What an online store costs at minimum, which items are mandatory and where saving money gets expensive later, with a first-year cost example.
An online store that is legally allowed to sell in Germany rarely costs less than €600 to €1,500 in fixed costs in its first year, even if the software itself is free. That amount covers the subscription or hosting, domain, theme, a few extensions, legal texts and participation in a packaging compliance scheme. Payment fees come on top of every order. The range is an experience-based estimate for self-built stores on Shopify Basic or WooCommerce.
The largest cost never appears on a pricing page: your own time. For setup, product data and testing, plan on roughly 35 to 70 hours for a small store before the first order arrives. If you don’t have that time, you pay a freelancer or an agency for it.
A store is affordable when fixed costs, fees and time add up to a sensible share of the revenue you expect. A €500 store can end up more expensive after two years than a €5,000 store if it loses orders or constantly needs repairs. If you have neither a startup budget nor time, you can rent a finished store.
This article is for founders and small retailers who want to start selling online on a tight budget. You will learn which costs are mandatory, what the cheapest routes cost in year one, where saving money makes sense and where it becomes expensive later.
When people look for a cheap online store, they usually compare monthly prices: €27 with one provider, free with another. That number tells you little. The cost of a store is made up of four blocks, and only one of them is on the pricing page.
Theme or design, setting up payment methods and shipping, product photos, copy and, if needed, help from a freelancer or agency. For a self-built store this is often a few hundred euros. For a custom project the figure quickly reaches five digits.
Subscription or hosting, domain, paid apps or plugins, a legal text service and the packaging compliance fee. These costs arrive every month, whether you sell anything or not.
Payment fees, packaging material and postage. They grow with revenue. For small stores, payment fees over a year are often higher than the store subscription itself.
Setup, product maintenance, updates, customer service. This time never shows up on an invoice. For self-built stores it is still the largest cost.
An offer with a €0 license can therefore cost more than a €300 monthly subscription if the free system takes 150 hours of your own work or a paid developer. Always compare the total over at least two years, not the entry price.
An online store is more than a page with a shopping cart. To be allowed to sell in Germany and to earn customers’ trust, it needs a fixed set of basics. This list is the minimum you should not skimp on:
What can be missing at the start: a custom design, a blog, customer accounts with loyalty points, filter navigation for a small catalog, newsletter automations and an ERP integration. You can add all of that once the store makes money. A store with 30 products does not need filters for color, size and material.
For small budgets there are four realistic routes. The table shows fixed costs in year one, excluding payment fees and your own time. The ranges are experience-based estimates and assumptions, not quotes.
| Route | Software | Fixed costs in year 1 (assumption) | Your own work | A good fit if |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Shopify Basic, self-built | €27 per month billed yearly | approx. €700 to €1,300 | high | you want to launch fast and have few special requirements |
| WooCommerce, self-built | free plugin | approx. €400 to €900 | very high | you know WordPress and handle updates yourself |
| Shopware Community Edition | no license fee | from approx. €900 for hosting, plus implementation | medium to high | you plan to grow and have developer capacity |
| Store subscription with an agency | included | e.g. €3,588 (€299 × 12) | low | you lack time and startup budget |
According to Shopify’s German pricing page, the Basic plan costs €27 per month billed yearly and €36 billed monthly. Shopify takes care of hosting, security and software updates. You pick a theme, add products and go live. Costs come mainly from premium themes, apps and payment fees. With Shopify Payments on the Basic plan you pay 2.1% plus €0.30 per online card payment. If you use an external payment provider instead, Shopify charges an additional 2% of revenue on the Basic plan.
WooCommerce is a free WordPress plugin. You need hosting, a theme and, for the German market, usually a plugin for legal texts, price display and checkout adjustments. The software costs nothing; the responsibility is yours: updates to WordPress, theme and plugins, backups and security. If you don’t do this regularly, you save at the start and pay for repairs later.
