and advanced features can range from $0 for built-in features to $500 for premium plugins and extensions, both of which can be available as a one-time purchase and on a subscription basis. 

The cost of creating an ecommerce website with custom functionality can vary between $1,000 and $15,000 for a feature based on the estimated scope of work.

When you purchase a plugin or an extension, tuning and customization can be required. Why? 

Integrating several plugins can increase your website load, resulting in a slowdown. Plugins can also conflict with each other and harm website performance. 

Tuning can add between $200 and $2,000 to ecommerce website development costs depending on the number of plugins and their compatibility. 

The development team can also work on integrating company databases, CMSs, shipping carriers, accounting software, and more to streamline data management. 

Depending on their ease, integrations can cost between $50 and $5,000.

Here, you should balance the initial investment costs and the customization needed to keep up with future changes.

Suppose you are a small niche business and do not expect explosive growth. In that case, you can select cost-effective WordPress development services that let you launch fast without paying for capabilities you won’t use.

However, if you expect your user base will constantly grow, it’s wise to consider a custom ecommerce implementation with a flexible and scalable architecture. 

A custom implementation simplifies future change management and saves you money when you expand, albeit initial custom ecommerce website building costs can be two to three times higher than the cost for a premade solution.

Here are some additional costs you need to keep in mind when building and running your website: 

According to Pew Research, 76% of US adults use smartphones to shop online. Hence, you must ensure your website looks and works great on mobile devices. 

Your customers will access your website from various devices, and premade website themes are usually responsive by default. Still, glitches and inconsistencies are possible.

Optimizing and testing layouts, content, and website performance on smartphones and tablets lets you deliver improved experiences. These activities can add $500 to $5,000 to the cost of ecommerce website development.

You can also consider launching a mobile app to bring the shopping experience to the next level. You can reuse your website’s source code by choosing:

The impact of AI technologies on ecommerce is growing. AI lets you:

and more.

Costs of AI implementation also vary. You can spend anywhere from $2,000 to $10,000 on building a ChatGPT-powered chatbot to $20,000 to $60,000 on a custom fraud detection system. 

Also, unless you have a well-maintained database that perfectly fits the needs of your AI project, you will need to keep in mind the costs of collecting, filtering, and normalizing data.

Your allocated budget may not allow you to meet your needs when it comes to launching, maintaining, and expanding your website. Consider reaching your goals for less money while providing end users with a quality website.

Let’s examine five common ways of cutting the cost to build an ecommerce website:

Surprisingly, either option can help you optimize expenses. 

If you start small and you or your employees have enough time, doing everything yourself can help you lower the costs of setting up an ecommerce website. A DIY website builder lets you manage a website quickly for a low subscription fee that covers hosting, SSL, and support. 

However, when your website grows and reaches plan limitations, your expenses can grow beyond expectations. Also, you will be tied to specific functionality and may bump into customization limits. Both of these things can make a DIY website less-than-perfect in the long term.

On the contrary, hiring a dedicated development team can be expensive at the start of your project yet profitable in the long term. In this case, the team launches a solution for your specific needs and optimizes growth costs.

When you hire a dedicated team, you are also flexible in your choice of third-party services. You can switch payment providers, move to a different hosting service, and integrate any features you can imagine.

The best technique for optimizing the cost to build an ecommerce website is to review the scope when making a project estimate and shift every non-essential feature to future deliveries. 

A feature should remain on your requirements list if you cannot sell without it. Examples include a shopping cart, a payment gateway, and a contact form.

If a feature boosts your sales, it should also remain on your requirements list (e.g., related products, product comparison, or search and filters).

If a feature does not directly engage visitors in the sales process, it can wait (e.g., custom payment systems or multilingual support).

You can then work on the features on your list in short sprints. After each sprint, you should evaluate deliverables and decide if any changes are necessary.

Open-source technologies let you optimize the costs of ecommerce website development. 

You can download, install, and use a CMS such as WordPress, Magento Community Edition, Opencart, or Drupal at no cost. Moreover, you can leverage CMS plugin marketplaces where you can find extra functionality for free. For instance, over 58,000 free plugins are available for WordPress. 

The downside of this approach is that, unlike using DIY builders, using and optimizing a CMS requires technical skills. The task can be overwhelming for non-tech business owners.

However, open-source platforms are popular, allowing freelancers and companies to offer competitively priced website development and maintenance services.

If you are limited in time and resources, outsourcing website development can be a viable alternative that lets you:

Outsourcing costs vary based on the vendor’s location:

The key challenge in outsourcing is finding a reliable vendor that can handle your requirements and deliver on promises while working around your limitations. 

The rule of thumb is to invest your time in evaluating the project team to ensure you get relevant expertise. Look for proven experience, and start small with a pilot task if necessary.

Cloud technologies allow your business to:

and more.

Instead of buying and installing internal servers or renting dedicated servers, cloud providers let you rent computing resources and pay only for what you use.

You can add more server resources when needed and shut down unused servers as soon as they are no longer required, optimizing growth and scaling expenses. 

The tricky part of cloud infrastructure is that it requires constant monitoring by an expert engineering team. The team must find and eliminate unused resources to prevent waste, overuse, and unjustified hosting expenses as well as to minimize maintenance costs.

Ecommerce websites are one of IT Craft’s key areas of expertise. We have helped businesses of all sizes launch, enhance, and expand their online stores.

Below is one of our many successful cases:

Adorama is an established retailer of photography, video, and leisure equipment. The Adorama website ensures customers can easily find and purchase any gear online.

The company operates an extensive, custom-built ecommerce platform that allows them to manage and update a large product catalog, create deals and special offers, and do much more.

The client wanted a team capable of efficiently handling platform modernization, maintenance, and expansion to keep up with evolving customer buying habits and expectations.

IT Craft’s dedicated team quickly augmented the in-house teams, helping with feature implementation, improvements, and website maintenance while staying within budget limits.

Complexity is the key factor in determining the cost to develop an ecommerce website, but it is not the only factor.

You should always start small with basic functionality and integrations to meet your budget. Still, you should be ready to expand to meet the growing expectations of your constantly increasing customer base. 

When you do not have in-house developers, it’s wise to turn to a dedicated team of website development professionals. This strategy will save you time and money and reduce overhead. 

How much does it cost to build an ecommerce website? Are you still unsure about the answer?