How much does a custom e-commerce site really cost?
Catalog, payment, admin, sales boosters: complete breakdown of hand-coded e-commerce pricing, with TCO comparison vs Shopify Plus and WooCommerce.
Selling online in 2026 looks nothing like what it was five years ago. Average basket is dropping, abandonment is rising, and e-merchant margins are being eaten by three invisible actors: platforms (Shopify, WooCommerce), third-party apps (each €10-200/month), and payment fees. Before even starting, a Shopify Plus merchant typically pays €2,000/month in fixed costs platform + apps — that's €24,000/year, excluding development.
At SARO Agency, we code custom e-commerce sites. It's not for everyone: to sell 10 craft products in a niche, Shopify Lite at $9/mo is enough. But as soon as we talk about a brand that wants to grow, the TCO gap becomes massive. Here are the numbers, line by line.
An e-commerce site isn't a website with a cart. It's a transactional platform that must hold traffic peaks, handle dozens of edge cases (refunds, returns, taxes, multi-currency), and stay maintained 5 to 10 years. The price you're billed is the cost of a platform designed for that.
SARO entry price: €9,900 ex. VAT
Our starting price for a multi-page e-commerce site is €9,900 ex. VAT. This price covers:
- Catalog up to 10 products (extensible to 50 or unlimited)
- 3 pages included + Home and Contact required (5 pages total)
- Secure Stripe payment (cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay)
- Stock management via Stripe + light dashboard
- Automated transactional emails (order confirmation, shipping, etc.)
- E-commerce SEO basics (Product schema, OpenGraph, sitemap)
- 1-year secure hosting + SSL + backups
- 2h training on usage
- Source code 100% delivered
In 48-month installments, that comes to €207/month — cheaper than a Shopify Plus license alone.
That's the "starter" price. From there, the price scales with the business modules you activate. Here are the most requested modules and their impact.
The options that actually change ROI
Extended catalog
- Up to 50 products: +€1,500 (category management, simple variants, basic filters)
- Unlimited catalog: +€3,500 (scalable database architecture, full-text search, advanced filters)
Beyond 200 products, we switch to a dedicated architecture with ElasticSearch or equivalent. Count +€5,000 to +€8,000 depending on complexity.
PayPal alongside Stripe
+€1,200. Stripe is included by default (credit cards + Apple/Google Pay). Adding PayPal increases conversion by 5 to 12% according to Baymard Institute studies, especially on baskets > €100 and senior customers.
Multi-currency (EUR, USD, AED, GBP…)
+€1,500. Displays prices in visitor's currency (auto IP/geo detection), handles conversions and multi-currency checkout via Stripe. Essential as soon as you sell outside France.
Wishlist + Product Reviews + Recommendations
+€800 + €1,200 + €1,500 = €3,500 total. Together these three features increase average basket by 15-30% according to our client audits. Social proof drives conversion on products > €50.
Loyalty points program
+€2,000. Customers earn points on each purchase, redeemable for discounts or gifts. Builds repeat-customer loyalty and increases purchase frequency by 25-40% depending on segment.
Electronic gift cards
+€1,500. Email-delivered cards with unique codes, balance viewing, configurable expiration. Guaranteed sales spike in December.
Click & Collect / In-store pickup
+€1,500. Configure your pickup points in the admin (multi-store managed), time slots, email/SMS notifications when order is ready. Third-party pickup networks (Mondial Relay, etc.) are quoted separately.
Advanced product filters
+€1,000. Essential from 30+ products. Filter by size, color, price, brand. Without filters, category-page bounce rate goes from 35% to 65% on average.
Multi-vendor marketplace
+€8,000. Platform where multiple vendors publish their own products (Etsy-style). Vendor management, commissions, payouts via Stripe Connect. It's a project of its own — you leave simple e-commerce to enter marketplace territory.
The full admin: the option that changes everything
This is the module that separates a "configure once, freeze forever" e-commerce from a daily operational e-commerce.
Price: from €6,000, scaled by active modules.
The SARO admin covers:
- Edit all site texts (titles, paragraphs, buttons, CTAs)
- Edit all images (upload, cropping, auto WebP/AVIF optimization)
- Manage catalog: add/edit products with photos & descriptions, categories, stock
- Process orders (status, shipping, Colissimo/Mondial Relay labels)
- Automatic PDF invoice generation
- Accounting exports (CSV for accountant, Sage/Cegid-compatible format)
- Customer management (history, segmentation, internal notes)
- Promo codes (% or fixed amount, conditions, validity dates, limits)
- Sales statistics (day/week/month revenue, top products, conversion rate)
Without this option, you manage products via the Stripe dashboard (very limited) and every ergonomic or content modification you ask us is billed separately (typically €80-150/intervention).
