How Much Does a Custom Ecommerce Store Actually Cost in 2026?

How much does it actually cost to build ecommerce website cost in 2026? The answer depends entirely on which path you take. A SaaS platform like Shopify runs $1,500-5,000 per year in fees and apps. A traditional WooCommerce build costs $3,000-15,000 upfront. A custom headless build from an agency? That's $25,000-75,000 before you've sold a single product. Or you could use a headless starter kit for $500-2,000 plus hosting and get 90% of the custom result. Here's an honest breakdown of what each approach actually costs — no vague "it depends" answers.

TL;DR

A basic WooCommerce store costs $3,000-8,000 to build. A custom headless build runs $25,000-75,000+. Shopify costs $1,500-5,000/yr in fees and apps. A headless WooCommerce starter kit like WPBundle costs a fraction of custom development and eliminates the hardest technical challenges — cart sessions, checkout, payment integration — out of the box.

The four approaches to ecommerce (and what each costs)

Every ecommerce store falls into one of four categories. Each has a fundamentally different cost structure, and understanding the trade-offs is the first step to making the right decision for your business.

SaaS platform (Shopify, BigCommerce)

SaaS platforms are the "easy button" — low upfront cost, fast setup, but ongoing fees that scale with your revenue. The true cost is rarely just the monthly subscription.

Upfront: $0-400 (theme purchase)
Monthly platform: $39-399 (Shopify Basic to Advanced)
Monthly apps: $50-100 (reviews, email, upsells, SEO tools)
Transaction fees: 0.5-2% per sale (on top of payment processor fees)
Annual total: $1,500-5,000+ (and it scales up with your revenue)

The app ecosystem is where Shopify gets expensive. Most stores need 5-10 apps for functionality that WooCommerce includes for free — product reviews, advanced filtering, custom fields, email marketing integration. At $10-50/month each, those costs add up fast. For a deeper look at why store owners are reconsidering Shopify, see our guide on why Shopify is too expensive for growing stores.

Traditional WooCommerce

WooCommerce is free and open source, but building a professional store on it still requires investment. The advantage is zero transaction fees and full ownership of your data and platform.

Theme and design: $500-3,000
Development and customisation: $2,000-10,000
Hosting: $25-100/month
Plugins: $200-500/year
Annual total after launch: $500-1,500

$3k-15k

Upfront build cost

$500-1.5k

Annual ongoing cost

Transaction fees

Traditional WooCommerce is the most cost-effective option for stores that don't need blazing-fast performance or a custom frontend experience. The trade-off is speed — PHP-rendered pages are inherently slower than a modern JavaScript frontend, and you'll spend money on caching plugins and hosting upgrades to compensate.

Custom headless build (agency)

A fully custom headless ecommerce build means hiring an agency or senior development team to architect and build a Next.js (or similar) frontend connected to your WooCommerce or custom backend via APIs. This is the premium option.

Design: $5,000-15,000
Frontend development (Next.js/React): $15,000-40,000
Backend integration: $5,000-15,000
Cart and checkout: $5,000-10,000 (the hardest part)
Total: $25,000-75,000+
Ongoing maintenance: $2,000-5,000/year

Why custom builds blow their budgets

The $25,000-75,000 range is for a competent agency. We have seen quotes from $100,000+ for enterprise headless builds. The complexity is real — cart session handling, payment integration, and SEO migration are where projects blow their budgets. A checkout flow that works reliably across browsers, handles edge cases (expired sessions, partial payments, concurrent cart updates), and integrates with Stripe, PayPal, and Apple Pay is genuinely difficult engineering.

The cart and checkout represent roughly 30-40% of the total development cost in a headless build. This is the piece that catches teams off guard. WooCommerce's checkout was designed for server-side PHP rendering — making it work via REST or GraphQL APIs from a decoupled frontend requires solving session persistence, CSRF tokens, nonce validation, and payment gateway callbacks. For the technical details, see our guides on headless WooCommerce cart sessions and headless WooCommerce Stripe checkout.

Headless starter kit (WPBundle approach)

A headless starter kit gives you the expensive, time-consuming parts pre-built — cart, checkout, product catalogue, SEO — so your development investment goes towards customisation and branding rather than infrastructure plumbing.

Starter kit: one-time purchase ($500-2,000 range)
Hosting: $25-100/month (WordPress) + $0-20/month (Vercel)
Customisation: your time or $2,000-5,000 for a developer
Annual total: $500-1,500

The maths is straightforward: 90% of the custom build, 5% of the cost. A starter kit like WPBundle handles the cart sessions, checkout flow, payment processing, and SEO scaffolding that would take an agency 4-8 weeks to build. You invest in what makes your store unique — your design, your product experience, your brand — not in re-implementing fundamental commerce infrastructure.

