How much does an e-shop cost to build?
Quotes in Greece start around €300 and run into the tens of thousands. That does not mean someone is overcharging you — it means “e-shop” describes wildly different things.
Here is what you are actually paying for, so you can compare two quotes that look the same.
The four things that set the price
1. How many products, and how they get in
Twenty products you upload by hand is a different job from two thousand that must stay in sync with your supplier’s stock. Always ask: who loads the products, and who keeps them updated? If the answer is “you”, count your own hours — that is a real cost.
2. What it has to connect to
An online store rarely lives alone. Payments, couriers, invoicing, myDATA, stock, Skroutz. Every connection is work, and that is where the difference between €300 and €3,000 hides.
In Greece, invoicing and myDATA reporting are legal obligations, not optional extras. A quote that never mentions them is not cheaper — it is incomplete.
3. Off-the-shelf theme or designed for you
A good ready-made theme is a perfectly respectable starting point and costs very little. Custom design earns its money when the brand is the product — fashion, cosmetics, anything that sells on how it looks. For everything else, that budget usually returns more spent on product photography and product copy.
4. Who maintains it
The cost almost everyone forgets. A store is software: it needs updates, backups and security monitoring. An abandoned WooCommerce install becomes a liability within a year.
Ask plainly: what does maintenance include, what does it cost per month, and what happens if something breaks on a Sunday night?
The costs that show up later
These are often missing from the quote, but you will pay them:
- Hosting — a store needs more than a simple website does
- Payment fees — typically 1–2% of every transaction, forever
- Product photography — often the largest hidden cost in a fashion catalog
- Content — someone has to write the descriptions
- Advertising — a store with no visitors sells nothing
That last one matters most. If the whole budget goes into building it and nothing is left to get you found, the store will not pay back — however well built it is.
When not to build one yet
It is the wrong investment if:
- You have few products and no promotion budget. Start on Skroutz or a marketplace and find out whether they sell at all first.
- Your bookkeeping is not sorted. A store multiplies that problem.
- The real bottleneck is somewhere else — stock, shipping, customer service. A checkout button fixes none of those.
How to start without risk
Begin with the products you actually sell, good photographs, one payment method, one courier. Get real orders. Then expand.
That is far cheaper than building for six months and launching with features nobody uses.
Want a realistic estimate for your own catalog? Book a free 30-minute call — we will also tell you if we think you should not do it yet. See also what we do with websites and e-shops.