Shopware offers the Community Edition free of charge according to its pricing page. You organize hosting, implementation and maintenance yourself. For a store that runs reliably you need suitable hosting and know-how for the setup. The paid editions start with Rise at €600 per month plus VAT. In our article on Shopware costs we estimate around €25,000 in the first year for a small store built with an agency. For a launch on a very small budget, Shopware is therefore rarely the first choice. For retailers who want to grow and later connect an ERP, B2B features or several countries, it is a solid foundation.
With a store subscription, an agency builds the store and runs it for a fixed monthly fee. At solution25 the Scale package starts at €299 per month with a minimum term of 24 months. Setup, 200 products entered for you, hosting in Germany and updates are included, and after 24 months the store belongs to you. In cash terms this is not the cheapest route, but it saves the most working time. You will find details on contracts and terms in our article on renting an online store.
To make the figures tangible, here is a hypothetical example. It does not come from a client project. Use your own numbers for your planning.
Assumptions: A retailer launches with 80 products and plans €30,000 in revenue in the first year with an average order value of €50. That is 600 orders. They build the store themselves on Shopify Basic.
| Item (12 months) | Amount | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Shopify Basic, billed yearly | €324 | €27 × 12, pricing page |
| Premium theme | approx. €300 | assumption, one-time |
| Two paid apps | approx. €240 | assumption: €20 per month |
| Domain | approx. €15 | assumption |
| Legal text service with updates | approx. €180 | assumption: €15 per month |
| Packaging compliance scheme | approx. €50 | assumption, depends on volume |
| Fixed costs | approx. €1,109 | |
| Payment fees with Shopify Payments | €810 | 2.1% of €30,000 plus €0.30 × 600 |
| Total excluding your time | approx. €1,919 |
If the same retailer processed every payment through PayPal, fees would be 2.99% plus €0.39 per transaction according to PayPal’s current German fee schedule. That is €897 plus €234, or €1,131 a year. On Shopify, the 2% transaction fee for an external provider would come on top. In this example, the choice of payment methods is worth several hundred euros.
At €324, the software is the smallest block. Payment fees and extras together are almost five times as high. Add 60 hours of work at €40 per hour (assumption) and you add €2,400. The supposedly cheap store then costs around €4,300 in year one. That is not an argument against building it yourself. It simply shows that you should plan with the honest total.
There is no budget version of compliance. Mistakes here can quickly cost more than the whole store, for example through cease and desist letters or fines. The key points for stores selling in Germany:
Commercial online services in Germany must keep provider information easy to find and permanently available. This is governed by Section 5 of the Digital Services Act (Digitale-Dienste-Gesetz, DDG). It includes name and address, an email address and, where applicable, register number and VAT ID. Terms and conditions, withdrawal policy and privacy policy should match your product range. Free generators help you get started. For most small stores, a paid service that updates the texts when the law changes is the safer choice.
Anyone shipping packaged goods in Germany must be registered in the LUCID packaging register. Shipping packaging always requires participation in a compliance scheme. That means you sign a contract with a dual system and report your volumes. The EU Packaging and Packaging Waste Regulation (PPWR) has applied since August 12, 2026. The German packaging register authority points out that it is still unclear for online retailers which role they have under it. Check your obligations directly with the packaging register.
Since June 28, 2025, the German Accessibility Strengthening Act (BFSG) has applied to many online stores selling to consumers. Micro-enterprises providing services are exempt: fewer than ten employees and annual revenue or balance sheet total of no more than €2 million. Pure B2B stores are not covered. Even if you are exempt, a theme with good contrast, alt text and keyboard navigation is worth it. You may grow beyond the threshold, and accessible stores are easier for everyone to use.
The requirements above describe the situation for stores selling in Germany. If you run your store from the United States, US rules apply instead: there is no federal VAT, but sales tax varies by state, and many states require online sellers to collect it once they exceed economic nexus thresholds. A tax service integration that calculates and files sales tax automatically is a recurring cost worth budgeting for. If you sell to customers in Germany or the EU, the German rules above apply to those sales as well. Shopware partners such as solution25 are mostly based in Europe; with a European partner, plan for a few overlapping working hours per day, usually US mornings.
These notes do not replace legal advice. They show which items belong in your budget.
