What does a webshop cost? Honest answer: somewhere between €1,500 and €40,000, and that wide spread is exactly the point. A template shop on Shopify and a custom webshop with B2B pricing and a link to your warehouse are both called a “webshop”, yet they are two completely different projects. One team handling both the design and the build keeps the price at the lower end of these ranges and the lead time short. What you pay depends on four things: the platform, the number of products, the integrations you need and how much of your own logic it holds. This article is the webshop deep-dive under our broader guide on what a website costs, and it shows the real prices per type and per platform, plus the monthly costs and transaction fees most quotes leave out. For the build itself, see our webshop service.
What does a webshop cost per type?
The most useful way to look at prices is per route, not per agency. Below are four categories with the one-time investment, the lead time and the monthly costs in the Dutch market in 2026. These are realistic ranges for SMB webshops, not teasers and not enterprise figures.
| Route | One-time investment | Lead time | Monthly costs |
|---|---|---|---|
| Build it yourself on a platform (Shopify or WooCommerce) | €0 to €1,000 | 1 to 3 weeks yourself | €30 to €120 |
| Template shop via an agency (theme, standard payments) | €1,500 to €4,000 | 2 to 4 weeks | €40 to €150 |
| Professional webshop (custom design, integrations, up to ~100 products) | €8,000 to €18,000 | 4 to 7 weeks | €80 to €250 |
| Custom webshop (B2B pricing, stock sync, own logic) | €20,000 to €40,000 | 6 to 10 weeks | €150 to €400 |
The monthly costs cover hosting or a platform subscription, payment provider and regular maintenance. Transaction fees come on top, because they scale with your revenue. If you are torn between an off-the-shelf platform and a purpose-built shop, our article on WordPress, custom or headless helps you decide.
What does a webshop cost per platform?
The platform sets a large part of your costs, now and later. The three routes most common in the Netherlands are Shopify, WooCommerce (on WordPress) and a custom shop on your own tech. They differ not only in build price, but above all in what they cost you monthly and how much freedom you keep.
| Platform | One-time build cost | Monthly costs | Where it fits |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shopify | €1,500 to €15,000 | €27 to €289 (+ apps) | Fast to launch, standard B2C, little custom work |
| WooCommerce (WordPress) | €2,500 to €18,000 | €20 to €100 (hosting + plugins) | Flexible, many plugins, self-maintained |
| Custom (own stack) | €20,000 to €40,000 | €40 to €200 (hosting) | B2B logic, integrations, scale, you own the code |
Shopify launches fastest and is easiest to manage, but you pay a monthly subscription and often extra for apps that come built in on custom shops. WooCommerce is free as software, but you pay in hosting, plugins and maintenance, and you are responsible for updates and security yourself. Custom costs the most up front, but you are tied to nothing and the running costs stay low. For the broader trade-off between platforms, read our comparison of WordPress, Webflow, Wix and Shopify.
What determines the price of a webshop?
In nearly every webshop quote, the same dials push the price up or down. Not the agency’s logo, but these five.
- Number of products and variants. Setting up ten products is an afternoon’s work. A catalogue of 2,000 items with sizes, colours and stock status per variant is a project in itself, and often needs an import from your old system.
- Payment methods and checkout. iDEAL, card and pay-later are standard. But a checkout with business invoices, tiered discounts or a customer-specific price costs extra build time.
- Integrations. A link to your accounting, your warehouse (WMS), a courier or a marketplace like bol.com costs €750 to €4,000 per integration, depending on how well the API is documented.
- Design and brand experience. A standard theme with your colours costs almost nothing in design. A unique design that a designer draws screen by screen adds €1,500 to €6,000.
- B2B logic. If you sell to businesses, logic comes in that a normal B2C shop does not have: prices per customer group, minimum order quantities, quotes and invoiced orders. That is the biggest cost driver of all.
What are the monthly costs and transaction fees?
