How much does an e-commerce website cost for a small business in 2026?

You run a business. You need to sell online. You google "e-commerce website cost" and get answers ranging from $0 to $35,000.

Not helpful.

I'm Jeff Cadet, a full-stack developer. I've built e-commerce sites for real small businesses, including a trilingual fashion e-commerce store and a beauty services website. Here's what it actually costs, based on what I've seen and built.

The short answer

Most small businesses I work with land in the $1,500 to $8,000 range with a freelancer.

Do it yourself with Shopify or Squarespace

Shopify starts at $29/month (Basic plan, billed yearly). Squarespace starts at $23/month (Core plan, billed yearly).

Both include hosting, SSL, payment processing, and templates. You pick a theme, add your products, connect Stripe or their built-in payments, and you're live.

This works well for standard products with standard pricing. If you're selling t-shirts or candles and don't need anything unusual, Shopify at $29/month is the right answer. Don't spend $5,000 on a custom build for a simple store.

Where it breaks down: multilingual support, custom order flows (quotes, deposits, custom sizing), page speed optimization, and SEO control beyond the basics. If you need any of those, you're going to hit walls fast.

Real cost for a small Shopify store: $80 to $150/month once you add a few paid apps, a premium theme, and a domain. A typical store uses 5 to 10 paid apps, and those add $50 to $200/month you probably didn't budget for. That's $960 to $1,800 per year before you've sold anything.

Hire a freelance developer

This is what most of my clients do.

A freelance developer builds you a custom site. You own the code. The design is yours, not a template shared with 10,000 other stores. You get exactly the features you need and nothing you don't.

Typical cost: $1,500 to $8,000 upfront, plus $20 to $50/month for hosting.

Here's what I built for two real clients.

Maison Saint Louis (fashion e-commerce)

A haute couture fashion house needed a digital storefront in three languages with custom order workflows.

Shopify couldn't do this. The trilingual support, custom order quoting, and editorial design all required custom development.

Sarah Beauty (service business)

A beauty professional needed a website that would rank locally and drive bookings.

Honestly, this could have been a Squarespace site. But the client wanted fast load times and real SEO control. The custom build loads in under 1.5 seconds on 3G. Try that with a Squarespace template loaded with third-party scripts.

Hire an agency

$6,000 to $35,000+ upfront. $200 to $500/month in maintenance retainers.

You get a team: designer, developer, project manager, QA. You also get a longer timeline (2 to 6 months), revision rounds, and meetings.

This makes sense if you have a large product catalog (500+ SKUs), need ERP or inventory integrations, or need ongoing content and marketing support.

For most small businesses, it's more than you need.

Costs that sneak up on you

The upfront price isn't the full picture.

Payment processing takes 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction on Stripe. Shopify adds 0.5% to 2% on top of that if you don't use Shopify Payments. On $10,000 in monthly sales, that's an extra $50 to $200 just for using your preferred payment provider.

Free themes exist. They look free. Budget $150 to $400 for a premium theme if you're on Shopify or Squarespace.

Photography matters more than design. I've seen beautiful websites with terrible product photos that don't sell. Budget $200 to $1,000 for product photography, or learn to shoot with a phone and good lighting. It makes more difference than any design choice.

Maintenance adds up. Security updates, content changes, bug fixes, hosting renewals. Plan for $1,100 to $5,000/year in ongoing costs no matter how you build.

How to pick a developer

Ask for live stores you can visit right now. Mockups and screenshots don't prove anything.

Ask about ongoing costs before you sign. If they don't bring up hosting, maintenance, and domain renewal, they're planning to hand off and disappear.

Check what they build with. Next.js, Tailwind, Stripe is a modern stack. WordPress with 47 plugins is a maintenance nightmare waiting to happen.

Look at the site on your phone. Over 60% of e-commerce traffic is mobile. If the demo looks great on desktop and terrible on a phone, keep looking.

If you need an e-commerce site

I build custom e-commerce sites for small businesses. Multilingual, Stripe payments, fast, SEO-optimized.

If you're not sure whether you need custom development or if Shopify is enough, let's talk. I'll tell you honestly. No charge for the conversation.

See the stores I've built, including Maison Saint Louis and Sarah Beauty.