What Does a Webshop Cost to Build and Run?
By CodexierPublished 6 min read
Ask what a webshop costs and you get a build price. Run one for a year and you discover four other cost lines that together usually exceed it: the platform, the apps, the payment and shipping fees, and your own time. This guide takes each in turn, shows how they scale with the size of the store, and ends with a first-year budget structure you can fill in for your own shop. Our fixed packages are used as a transparent reference; current prices are on the pricing page.
Build cost by store size
Build cost depends on three things more than anything else: how many products with how many variants, how much design goes beyond the theme, and how many systems the shop must talk to. A store with thirty products, a good theme and standard Klarna and shipping integrations is a well-defined job. A store with two thousand products imported from a supplier feed, custom bundles and a Fortnox integration is a project. Our store setup service covers the first case at a fixed price; the second is scoped through custom e-commerce features.
| Store size | Typical scope | Build character |
|---|---|---|
| Small | Up to a few dozen products, theme design, Swish and Klarna, one shipping carrier | Fixed package |
| Medium | Hundreds of products, product data import, several carriers, email flows | Fixed package plus add-ons |
| Large or integrated | Thousands of products, ERP or Fortnox sync, B2B pricing, custom checkout logic | Scoped project |
Platform and app subscriptions
Shopify charges a monthly plan fee that includes hosting, security and updates. WooCommerce is free software, but you pay for hosting, and a serious store needs managed hosting with backups and a staging environment. Both then accumulate apps: reviews, email marketing, shipping labels, upsells, translations. Each app is a small monthly fee that nobody notices until there are fifteen of them.
- Set an app budget per month before launch and review it quarterly. Remove any app you cannot name the purpose of.
- Prefer platform-native features over apps where they exist; native features do not break on updates.
- On WooCommerce, count premium plugin renewals as a subscription, because that is what they are.
- Keep the platform account and every app account in your company's name, not the agency's.
Payment and shipping fees
Payment providers take a fixed fee per transaction plus a share of the amount, and the share varies by method: card, Klarna invoice or instalments, and Swish each have their own terms. For a Swedish consumer shop, Klarna and Swish are close to mandatory because customers expect them, so the question is not whether to pay these fees but how to keep the average order value high enough that the fixed part becomes small. Fees are published by each provider; read the current schedule rather than a blog post.
Shipping is the other percentage cost. Contract rates with PostNord, DHL, Bring or Instabox depend on volume, and a shipping integration app is what prints labels and offers pickup points at checkout. Decide early whether you charge shipping at cost, subsidise it, or offer free shipping above a threshold, because that decision changes your margin more than any platform fee does.
Your own time after launch
The line most budgets omit. Someone has to answer customer questions, pack orders, handle returns under Swedish distance-selling rules, update product data, write the campaign emails and keep the bookkeeping in Fortnox or Visma tidy. For a small shop this is easily a part-time role, and if it is your evenings, it has a cost even if no invoice shows it.
| Task | Frequency | Can it be reduced? |
|---|---|---|
| Order handling and packing | Daily | Shipping integration, pick lists, a fulfilment partner at volume |
| Customer questions | Daily | Clear product pages, order tracking, FAQ, a chatbot at volume |
| Returns | Weekly | A self-service returns flow and clear policy |
| Product data and content | Weekly | Templates, supplier feeds |
| Bookkeeping | Monthly | Order-to-accounting integration |
A first-year budget example
Build the budget as five lines and fill them with your own figures from the providers' price lists. The build line is the only one we can state for you; the rest depend on your plan, your apps and your sales.
| Line | How to estimate it | Example: small Shopify store |
|---|---|---|
| Build | Fixed package or scoped quote | 14,990 kr one-time, our store setup |
| Platform | Plan fee times twelve | Shopify plan of your choice, twelve months |
| Apps | Monthly app budget times twelve | Three to five apps at launch |
| Payment and shipping | Share of expected revenue plus carrier contract | From your revenue forecast |
| Your time | Hours per week times a realistic hourly value | Ten hours a week at first |
Add a reserve for the first campaign and for one unplanned fix. Both happen.
When you do not need a webshop: if you sell a handful of items occasionally, a payment link, a Swish number and a simple order form on your website will do, and the running costs above will not apply. If you are testing demand, a marketplace listing costs less to try than a store. When the product range and the order volume are real, a proper store is cheaper per order than any of those. A free 15-minute call is enough for us to say which case you are in.
Frequently asked questions
Is Shopify or WooCommerce cheaper to run?
For a small shop with few apps, Shopify's plan fee and WooCommerce's managed hosting end up in the same range; WooCommerce adds maintenance time. At larger volumes the difference is decided by transaction fees and app choices rather than the platform itself. Our comparison of Shopify and WooCommerce for Swedish shops goes through the details.
What does a webshop cost per month after launch?
Plan fee or hosting, plus apps, plus payment fees on sales, plus any maintenance plan. The first three are on each provider's price list; the last is a fixed monthly amount if you choose one. The honest answer is that your own time is the largest monthly cost for most small stores.
Can I start small and expand the store later?
Yes, and it is the sensible route. Launch with the core range, standard payments and one carrier, then add features once real orders show what customers need. Products, customers and orders carry over; a redesign later is a design cost, not a rebuild.
Do I need a maintenance plan for a webshop?
On Shopify the platform handles updates and security, so a maintenance plan is about content and fixes. On WooCommerce you need someone updating plugins and testing the checkout after each update, either yourself or a plan. A broken checkout you discover from a customer email is the expensive outcome.
Want a first-year budget for your shop?
Tell us your product count, the payment methods you need and roughly how many orders you expect. In 15 minutes we fill in the five lines with you and give a fixed build price, or suggest something cheaper if a store is premature.
Book a free 15-minute call