The build price is only half the story. A webshop has running costs a normal website does not have, and cheap quotes often hide them. Below are the real monthly costs per type of shop in 2026.
| Cost item | Small shop | Professional shop | Custom shop |
|---|---|---|---|
| Platform / hosting | €25 to €50 | €50 to €150 | €40 to €200 |
| Payment provider (fixed monthly) | €0 to €25 | €10 to €40 | €10 to €50 |
| Maintenance and updates | €25 to €75 | €75 to €200 | €100 to €300 |
| Apps, plugins, licences | €10 to €50 | €30 to €100 | €20 to €80 |
| Total per month | €60 to €200 | €165 to €490 | €170 to €630 |
And then there are transaction fees, the item sellers underestimate most. Count on roughly €0.20 to €0.40 per iDEAL payment and 1.5% to 2.9% per card, depending on your payment provider such as Mollie, Stripe or Adyen. If you also sell via a marketplace like bol.com or Amazon, another 10% to 20% commission comes off each sale. At an average order value of €50 that adds up fast: on €10,000 in revenue you can easily pay €200 to €400 in transaction fees alone.
How much money do you need to start a webshop?
This question comes up almost every time, and the answer surprises most starters. The tech is rarely the biggest cost. To simply start you need a platform subscription of €30 to €120 per month, a domain name of around €12 per year and enough stock to sell. If you do it yourself on Shopify or WooCommerce, you sit at €500 to €2,000 in startup costs.
But the real costs usually sit elsewhere. In stock you buy up front. In marketing to pull in visitors, because a webshop without traffic sells nothing. And in your own time to get product photos, copy and setup right. According to Eurostat, the Netherlands has one of the highest shares of online shoppers in the EU, so the market is there. The question is not whether people buy online, but whether they find and trust your shop. If you have the shop built, the one-time build price from the tables above comes on top.
Template or custom: which is cheaper long term?
This is the question that causes most budget arguments. A template shop is almost always cheaper in year one. The question is whether that still holds after two years. Below is a worked example for a professional webshop of €12,000 in build cost, run across two years, so you see where your money goes after launch.
| Cost item | Year 1 | Year 2 | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| One-time build cost | €12,000 | €0 | Design, build, integrations, delivery |
| Platform + hosting | €900 | €900 | Hosting or platform subscription |
| Payment provider (fixed) | €240 | €240 | Monthly costs separate from transaction fees |
| Maintenance and updates | €1,200 | €1,440 | Security, updates, small changes |
| Apps and licences | €480 | €600 | Plugins, email, analytics |
| Total | €14,820 | €3,180 | 24-month TCO: €18,000 |
The build cost here is about 81 percent of year one and almost nothing in year two. Anyone comparing on the build quote alone misses the running costs that, over two years, add up to a quarter of the build price again, transaction fees not included. A well-built shop keeps those running costs low. A too-cheaply built shop drives them up with plugin updates that break and a platform that gets pricier the moment you grow.
Our rule of thumb: a template is fine if you test one product line and are happy to rebuild in two years. Choose custom the moment you sell B2B, need to sync stock, or need a feature no off-the-shelf theme offers. For a worked example, see the anonymous e-commerce case.
Why is a cheap webshop sometimes false economy?
A €699 webshop exists, but you pay the difference back somewhere else. Usually in one of these forms. A slow shop that loses visitors before they check out. A standard theme that looks like every other shop and so builds no trust. Transaction and app costs that climb after launch. Or a rebuild after eighteen months because the foundation does not scale.
Speed is no detail here. According to research by Google, the probability of a visitor bouncing rises 32 percent when load time goes from 1 to 3 seconds. And the Baymard Institute, which pools nearly fifty studies, measures an average cart abandonment rate of around 70 percent. So every second of delay and every bump in your checkout costs you revenue directly. For the full picture of what a too-cheap choice costs later, read our article on the hidden costs of cheap websites.
What is the first step?
- Write down what your shop has to do, not how it should look. Do you sell to consumers or businesses? How many products? Which integrations do you need?
- Choose your route deliberately. Testing an idea? Start small on a platform. Already know you will scale or sell B2B? Count on the professional or custom category from the start.
- Ask every quote split out: platform, design, integrations and monthly costs separately, transaction fees included. That way you compare apples with apples.
Book a free intake call. In thirty minutes we look at what your webshop needs to do, give an honest price indication and tell you whether a platform shop or custom is the right choice for you. For the full decision path around your online presence, read our complete custom website guide.
