Quotes for the same project can range from 3,000 to 80,000 dollars without any of them being dishonest. The gap is not margin: it is what each one understands by “ecommerce website.”
This breakdown separates the real tiers, details the line items that rarely appear in a first quote, and explains what to ask so you are comparing like with like.
What drives the price
Five variables explain most of the distance between proposals.
Catalog size. Twenty simple products are nothing like two thousand SKUs with size, color, and material variants.
Design depth. Adapting a commercial theme to your brand costs a fraction of designing every page template from scratch.
Integrations. Connecting to an ERP, a carrier, a physical point of sale, or a regional invoicing system adds specific development hours.
Content load. Uploading two thousand products with descriptions, photos, and attributes is real work, and it gets billed even when quotes omit it.
Platform choice. It changes licensing, development, and ongoing maintenance costs, as we cover in Shopify vs WooCommerce.
Pricing by project tier
Starter store: 3,000 to 8,000 USD
A commercial theme adapted to your identity, up to fifty products, standard payment gateway, simple shipping rules, and training so your team can run it.
A valid starting point for validating demand or for a brand with a tight catalog and a clear offer. No custom integrations, no bespoke design.
Mid-tier store: 8,000 to 30,000 USD
Custom design for the key templates, up to five hundred SKUs with variants, invoicing and carrier integrations, analytics and conversion tracking properly configured.
Architecture work enters here too: how categories, filters, and navigation paths are organized. Most serious projects land in this range.
Advanced store: 30,000 to 90,000 USD
Fully bespoke design, large catalogs, real-time ERP or inventory integration, customer-specific pricing logic, multi-currency or multi-warehouse selling.
At this level the build resembles a software project more than a website, with phases, staging environments, and technical documentation.
Marketplace or composable commerce: 90,000 USD and up
Multiple sellers, commission logic, a decoupled architecture between the commerce engine and the presentation layer. A different category of project, with a different team and timeline.
The line items quotes forget
This list explains most projects that end up costing 40% more than quoted:
- Product photography and video. Typically 8 to 40 dollars per SKU depending on complexity.
- Copywriting for product pages. 6 to 25 dollars per product when written with selling and search intent in mind.
- Catalog upload. Real hours somebody has to spend.
- Annual licenses for themes and plugins, renewed every year.
- Hosting and certificates, on self-hosted platforms.
- Monthly maintenance: updates, backups, and support.
- Team training for whoever will process orders.
- Analytics configuration and properly implemented conversion tracking.
The cost after launch
A store does not end the day it goes live; that is when its recurring cost begins.
Technical maintenance runs 150 to 900 dollars a month depending on platform and volume. It covers updates, backups, monitoring, and incident response.
On top of that sits commercial operation: content, campaigns, and continuous optimization of product and category pages. A store with no post-launch investment rarely sells.
A rule that works for first-year budgeting: set aside at least the same amount as the build for traffic, content, and iteration over the following twelve months.
Where the project time goes
Knowing how effort distributes helps you judge whether a price is high or suspiciously low.
Definition and architecture take about 15%: understanding the business and structuring categories, filters, and navigation before anything gets designed.
Interface design runs 20% to 30%, depending on how many templates are bespoke and how many revision rounds are agreed.
Development and integrations take the largest block, 35% to 45%, and it is where connections to invoicing, carriers, or inventory can double an initial estimate.
Content loading and testing close it out. That stage gets underestimated most often, and it determines whether the store opens with a full catalog or a partial one.
Why nearshore development changes the budget
If you are a US or Canadian brand, there is a third axis beyond tier and scope: where the team sits.
A Latin American studio delivers the same mid-tier build at a materially lower rate than a comparable US agency, while working in overlapping business hours. That overlap is the part that matters operationally.
Offshore teams twelve hours away turn every clarification into a lost day. A team one or two hours off your clock answers in the same working session, which compresses a twelve-week project into eight.
For brands selling to Hispanic audiences there is a further benefit: the team builds bilingual stores natively rather than translating a finished English build, which is where most localization problems originate.
How to phase a build when budget is tight
Launching smaller is almost always better than launching late, and phasing protects both budget and momentum.
Phase one covers what makes selling possible: core templates, the top categories, payment, shipping, and measurement. A partial catalog is fine; an unmeasured store is not.
Phase two adds the integrations that save operational time, such as ERP sync or automated invoicing. These are expensive and rarely block revenue on day one.
Phase three handles depth: content pages, advanced filtering, personalization, and the long tail of the catalog.
Sequencing this way also gives you something a single big launch never does: real customer data to inform what phase two should actually contain.
How to compare quotes
Ask every proposal to specify six points and comparison becomes simple.
Exact number of products in the initial load and the cost per additional product. Which page templates are custom designed, named individually.
Integrations included, listed by provider name. Design revision rounds and what happens with extras.
Warranty period after launch, which should be at least thirty days. And ownership of the code, the accounts, and the editable design files.
If a quote does not break these out, it is not comparable to one that does, even when the final number looks similar.
Red flags
The most frequent is the proposal promising a “professional store” at a very low price without asking about your catalog. It usually means an unmodified theme and zero integrations.
The second omits analytics and conversion tracking. Launching without measurement means going blind exactly when you start spending on traffic.
The third includes no post-launch warranty. Every project has adjustments in the first weeks, when real users find what testing did not.
The fourth registers the domain and accounts in the agency’s name. Your domain, hosting, and accounts belong under your company from day one.
At Conqr we quote with an open scope: what is in, what is out, and what is better left to a second phase.
Frequently asked questions
How long does a build take?
A starter store, three to five weeks. A mid-tier build, eight to twelve. An advanced one, four months or more. Delays almost always come from client-side content, not from development.
Is it cheaper to build it myself with a page builder?
In licensing, yes. In outcome, it depends on your time. What usually fails in self-built projects is not the design: it is category architecture, measurement, and product page optimization.
How much should I budget for advertising at launch?
A realistic floor is 1,500 to 4,000 dollars a month for the first three months, adjusted to your margin and average order value.
Does the price include product photography?
Almost never unless written. It is the most expensive forgotten cost on large catalogs, so ask explicitly.
What if I want to change agencies later?
It should not be a problem if the code, domain, and accounts are in your name. Verify that clause before signing; it determines how free you are afterward.
Want a quote with the scope broken out for your catalog? Get in touch.