Which twelve building blocks belong in a complete online shop solution, what offers often leave out and how to compare packages fairly.
A complete online shop solution is an offer in which one provider delivers the shop platform, setup, design, hosting and ongoing support from a single source. The term is not protected. A shop builder with hosting calls itself a complete solution, and so does an agency project with an ERP integration or a shop on a subscription. What is really included only shows up in the list of services.
A full package covers twelve building blocks: concept, platform, design, product data, payments, shipping, legal, integrations, SEO and tracking, hosting, maintenance and support, and training and handover. The items most often missing are ongoing product data maintenance, licence fees for extensions, updates to legal texts, redirects when an existing shop is replaced and a clear rule on what happens to the shop and its data when the contract ends.
Legal responsibility always stays with you. A provider can build in the withdrawal button, implement the shop with accessibility in mind and connect a legal text service. Legal notice, terms and conditions, packaging registration and tax questions remain the merchant’s job.
This article is for founders, managing directors and e-commerce managers who do not want to build a shop themselves but buy it as a package. After reading it, you will be able to put complete offers side by side, spot the gaps and ask the right follow-up questions. Whether you should rent the shop or buy it as a project is covered in our article Renting an online shop. This article is about what goes into the package.
People who look for a complete solution usually want one thing: one contact instead of five. Instead of finding shop software, a host, a designer, a developer and legal advice separately, one provider should deliver everything between the idea and the first order. The market offers three forms, and they differ a lot in scope.
Providers such as Shopify rent software and hosting as a package. In Germany, Shopify starts at 27 € per month when paid annually, the Grow plan costs 79 € and Advanced 289 € per month. What is complete here is the technology: servers, security updates and checkout run without your involvement. Setup, design, product data, legal texts and maintenance are up to you, or you hire someone for them.
An agency builds the shop according to an agreed scope and hands it over. Complete usually means concept, design, setup and often integrations with an ERP system or a shipping provider. Whether hosting, maintenance and support are included is often covered by a second contract. Many merchants only notice after launch that ongoing support was not part of the project price.
Here an agency builds and runs the shop for a fixed monthly fee with a minimum term. Software, setup, hosting, updates and support are in one contract. This comes closest to the idea of a complete solution, but it ties you to one provider for a fixed period. The contract points that matter are covered in our article on renting an online shop.
For your evaluation, the form matters less than the content. What counts is which building blocks are in the price, which ones you deliver yourself and which ones you pay for later.
The following list is the checklist we use ourselves when we write an offer or review another provider’s offer for a merchant. Every building block must be either included, explicitly excluded or assigned to you as a task. None of them should stay open.
| Building block | What it includes | Often forgotten |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Concept | Target group, assortment structure, categories, feature list | Coordination with warehouse and accounting |
| 2. Platform and licence | Software, plan, licence term | Required move to a more expensive plan above a certain revenue |
| 3. Design | Home page, category, product page, basket, checkout, mobile view | Secondary pages such as shipping info, about us, error page |
| 4. Product data | Creation, variants, attributes, images | Maintenance and new products after launch |
| 5. Payments | Payment provider, payment methods, test orders | Fees per transaction, refund process |
| 6. Shipping | Shipping methods, costs, delivery countries, labels | Returns process and return labels |
| 7. Legal | Mandatory pages, checkout notices, withdrawal button, cookie consent | Updates when laws change |
| 8. Integrations | ERP, accounting, shipping, marketplaces | What happens when a sync gets stuck |
| 9. SEO and tracking | Page titles, descriptions, analytics, consent | Redirects of old URLs when moving |
| 10. Hosting | Server, domain, SSL, backups, monitoring | Limits on visitors, storage or traffic |
| 11. Maintenance and support | Updates, bug fixing, response times | Major version upgrades, adjustments to extensions |
| 12. Training and handover | Onboarding, documentation, access | Who owns the shop, the data and the domain |
If you take away only one rule: ask the provider to answer this list line by line, in writing, marking each item as included, not included or your task. A serious provider can do that in an hour. A provider who avoids the question has usually priced in the gaps, just not in your offer.