What drives cost in custom ecommerce

Whether you build from scratch or use a starter kit, certain components of an ecommerce store are disproportionately expensive to get right. Understanding where the money goes helps you make smarter decisions about what to build versus what to buy.

Cart session persistence (the #1 budget killer)

In a traditional WooCommerce store, cart sessions are managed by PHP server-side — cookies, database entries, and server sessions all work together seamlessly. In a headless architecture, your frontend runs on a completely separate server. Every cart interaction requires an API call, and maintaining persistent sessions across page loads, browser refreshes, and even different devices is genuinely complex engineering.

Why cart sessions are so expensive to build

Cart session management in a headless build involves JWT token handling, server-side session storage, race condition prevention (what happens when two tabs update the cart simultaneously?), session expiry and recovery, and guest-to-authenticated session merging. Most agencies estimate 2-3 weeks of development time for cart sessions alone.

Other major cost drivers

Payment integration — Stripe, PayPal, Apple Pay, and other gateways each have their own API patterns and webhook requirements
Product catalogue complexity — variable products with multiple attributes, grouped products, and custom product types multiply development time
Search implementation — fast, relevant product search requires either Algolia/ElasticSearch integration or careful optimisation of WooCommerce's built-in search
SEO migration — if you're coming from an existing store, URL redirects, structured data migration, and sitemap continuity are critical to preserve rankings

The hidden ongoing costs

The upfront build cost is only part of the picture. Every ecommerce store has recurring costs that many store owners underestimate when budgeting for their build.

Maintenance and updates

Security updates and patches: WordPress, WooCommerce, and plugins all require regular updates
Plugin and dependency updates: npm packages, React versions, and Next.js releases need testing and integration
Hosting scaling: as traffic grows, hosting costs increase — plan for it
CDN and edge caching: Cloudflare free tier covers most stores, but high-traffic sites need paid plans

With a custom agency build, these maintenance tasks either fall to your internal team or to an ongoing retainer with the agency. With a starter kit, the core framework receives updates from the maintainer — you only need to manage your customisations and hosting.

Custom build vs starter kit: the trade-offs

Pros

100% bespoke — every pixel and interaction custom-designed
Exact requirements met with no framework constraints
Full control over technology choices and architecture
No dependency on a third-party starter kit or its roadmap

Cons

$25,000-75,000+ upfront development cost
3-6 month build timeline before launch
Ongoing maintenance burden — you own every line of code
Single points of failure if the agency relationship ends
$2,000-5,000/year in maintenance retainer fees

Cost comparison summary

Here's how the four approaches compare side by side. The right choice depends on your budget, technical ability, and growth timeline.

Shopify: $0 upfront, $1,500-5,000/yr ongoing, includes 0.5-2% transaction fees
Traditional WooCommerce: $3,000-15,000 upfront, $500-1,500/yr ongoing, no transaction fees
Custom headless (agency): $25,000-75,000 upfront, $2,000-5,000/yr maintenance
Headless starter kit (WPBundle): $500-2,000 upfront, $500-1,500/yr ongoing, no transaction fees

The gap between a custom headless build and a starter kit is striking. For the vast majority of stores — those doing under $1M per year in revenue — a $25,000-75,000 custom build is hard to justify when a starter kit delivers the same performance benefits, the same modern architecture, and the same developer experience for a fraction of the investment.

When does a custom build make sense?

A custom headless build is justified when your store has genuinely unique requirements that no existing framework can accommodate — custom product configurators, complex B2B pricing rules, multi-vendor marketplaces, or deeply integrated ERP/CRM workflows. For a standard product catalogue with cart and checkout, a starter kit is the smarter investment.

The bottom line

The real build ecommerce website cost in 2026 ranges from under $2,000 (headless starter kit plus your own time) to over $75,000 (agency-built custom headless store). SaaS platforms fall somewhere in between on a total cost of ownership basis, but come with ongoing fees and platform lock-in that compound over time.

The right approach depends on your budget, your technical ability, and your growth plans. If you have $50,000+ and enterprise requirements, hire a specialist agency. If you want modern headless performance without the enterprise price tag, a starter kit like WPBundle gives you 90% of the result for 5% of the cost. If you just need to get selling quickly with minimal investment, traditional WooCommerce is still a solid choice.

For more context on these decisions, explore our related guides on headless WooCommerce cost breakdown, self-hosted ecommerce platforms, why Shopify gets expensive, and what is headless WooCommerce for the full architectural picture.