Depending on the hosting provider you choose, you may not be able to make a monthly payment. You should plan to pay 12 months in advance, although you can reduce the total cost by committing to 2 or 3 years.
Many hosting solutions offer a free domain name for the first year and an SSL Certificate . However, the free SSL is not strong enough to support e-commerce transactions.
Hosting costs increase significantly when you scale up and require chinese overseas asia database multiple dedicated servers (you don’t share hosting space with any other websites) to run your website. And when you get to that point, you need to have the revenue to justify the expense.
E-commerce software
The price of an eCommerce website is more than just websites for your online stores. You also need to factor in the costs of apps, content, product photography, payment gateway and processing fees, and marketing. Additional software you may need to help you sell online includes:
Email marketing and automation
Landing Page Builder
Funnel construction
Live Chat/Help Desk
E-commerce design options
There are a variety of free website themes to choose from. Many of them work well for eCommerce businesses but come with fewer customization options out of the box. Because of this, many eCommerce websites use premium themes.
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For WordPress, you can get a good premium theme for under $100. For Shopify themes, you can expect to spend $140 to $180 on paid themes. With BigCommerce, plan to spend $150 to $300.
To keep your ecommerce website design option low, find a template you like, change the colors, and add your logo. Use tools like Crello or Canva (free and pro versions available) to create a logo instead of hiring a professional graphic designer.
You'll pay more overall if you need any custom ecommerce programming or functionality. Since basic ecommerce functionality is built into most SaaS platforms, you can get by without custom programming.
If you need a lot of advanced features, you may not be able to use services like Shopify and BigCommerce because they limit access to the source code.
Training and Maintenance
After dealing with the initial costs of your website, you need to spend money to maintain it. You will need to be trained to use it and make basic updates to stock, products, pricing, etc. You will risk losing your competitive advantage if you cannot handle maintenance yourself. It can also impact the quality e-commerce experience your customers expect.
Additional considerations
Email list size: The larger your list, the more you'll typically pay for management.
Fulfillment Services: Fulfillment services handle order fulfillment for you, but it comes at a cost. Fees vary based on order volume, inventory storage space, and more.