The first building blocks decide whether the shop launches on time. This is where most delays happen, and they are almost never caused by technology but by missing content.
A concept does not have to be a thick document. One page is enough if it states who buys, which product ranges exist, what the categories are called and which features must work on launch day. Typical questions: do you need customer groups with their own prices? Do you sell abroad? Are there configurable products, gift cards or subscriptions? Every answer changes the effort. A package without these answers is not a fixed price, it is an estimate.
Complete packages almost always work with a template that is adapted to your logo, colours and fonts. For most small and medium shops this is the right choice, because good templates are built for buying and for mobile use. A custom design pays off when your brand sells strongly through imagery or when you need unusual product pages, for example with a configurator. Check which pages are designed as part of the package. Home page, category and product page are standard. Basket, checkout, customer account, emails and invoice are often forgotten, even though customers see them with every order.
Creating products takes the most time. A worked example based on assumptions: you have 200 products with three variants each. If one product with text, images and attributes takes 20 minutes, that adds up to around 67 hours, and only if manufacturer data is available in usable form. If texts or photos are missing, the time quickly doubles. So clarify who delivers the data, in which format (for example a CSV file) and how many products are included in the package. A package with 200 products created is not a complete solution for a merchant with 2,000 items.
You usually sign contracts with payment and shipping providers yourself, because they are in your company’s name. The provider sets up the connection and runs test orders. Ask whether refunds, partial shipments and return labels are tested. These cases only show up after launch, and they get expensive when nobody has set them up.
A provider can implement legal requirements cleanly on the technical side. Responsibility for the content and the obligations stays with the merchant. For a shop that sells to consumers in Germany, these are the most important points. They describe German law:
These points do not replace legal advice. They show which questions to raise when you discuss an offer. More on data protection and consent can be found in our article Data protection in online shops.
For retailers in the UK: VAT is charged at 20 % (standard rate), 5 % (reduced rate) or 0 % (zero rate), and each product needs the right rate in the shop. Customer data falls under UK GDPR. If you ship to customers in the EU, customs declarations and EU VAT rules apply to those orders, so plan this in the shipping setup. The German rules above only apply to you if you sell to consumers in Germany. Euro prices in this article remain in euros.
A shop is not finished when it goes live. It needs updates, backups, someone who responds when something breaks and enough server capacity for peaks such as Black Week or a newsletter campaign. This is where complete offers differ the most.
With shop builders such as Shopify, hosting is part of the subscription. With Shopware and WooCommerce you need a server that the provider supplies or arranges. Ask about the server location, backups (how often, how long they are kept, who restores them), monitoring and limits. Some packages are designed for a certain number of visits per month. That is fair as long as it is clear what happens when you exceed it: automatic upgrade, throttling or a conversation. Our article E-commerce hosting gives an overview of the models.
Shop platforms receive regular security and feature updates. Small updates are usually routine. Larger version upgrades can affect extensions and templates and then take real working time. Clarify whether the package only covers security updates or also major version upgrades, and who adjusts extensions that stop working after an update. How often Shopware releases new versions and what that means for planning is explained in our article Shopware updates and versions.
Look at two numbers: response time and resolution time. A response time of one business day only means that someone gets back to you. Ask what happens if the shop goes down on a Saturday evening, whether there is an emergency number and how many hours of changes per month are included. Ticket support is enough for many small shops. If you make a lot of revenue in a few days, you need binding response times on weekends too.
We see the following points regularly when merchants send us an offer to review. None of them is dishonest. They only become a problem when the offer does not mention them and you assume they are included.
The three forms can only be compared if you use the same period and the same services. The following examples are simplified. Where we make assumptions, we say so. Payment fees, shipping costs and your own working time come on top in all three cases.
Shopify Basic costs 27 € per month when paid annually in Germany, so 648 € over 24 months. Assume you buy a theme for a one-time 350 € and use apps for a combined 40 € per month, which adds 350 € and 960 €. With a legal text service at an assumed 10 € per month (240 €), you end up at around 2,200 € over two years. In return, you build and maintain everything yourself.
