Almost everyone asks me what building an online store costs. Almost nobody asks about running it. Yet it’s the monthly cost of running an online store that decides whether it will still pay off in a year, or in five. In this article I break it down line by line: what’s essential, what’s optional, where business owners overpay and how these costs compare with Amazon, eBay or subscription platforms. All figures are approximate market ranges for Europe and North America as of 2026; always check current pricing.
To be clear: I mean a store you own, built on WooCommerce. That’s the kind of online store I build, and I know these costs from dozens of projects.
Essential costs: the store won’t run without them
Hosting: roughly €10–40 / $10–50 a month
Hosting is the server your store runs on. For a small or medium store (up to a few thousand visits a day), good shared hosting at around €10–20 / $10–25 a month is plenty. Stores with more traffic or a large catalog should aim for about €25–40 / $30–50 for a VPS or hosting optimized for WooCommerce.
Don’t save on PHP resources and the database: hosting for €2 a month can cost you far more in abandoned carts, because a slow store loses customers. More on how hosting works and why it matters in a separate article.
Domain: roughly €1–2 / $1–2 a month
A .com domain usually costs about €12–20 / $15–20 a year at renewal (country domains such as .de or .co.uk are often cheaper), so €1–2 a month. Watch out for “€1 for the first year” offers: what counts is the renewal price, not the first year.
SSL certificate: €0
On decent hosting, a Let’s Encrypt certificate is free and renews automatically. If someone wants you to pay €50–200 a year for the “padlock” on a basic store, treat it as a warning sign.
Payment fees: roughly 1.5–3% of revenue
Payment providers such as Stripe, PayPal or Klarna charge a fee on every transaction. Roughly: Stripe charges around 1.5% plus a small fixed fee for standard European cards in the EU, typical US card rates are closer to 3% plus about 30¢, and PayPal is usually a bit more. The exact rate depends on the provider, card type and customer’s country. This cost scales with sales: on €10,000 of monthly revenue you’ll pay roughly €150–300, and on $10,000 in the US roughly $300.
An important comparison: this is the only commission you pay in your own store. On Amazon, referral fees in many categories are around 8–15%, plus a monthly seller plan and, very often, advertising. On the same €10,000 of revenue, a marketplace can easily take €800–1,500 or more, several times as much.
Optional costs: they depend on how you run the store
Technical maintenance: €0 or roughly €40–120 / $50–150 a month
WooCommerce, like any software, needs updates (plugins, theme and WordPress itself) and regular backups. You have two options:
- Do it yourself: €0 plus 1–2 hours of your time a month. With a little discipline it’s realistic. After launch, every client of mine gets a store manual.
- Ongoing maintenance: usually around €40–120 / $50–150 a month. Someone handles updates, security, backups and small fixes, which for a store that earns money is cheaper than one day of downtime after a failed update. If your store is already running but nobody has looked after it, start with a review and repair.
Premium plugins: roughly €0–25 / $0–30 a month
Free plugins cover most store features. Paid licenses come in for things like subscriptions, bookings or B2B integrations. A typical small store spends nothing on this; a larger one around €10–25 a month, averaged out from annual licenses.
Email marketing: roughly €0–50 / $0–60 a month
Tools such as MailerLite, Mailchimp or Klaviyo have free plans, usually for the first few hundred subscribers, and then the price grows with your list. I treat it as the cheapest way to bring customers back, not a cost. I’ve explained how automated email works in a separate article.
Marketing: a growth budget, not a running cost
I deliberately leave SEO and Google Ads out of the running costs. The store works without them, but it grows with them. If you plan to actively drive traffic, a realistic starting budget for ad campaigns is roughly €300–1,000 / $300–1,000 a month, and SEO is a long-term investment that lowers your cost per customer over time.
Summary: three realistic monthly scenarios
Minimal scenario, store run by yourself (all figures approximate): hosting €12 + domain €1.50 + SSL €0 = about €15–25 / $15–30 a month, plus payment fees on your actual sales.
Typical scenario, store with technical maintenance: hosting €15 + domain €1.50 + maintenance €40–80 = about €55–100 / $65–120 a month.
Extended scenario, store with maintenance, email marketing and premium plugins: about €100–180 / $120–220 a month, usually for stores that already turn over €10,000 or more a month.
For comparison: subscription (SaaS) platforms such as Shopify start at roughly €30–80 / $30–80 a month for the plan alone, often with extra transaction fees and paid apps on top. You’ll find the full comparison in WooCommerce vs Shopify for a small business.
Hidden costs nobody talks about
Three things that most often surprise store owners after the first year:
- Renewals. In the second year, the domain and plugin licenses cost the full price, not the promotional one.
- Transactional email. Order emails sent straight from the server tend to land in spam. Proper sending (for example via an external SMTP service) costs roughly €0–15 / $0–15 a month, but you have to plan for it.
- Product photos and descriptions. A cost in time, not money, but the one that most often holds a store back. Image quality has a direct impact on sales.
How much does it cost to run an online store? The one-sentence answer
A well-organized store you own costs from about €15 / $15 a month if you run it yourself to about €100 / $120 with full technical maintenance, plus roughly 1.5–3% in payment fees (approximate, 2026). That’s a fraction of what you’d hand over to marketplaces on the same revenue.
If you like, I’ll calculate it for your range, scale and growth plans. Write or call me; the quote and consultation are free. And if you’re only planning to build a store, also check how much an online store costs and my current pricing.