Many retailers plan their budget carefully and their time not at all. Yet for a self-built store, time is the largest cost. The following figures are experience-based estimates for a small store with around 80 products:
| Task | Time (assumption) |
|---|---|
| Basic setup, theme, page structure | 10 to 20 hours |
| Adding products with copy and images, 10 to 20 minutes per product | 13 to 27 hours |
| Payment methods, shipping, taxes, legal texts | 5 to 10 hours |
| Test orders, fixes, mobile view | 5 to 10 hours |
| Total before launch | 33 to 67 hours |
Then there is day-to-day operation: new products, orders, returns, customer inquiries and updates. Plan on two to five hours per week, even while the store sells little.
This time is not automatically lost. If you build your store yourself, you understand it and can react faster. But the time is missing elsewhere, for example in purchasing, marketing or talking to customers. Ask yourself honestly whether an hour in the store backend brings more than an hour in your core business.
There is no best platform for small budgets. There are platforms that fit your situation. Three questions help you decide.
If you don’t want to deal with servers, updates and security, Shopify is the simplest choice. You pay a monthly fee for it and are tied to the platform and its app ecosystem. WooCommerce and Shopware Community Edition run on your own hosting. That gives you more control but requires regular maintenance.
A hobby store with 20 products has different needs than a retailer planning €500,000 in revenue within two years. For fast growth with ERP integration, B2B features or several countries, Shopware is strong. It makes the entry more expensive than a hosted builder, though. Shopify grows with you through apps and higher plans. WooCommerce tends to hit limits sooner with large catalogs and high order volumes if hosting and plugins are not set up properly.
Standard products with variants, shipping and common payment methods are handled well by all three platforms. Configurators, customer-specific pricing or special workflows cost money on any platform. On Shopify you usually solve this with apps, on WooCommerce with plugins or custom development, on Shopware with extensions or custom plugins.
A rule of thumb from our experience: if you start alone, don’t enjoy technology and have a manageable catalog, Shopify is usually the cheapest option. If you already use WordPress and can take care of the technology, WooCommerce saves money. If you are betting on growth, integrations and independence from day one, you are better off planning with Shopware and a realistic budget. You will find a detailed comparison in our article Shopify vs. Shopware.
Most of these mistakes cost no money at launch, but revenue and time afterward. That is exactly why they rarely show up in planning.
The software is available for free, for example WooCommerce or Shopware Community Edition. Running a store for free is not possible, though. Hosting, domain, legal texts, packaging compliance and payment fees always apply.
Fixed costs for a self-built store are usually between €50 and €120 per month (experience-based estimate). Payment fees are added per order. With a store subscription from an agency, monthly fees start at a few hundred euros, but setup and operation are included.
In cash terms WooCommerce is often cheaper. A hosted builder like Shopify saves you time on hosting, updates and security, though. If you count your hours, the difference is usually small.
When you lack time, have special requirements or want the store connected to inventory management and a fulfillment provider from the start. A short review before launch can also pay off if you otherwise build the store yourself.
Yes, but a migration costs time and money. Products, customers and orders can be transferred; design, extensions and URLs have to be rebuilt. That is why you should choose a platform that can carry you for at least two to three years.
If you want to build your store yourself and have the time, you don’t need an agency. The figures in this article give you a solid basis for planning.
If you lack time or startup budget, our store subscription is an alternative: we build and run your store on Shopware, WooCommerce or Shopify from €299 per month, and after 24 months it belongs to you. If you already have a store that sells too little, our store analysis shows you where it gets stuck. For any other questions, reach us through our contact form. We will also tell you if a project does not pay off for you yet.
Besar Bilalli is co-founder and Co-CEO of solution25, the Shopware agency based in Bremen. Before founding the agency in 2017, he and Besnik Bilalli built their own online store without any startup capital and grew it to more than 500 orders a day. Since then, he has guided merchants through Shopware projects, from platform selection to day-to-day operations. He’s happy to answer questions about this article personally: get in touch.
Responsible for content and updates: Besar Bilalli. Last updated: November 2026. Next content review: February 2027.