At solution25, the Scale package costs 299 € per month and the Pro package 499 € per month, each with a 24 month minimum term and no setup fee. Over 24 months that is 7,176 € or 11,976 €. Included are the build, creation of 200 or up to 500 products, payment methods, shipping, hosting in Germany, updates, backups and support. If you choose Shopify as the platform, Shopify’s fees come on top.
In our article Shopware costs we estimate around 25,000 € in the first year for a small Shopware shop and 80,000 to 120,000 € for a mid-sized shop with an ERP integration. The Community Edition has no licence fee, and the Rise plan starts at 600 € per month. In return, you get a shop that fits your processes exactly and that you own.
| Model | Cost over 24 months | Your own work | Fits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shop builder, DIY | approx. 2,200 € (with assumptions) | high | Start with a small range and time to spare |
| Shop on a subscription | 7,176 € to 11,976 € | low | Standard features, quick start |
| Project with Shopware | from approx. 25,000 € in the first year | medium | Own processes, integrations, B2B |
The cheapest option on paper is not automatically the least expensive. If you put in 150 hours of your own work for example A and value your hour at 50 €, the shop builder costs you 7,500 € in time. More on small budgets can be found in our article Building an online shop on a budget.
Many complete solution providers work with exactly one platform. That is not a drawback as long as the platform suits you. Choose the platform before you choose the provider, not after.
Shopify suits you if you want to start quickly, have a manageable product range and standard processes are enough. Shopify provides hosting, security and checkout. Limits show up with custom pricing logic, complex B2B requirements and deep checkout customisation, which is only possible on the Plus plan from 2,100 € per month in Germany. Ongoing costs come from apps and fees.
Shopware fits if you need many products, several customer groups, B2B processes or an ERP integration. The Community Edition is released under the MIT licence and has no licence fee. Under Shopware’s fair usage policy you need a paid plan if your shops generated more than 1 million euros in gross merchandise value in the previous year. Shopware runs on your own or a rented server, so hosting and maintenance must be part of the package. How to find the right ERP system for Shopware is covered in a separate article.
WooCommerce is an extension for WordPress and fits when content such as guides or recipes is at the centre and the shop is added to it. It is flexible but requires discipline with extensions and updates. Every additional extension is one more part that needs maintenance.
You will find a detailed comparison of the two big platforms in our article Shopify or Shopware.
You can copy these questions word for word into your request. The answers quickly show whether a package is really complete.
If you also want to evaluate the agency itself, you will find more questions in our article Finding a Shopware agency.
An offer in which one provider delivers the shop platform, setup, design, hosting and support from a single source. The term is not protected, so the list of services counts, not the label.
It depends on the form. A shop builder you set up yourself costs a low four-figure amount over two years plus your own time. A shop on a subscription at solution25 starts at 299 € per month. A custom Shopware project starts at around 25,000 € in the first year.
With a project, usually yes. With a shop builder you rent the software and keep your data. With a subscription, the contract defines when and to what extent the shop becomes yours. At solution25 that is after 24 months.
The content of the legal texts, packaging registration, taxes, contracts with payment and shipping providers and the accuracy of your product information. The provider implements the technology, but you are the one who is liable.
With a template, finished product data and standard features, a few weeks is realistic. With a custom design, integrations and many products, expect several months. The most common reason for delays is missing content.
We are a Shopware Platinum Partner based in Bremen, Germany, and have been working on online shops since 2017. We offer both routes: shops as a project and ready-made shops on a shop subscription, built with Shopware, WooCommerce or Shopify. The subscription combines build, product setup, hosting in Germany, updates and support in one contract. For projects, we write the twelve building blocks from this article into the offer and mark what is included and what is not.
If you already have a complete offer on the table, we are happy to review it and tell you where the gaps are, even if you end up staying with another provider. For existing shops, our shop analysis is a good place to start. Or write to us via our contact page.
Henrik Schäfer is a TÜV-certified data protection officer and handles privacy and compliance topics in ecommerce projects at solution25. He helps merchants put privacy requirements into practice without losing sight of conversion. Get in touch
Responsible for content and updates: Henrik Schäfer. Last updated: November 2026. Next content review: February 2027.
