What an ecommerce website costs in the UK

An ecommerce website in the UK costs whatever it takes to build what you actually need, and then what it takes to run it every month. Published agency ranges put a small Shopify store at a few thousand pounds, a WooCommerce build with custom features at five to fifteen thousand, and a custom or headless store at fifteen thousand and upwards, often well past forty. The build is the number people ask about. Over three years, the running costs are often the bigger one.

This piece uses published figures throughout: an agency’s own UK ranges for the build, and Shopify’s, WooCommerce’s and Stripe’s own pages for the running costs. My own build work is priced per project, on what it’s worth to the business, so there’s no rate card here, but there’s everything you need to judge a quote.

What the build costs

There’s no official survey of UK ecommerce build prices. What there is, is agencies publishing their own tiers. Cambria Digital’s UK guide, published in June 2026, sets out three.

Why the tiers are so far apart

The tiers aren’t really different sizes of the same thing. A starter store adapts a theme to your products. A growth build adds features and connections that don’t come out of the box. A custom build designs and builds the store around how the business works. The price follows how much has to be designed and built rather than configured.

What a build quote usually includes

Cambria lists discovery, wireframes, visual design, front-end and back-end development, SEO setup, cross-browser testing and a handover session as common across its tiers. A quote that leaves out discovery or testing has dropped the steps that stop problems reaching customers.

What it usually leaves out

The same guide lists what’s excluded from the build price: content such as copy and photography, logo design, and hosting as an ongoing cost. Product photography and descriptions for a few hundred products can be a project of their own, and they’re often what makes the difference between a store that sells and one that just exists.

Theme or custom design

Shopify’s own guide to ecommerce website costs puts prebuilt themes at up to about $500, against thousands for a custom-built site. A good theme, set up properly with your own photography and copy, is the right start for most small stores. Custom design earns its cost when the brand or the buying journey genuinely needs something a theme can’t do.

What it costs to run, every month

The build is paid once. These costs arrive every month for as long as the store trades, which is why they deserve as much attention as the quote.

The platform

On Shopify, the platform is a monthly plan: £19, £49 or £259 billed yearly, according to its UK pricing page, with Plus from £1,800. On WooCommerce, the software is free, but WooCommerce’s own pricing page puts hosting at $25 to $350 a month for most stores, and someone has to keep WordPress, WooCommerce and its extensions updated.

Payments

Card fees are usually the largest running cost, because they grow with sales. Shopify Payments on the Grow plan charges 1.7% plus 25p per online card payment. Stripe charges 1.5% plus 20p for standard UK cards, more for premium and international cards. On Shopify, using a provider other than Shopify Payments adds Shopify’s own transaction fee on top.

Apps and extensions

Reviews, subscriptions, email, search, loyalty, shipping labels: most stores add several. On WooCommerce, extensions typically cost $29 to $299 a year each. On Shopify, apps are mostly monthly subscriptions. Add them up before launch, because ten small monthly apps can cost more than the platform.

Maintenance

Every store needs someone to apply updates, fix what breaks and keep it fast. On Shopify, the platform updates itself, and the work is mostly the theme and apps. On WooCommerce and custom builds, updates and security patches are your responsibility. Budget for it as an ongoing cost, not an emergency.

Payment fees, worked through

Here’s what card fees look like for an example store: £20,000 of sales a month from 400 orders of £50, all on standard UK cards. It’s an illustration, run through the published rates above.

What the example shows

On these numbers, fees run from about 1.9% to 2.9% of sales depending on the route. Using a third-party provider on Shopify costs about £140 a month more than Shopify Payments, because of Shopify’s own fee: nearly £1,700 a year.

Where the example is too simple

Premium, business and international cards cost more on every provider, and a store selling abroad pays noticeably higher fees. Refunds, chargebacks and currency conversion add more. Run the sum with your own mix of cards and orders before choosing a platform on fees.

What pushes the price up

Two stores that look alike can be quoted very differently. These are the things that move a build quote the most.

Integrations

Connecting the store to an ERP, a PIM, a warehouse or a marketplace is often the most expensive part of a build, and the part most often underestimated. Each connection has its own data to map and its own edge cases. The integrations page covers what each type involves.

Catalogue and data

Fifty simple products take an afternoon to load. Five thousand products with variants, specifications and images from several suppliers are a data project, and the quality of that data decides how well the store sells and how well it’s found.

Custom pricing and B2B

Trade prices, customer-specific discounts, quotes and account payment terms are rarely standard. Each rule has to be built, tested and kept working, which is why B2B stores cost more than their size suggests.

Design and templates

A custom design is priced by the number of distinct page templates it needs, not the number of pages. A store with a distinctive product page, a bespoke configurator or a content-heavy home page costs more than one that follows a theme’s layout.

Choosing a platform on cost

Cost is rarely the only reason to pick a platform, but it’s worth knowing how each one spends your money.

When Shopify is the cheaper choice

For a store that fits Shopify’s way of working, the predictable monthly cost and the absence of server upkeep usually make it cheaper to run. The question is what happens when you need something it doesn’t do; what Shopify Plus costs covers the step up.

When WooCommerce or a custom build is

For a business with unusual requirements, content-heavy selling, or a need to own its code and data outright, the higher build cost can buy years of lower running costs and fewer workarounds. The trade is that maintenance becomes your job, or your developer’s.

If you already have a store

Moving an existing store is a different project from building a new one, with data, URLs and search rankings to protect. What a UK replatform costs covers that.

How my build work is priced

I don’t have a rate card or a day rate. Each build is scoped and priced on what it’s worth to the business, agreed in writing before work starts, with a deposit. The ranges in this piece are there so you can judge any quote, including mine.

What I build

Shopify stores and custom apps, WooCommerce builds, Magento work, and bespoke platforms in Laravel, Django and Next.js, with the integrations around them. The builds page covers each, including Shopify, WooCommerce and bespoke builds.

Getting a price

A short conversation about what the store has to do is enough to scope it. Book a free call, and if a template and a good theme will do the job, I’ll say so.