The checkout is cheap. Integrations aren't.
Ecommerce development cost: pick the architecture first, then price the integrations.
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Senior engineers
No juniors. No middlemen.
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Fixed price
Overruns are on us.
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Live in weeks
Weekly demos on staging.
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You own the code
100% of the IP, day one.
Ecommerce development cost depends mostly on architecture and integrations, not on the storefront. A themed platform store (Shopify or similar) with light customisation takes roughly 100–400 engineering hours; a headless storefront on a commerce platform 600–1,800; a fully custom marketplace or B2B ordering system 1,500–5,000+. At 2026 senior market rates of about $60–80/h in Central Europe and $140–200+ in the US, that is about $6k–32k, $36k–144k and $90k–400k+ in CEE. Platform, payment and app fees come on top every month.
Indicative cost by architecture
Derived: indicative hour bands for a small senior team multiplied by 2026 market rates. Not our price list: we quote after a free call.
| Architecture | What it usually includes | Indicative hours | At CEE senior rates ($60–80/h) | At US senior rates ($140–200/h) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Platform store, customised theme | Theme work, a few apps, product import, payments, shipping rules | 100–400 | $6k–32k | $14k–80k |
| Headless storefront on a platform | Custom Next.js front end, platform APIs for catalogue and checkout, CMS, 1–3 integrations | 600–1,800 | $36k–144k | $84k–360k |
| Fully custom commerce | Marketplace, B2B ordering, custom pricing or configurators, ERP and warehouse integrations | 1,500–5,000+ | $90k–400k+ | $210k–1M+ |
Derived, not surveyed: hour bands are indicative estimates; rates from vendor-published 2026 surveys (HireInSouth, SecondTalent), approximate. Your catalogue and integrations decide where you land.
What moves the number
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Integrations
ERP, warehouse, accounting, CRM
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Catalogue
Variants, bundles, B2B prices
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Checkout rules
Discounts, tax, subscriptions
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Markets
Currencies, languages, VAT
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AI features
Search, visualisation, copy
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Migration
Products, customers, orders, URLs
Platform, headless or custom?
Start on a platform when your products, prices and checkout look like most stores. Hosting, PCI-compliant checkout and updates are handled for you, and the money goes into catalogue, content and marketing.
Go headless when the theme limits you: you need a much faster storefront, rich content, several brands or markets on one catalogue, or a front end your own team controls. The platform still runs checkout and orders.
Build custom only when the business model is the product: a multi-vendor marketplace, B2B ordering with customer-specific prices and approvals, configurators, or rules no platform supports without fragile plugins.
Integration hours, the real cost driver
Illustrative engineering estimates per integration, not survey data. Clean, documented APIs sit at the low end.
| Integration | Indicative hours | What eats the time |
|---|---|---|
| Payment provider (beyond platform default) | 20–60 | Webhooks, refunds, failed payments, reconciliation |
| ERP or inventory sync | 80–300 | Stock levels, price lists, order status both ways, error handling |
| Warehouse / 3PL and shipping | 40–150 | Labels, tracking, returns, carrier rules |
| Accounting and invoicing | 30–100 | VAT, credit notes, country-specific invoice rules |
| CRM and email marketing | 20–80 | Customer sync, consent, abandoned-cart events |
| Marketplace feeds (Amazon, Google, etc.) | 30–120 | Feed formats, category mapping, rejected items |
| Search and recommendations | 40–160 | Relevance tuning, synonyms, merchandising rules |
Illustrative estimates. A legacy ERP without an API can cost more than the whole storefront. Ask for hours per integration in every quote.
Running costs after launch
Typical monthly and yearly costs people forget to budget. Check current prices on the providers' pages.
| Cost | Typical range | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Platform subscription | Tens of dollars to thousands per month | Standard plans are cheap; enterprise plans (e.g. Shopify Plus) cost far more |
| Payment processing | Per transaction | Stripe lists about 1.5% + €0.25 for standard EEA cards and 2.9% + $0.30 in the US |
| Apps and plugins | $0–1,000+ per month | Reviews, search, subscriptions, upsells; they add up quietly |
| Hosting (headless or custom) | $50–1,000+ per month | Scales with traffic; CDN caching keeps it low |
| Maintenance and updates | Often 15–20% of build cost per year | Common industry rule of thumb: security patches, API changes, small fixes |
Platform and payment prices change. The sources below link to the current pricing pages.