For a merchant who regularly evolves their site, the admin pays for itself in 6-12 months.
Total cost of a complete SARO e-commerce
Concrete case: a cosmetics brand launching its store with 50 products, multi-currency (EUR/USD), product reviews, recommendations, loyalty program, and full admin.
| Item | Price ex. VAT |
|---|---|
| Multi-page e-commerce base | €9,900 |
| 50-product catalog | €1,500 |
| Multi-currency | €1,500 |
| Product reviews with photos | €1,200 |
| Recommendations / you may also like | €1,500 |
| Loyalty points program | €2,000 |
| Full admin (with all modules) | ~€7,500 |
| Total ex. VAT | €25,100 |
Over 48 installments, that's €524/month ex. VAT. Over 24 installments, €1,047/month. Upfront, €23,845 (with -5% discount).
For an ambitious e-commerce targeting €200k-€500k annual revenue over 3 years, it's a controlled investment: less than 10% of year-1 revenue target, and zero recurring fees beyond maintenance (€129/month Standard Pack).
3-year TCO comparison: SARO vs Shopify Plus vs WooCommerce
Same functional scope on all three platforms.
Shopify Plus
- Shopify Plus license: $2,000/month minimum (varies by revenue) = ~€22,000/year
- Custom Premium theme (Shopify custom development): €8,000-€15,000 one-shot
- Required third-party apps: Klaviyo (mail) €60/mo, Loyalty Lion (loyalty) €159/mo, Stamped.io (reviews) €100/mo, Bold Multi-Currency €60/mo = ~€380/mo = ~€4,560/year
- Additional transaction fees (if not Shopify Payments): 0.5-2% of revenue
3-year total (assuming €200k revenue/year): ~€88,000-€95,000 ex. VAT
WooCommerce (self-hosted)
- Initial development (custom theme + WooCommerce + extensions): €8,000-€15,000
- Managed WooCommerce hosting (Kinsta Business or WP Engine): €120/mo = €4,320 over 3 years
- Premium plugins (WooCommerce Subscriptions, Bookings, etc.): ~€800/year = €2,400 over 3 years
- Monthly technical maintenance (updates, post-update fixes): €250/mo = €9,000 over 3 years
- Evolutions (1 per year, new plugin or theme tweak): €1,200/year = €3,600
3-year total: ~€30,000-€35,000 ex. VAT
Custom SARO
- Initial development: €25,100
- Standard maintenance pack: €129/mo = €4,644 over 3 years
- Vercel Pro hosting or equivalent (often included in the pack)
- Evolutions: à la carte, typically 1-2 per year
3-year total: ~€31,000-€33,000 ex. VAT
Summary
| Platform | 3-year cost | Performance | Code ownership |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shopify Plus | €88-95k | LCP 2-4s | Locked-in |
| WooCommerce | €30-35k | LCP 3-6s | You |
| Custom SARO | €31-33k | LCP 0.8-1.5s | You |
The interesting point: over 3 years, SARO TCO is lower than WooCommerce (at equivalent features), and drastically lower than Shopify Plus. With 2-4× better performance (translating to 15-25% more conversion).
Shopify makes sense below €50k annual revenue, and stops being interesting above €300k. WooCommerce becomes painful to maintain above 100 products. Custom SARO becomes obvious as soon as you exceed €150k annual revenue or 100 active products.
When custom isn't the right answer
To stay honest:
- < 30 products, market-test launch: Shopify Lite ($9/mo) or WooCommerce on shared hosting is enough
- < €50k expected annual revenue: the custom premium doesn't pay back
- No team to follow orders: your real problem isn't the platform, it's logistics
In these cases, save the budget for ads and product, not code.
How to scope your project
Our quote configurator covers all e-commerce modules with unit pricing, preferred payment mode, and real-time calculation. The resulting quote is firm and sent to a SARO engineer for review within 24h — no hidden fields, no surprise variations, no mandatory sales call before getting a number.
For an overview of SARO pricing (showcase, e-commerce, SaaS), read our transparent 2026 price breakdown. And to understand why we code by hand rather than on a theme, our Next.js vs WordPress technical comparison.