What Does a Magento Shop Cost?

Author: Nelly Chang

We are often asked the simple question of what it would cost to create a Magento shop. If you deal with the topic of e-commerce, it quickly becomes clear that the price of a web shop depends on the individual requirements of the client.

Iif you are new to e-commerce, you should at least have a rough idea of the price. Incidentally, this article is only about the open source version of the popular shop system.

First budget assessment

Sorting as a dealer helps with an initial assessment. This can also be enough for a first business

plan : Do you place high demands on the overall development? Or should it first be about going online with a professional shop? The following table provides information.

  • A simple Magento shop has no special extras and extensions. It is created from a standard template that is graphically adapted and slightly revised.

    • A shop of medium complexity includes, for example, the individual creation of the graphic and has features that make the set-up effort a little higher. (e.g. multilingualism, different shipping methods, nicer gift wrapping function, improved product search )

    • The requirements of a web shop with individual extras (e.g. an individual product configurator, an interface to merchandise management) must be considered in detail.Of course, there are also projects which development costs are far above this budget. In the enterprise sector, it is not uncommon for six-figure sums and more to be spent on setting up a Magento shop. In general, however, it can be said that a shop.

If the budget is not enough...

If the budget is a bit tight, there are two options:

On the one hand, you can switch to a cheaper rental system, which may be sufficient for the start. Disadvantages are usually the running costs or a fee that is charged for each sale. In addition, they are quite inflexible in design, wherever Magento goes in the frontend and backend, practically everything can be changed.

On the other hand, there is the possibility to start with a simple version and to develop the shop later.

Running costsHosting for Magento

Depending on the size of the product database, a Magento shop requires sufficient server resources. In order for the shop to be set up quickly by the end-user, I recommend my customers not to go into the cheapest offer, but to choose a dedicated server or cluster system. Because short loading times increase the user-friendliness and the conversion rate and also contribute to a preferred advertisement in the search engines.

Therefore, depending on the workload, monthly hosting costs of approx. EUR 40 - 150 are incurred.

Security updates

Magento regularly releases security patches that protect against hacker attacks and should be installed promptly. Although the installation is usually very quick, incompatibilities with installed or programmed extensions can occur, which can increase the effort.

As an average for this point, you can count on around EUR 50 per month for support incurred in the context of shop support.

Further development and optimization

One should not overlook the fact that a web shop can be continuously optimized and developed. Reasons for the adjustment can be:

  • SEO or adaptation to Google's algorithms. For example, for some time now, mobile-optimized shops have been preferentially listed on Google, ie old shops have to catch up here.

  • New product types (e.g. gift sets, variant articles, etc.) are added to the product range that have not yet played a role in the development of the shop.

  • Legal adjustments: Some changes in the legislature are forcing shop operators to make design, content or program changes. (A membership in TrustedShops or in the dealer association can be advantageous here )

  • Further development due to new shipping methods, payment methods or upcoming internationalization of the business.

Again, your goals are very important. If you start in a first step, then the budget is probably better off elsewhere. However, if you want to play a part in e-commerce above, it is worth planning your budget for the occasions mentioned here.

Recommendation for a successful Magento project

The problem with a shop project is often that retailers or clients have different ideas than what the Magento agency finally implemented.

For a successful Magento project, it is therefore imperative in any case to draw up a detailed specification or have it drawn up, in which all the requirements of the shop are listed. In this way, ambiguities can be eliminated right at the start of the project and costs made transparent. ( see also: Magento programming )

The time that you spend with an agency or programmer in the creation of a reasonable specification pays off in retrospect due to the shorter implementation time.

Conclusion

In the table above, I roughly listed the order of magnitude that should be kept in mind when developing a professional shop system. Running costs should also be considered.

The exact costs can only be estimated more precisely if the requirements are known. For this, it is worthwhile to draw up a detailed specification sheet from which the effort can be clearly seen.

What exactly this means in individual cases can often be clarified in a first conversation.