Illustrative example: a headless store for one brand
Illustrative example with stated assumptions. 2,000 products with variants, two languages and currencies, Next.js storefront on a commerce platform, CMS for content, ERP stock sync, one 3PL.
| Area | Assumed hours |
|---|---|
| Setup, CI/CD, design system | 100 |
| Storefront: catalogue, search, product pages | 260 |
| Cart and checkout via platform APIs | 120 |
| CMS content pages and landing pages | 100 |
| Two languages and currencies | 80 |
| ERP stock and order sync | 180 |
| 3PL and shipping integration | 90 |
| Data migration and URL redirects | 70 |
| Testing, performance, launch | 140 |
| Total | 1,140 hours |
| At $70/h (CEE senior mid-point) | ~$80k |
| At $170/h (US senior mid-point) | ~$194k |
Illustrative example. Hours are assumptions for this scope, not a quote. Compare with web app development cost.
Spend less without hurting sales
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Stay on the platform longer
Fix speed, search and product pages before replatforming. Most stores never need custom checkout.
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Integrate, don't rebuild
Add one custom service next to the platform for the rule it cannot handle, instead of replacing everything.
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Clean data first
Messy product data and SKUs make every integration slower. Fix them before the build.
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Fix the price
With a written scope, a fixed quote moves estimate risk to the vendor. See fixed price vs T&M.
No rate card. A fixed price instead.
We do not publish rates. After a free 30-minute call you get a written scope and a fixed quote, with hours per integration. On fixed-scope projects, if our estimate is wrong, the extra hours are ours. Changes you ask for are quoted separately first.
Ecommerce software developmentQuestions buyers ask us
How much does it cost to build an ecommerce website in 2026?
A customised platform store usually takes 100–400 engineering hours, a headless storefront 600–1,800 and a fully custom commerce system 1,500–5,000+. At senior market rates that is roughly $6k–32k, $36k–144k and $90k–400k+ in Central Europe, and about 2–2.5x that in the US.
Is Shopify cheaper than a custom ecommerce site?
To launch, almost always. You pay a monthly subscription and transaction fees instead of building checkout, hosting and security yourself. Custom pays off only when your business model or integrations do not fit the platform without fragile workarounds.
What is headless ecommerce and is it worth it?
Headless means a custom front end (often Next.js) talking to a commerce platform through APIs. It is worth it when speed, content, multiple brands or markets matter more than the extra build and maintenance cost. For a single simple store, a good theme is usually enough.
How much does an ecommerce app cost?
A mobile shopping app on top of an existing store backend is usually priced like a mobile app with a ready API. See mobile app development cost. Many stores get most of the benefit from a fast mobile web storefront first.
Why are ecommerce integrations so expensive?
Stock, prices and orders must stay correct in two systems at once, including failures, retries and edge cases like partial refunds. Older ERPs without good APIs add even more. That is why integrations, not pages, dominate most ecommerce quotes.
Do you offer fixed-price ecommerce development?
Yes. After a free call we write the scope and quote one fixed price, with hours per integration. On fixed-scope work, overruns on our estimate are our cost. Changes you request get their own quote before work starts.
Keep reading
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Ecommerce
Custom storefront features, ERP and marketplace integrations, AI merchandising and fast pages for stores that have outgrown plugins and themes.
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Web app development cost
What a web application costs to build in 2026: indicative hours by complexity, cost at different regional rates, what drives the price, running costs and an illustrative example.
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Web app development
Fast, SEO-ready web applications in Next.js and React: customer-facing apps, sales platforms and portals, with performance and search built into the architecture.
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Custom software cost
What custom software costs in 2026 by project type: internal tools, portals, integrations, SaaS and rescues. Market data from Clutch and vendor surveys, hidden costs and examples.
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Developer rates by country
Hourly software developer rates by country and seniority in 2026: US, Western Europe, Central & Eastern Europe, Latin America and Asia, with monthly costs and freelance benchmarks.
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MVP development cost
What an MVP costs in 2026 by complexity, region and pricing model: market ranges, timelines, hidden costs and an illustrative booking-app estimate.
Send the store brief. Get hours and a fixed price.
A free 30-minute call with a senior engineer, then a written scope and one quote.