Online shop costs at a glance
The cost of an online shop varies dramatically — from a few hundred euros for a Shopify starter setup to several tens of thousands of euros for a custom headless commerce solution. The decisive factor is not the price tag, but the total cost of ownership over several years.
Many companies underestimate the ongoing costs: transaction fees, app subscriptions, agency fees for changes, and hosting add up quickly. We show you the full picture.
Benchmark: a professional online shop with custom design and checkout starts at 8,900–25,000 € upfront. Shopify setups start cheaper, but ongoing costs often overtake after 2–3 years.
Costs by platform: Shopify vs WooCommerce vs Headless
Shopify (monthly, no setup fee)
- Basic: 29 $/month + 2 % transaction fee
- Shopify: 79 $/month + 1 % transaction fee
- Advanced: 299 $/month + 0.5 % transaction fee
- Plus: from 2,000 $/month
On top of that: app subscriptions (100–500 €/month), theme (200–400 €), agency fees for setup and customizing.
WooCommerce
- Plugin free, but hosting: 20–80 €/month
- Premium plugins: 200–800 €/year
- Maintenance and updates: 200–500 €/month
- Agency fees for custom work: expensive due to WordPress complexity
Headless Commerce with Next.js
- Upfront: 8,900–25,000 € (one-off)
- Hosting: 50–200 €/month
- No transaction fees
- Minimal maintenance thanks to a modern stack
All cost factors in detail
Design & UX
Professional shop design with product pages, cart, and checkout optimization: 2,000–8,000 € one-off. Good design boosts conversion rate by 10–40 % — one of the best investments you can make.
Product management & CMS
An intuitive backend for products, pricing, and inventory: 1,000–3,000 € in development. Saves significant agency costs for product maintenance over time.
Payment integration
Stripe, PayPal, Klarna: 500–2,000 € setup, depending on the number of providers and complexity of the payment flows.
Logistics & shipping
Carrier integration (DHL, DPD), shipping calculation, and tracking integration: 1,000–3,000 €.
SEO & analytics
Product schema, sitemap, Google Shopping feed, and GDPR-compliant analytics: should be included in the build.
Tip: always calculate the total cost of ownership over 3 years. Shopify looks cheaper, but at 50,000 € annual revenue and a 1 % transaction fee, you pay 500 €/year for that alone — plus subscription, apps, and agency fees.
Ongoing costs after launch
Hosting
Shopify is managed hosting included. Headless needs its own hosting: from 5 €/month on Hetzner Cloud (GDPR-compliant, German servers) — significantly cheaper than US cloud providers.
Transaction fees
With Shopify without Shopify Payments: 0.5–2 % per transaction. Sounds small, but it adds up: at 200,000 € revenue and 1 %, that's 2,000 €/year in transaction fees alone.
Payment provider fees
Regardless of platform, Stripe, PayPal, or Klarna fees apply: typically 1.5–2.9 % + 25 cents per transaction.
Maintenance and updates
Minimal with Shopify (managed). High with WooCommerce (plugins). Low with headless (no plugin overhead).
Marketing and SEO
Not directly a shop development topic, but tightly linked. A technically clean shop is the foundation for Google Shopping, SEO, and performance marketing.
When does a professional shop pay off?
An investment of 12,000 € in a headless commerce shop pays off when:
1. Conversion rate optimization: professional design and fast load times lift conversion by 15–30 %. At 10,000 visitors/month and a 2 % conversion rate (200 orders) × 50 € basket = 10,000 €/month. A 15 % conversion lift = 1,500 €/month additional revenue.
2. Saving on transaction fees: at 300,000 € annual revenue you save 3,000 €/year compared to Shopify (1 % transaction fee) — that amortizes the extra investment in 2–3 years.
3. Saving on agency costs: custom work on headless systems costs less than complex Shopify customizing projects with Liquid templates.
Bottom line: from an annual revenue of 150,000 €, a headless shop is usually the better choice over Shopify.
Frequently Asked Questions
The cheapest real online shop: Shopify Basic (29 $/month) with a free theme. Upfront cost is practically zero, but: 2 % transaction fee with third-party payments, limited customizing, and US data storage. Fine for market validation, but not a long-term foundation as revenue grows.
From around 150,000 € annual revenue. On Shopify Advanced (0.5 % transaction fee), you pay 750 €/year in transaction fees alone at 150,000 € revenue — plus subscription (3,588 $/year) plus app subscriptions. A headless shop costs 8,900–15,000 € upfront but has almost no ongoing platform costs. ROI after roughly 12–18 months.
The most common hidden costs: Shopify transaction fees (often underestimated), app subscriptions for features that are built in on headless, agency fees for Shopify customizing with Liquid templates (more expensive than expected), image optimization apps, tax calculation plugins, and email marketing integrations. Before project start we always produce a full TCO overview.
For a headless shop with 12,000 € investment and 200,000 € annual revenue: ROI after about 12 months through saved transaction fees (2,000 €/year vs Shopify) + higher conversion from better performance (+15 % = 30,000 € additional revenue). That's a conservative estimate — real-world payback is often faster.
Shopify: intuitive admin UI, no developer needed for product maintenance. WooCommerce: similar, but slower and more error-prone. Headless with Payload CMS: tailored admin UI, CSV bulk import, API integration with ERP for automatic updates. For large catalogs (500+ products), ERP integration is the decisive cost factor.
Regardless of platform, gateway fees apply: Stripe (1.5–2.9 % + 0.25 €), PayPal (1.49–3.49 % depending on method), Klarna (variable commission, around 0.35–3.29 %). These costs apply on every platform. With Shopify the platform transaction fees come on top — with headless they do not.
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