The Actual Cost of Maintaining an Ecommerce Website

Updated September 2026

Running an online store costs more than the monthly subscription. The plan is the number everyone sees. The rest (payment fees, apps, design, development and the steady trickle of fixes) is what decides your real yearly bill. This guide breaks those costs down so you can plan for them, whether you're on Shopify or running your own platform.

The three kinds of cost

It helps to sort every expense by how it behaves, because each kind needs a different kind of planning:

Your platform: hosted or self-hosted

With a hosted platform like Shopify, the plan covers hosting, security, bandwidth and the checkout. Shopify's US prices, as listed on its pricing page today, are:

Physical shops add POS Pro at $89 a month per location on the non-Plus plans. Prices vary by country, so check Shopify's pricing page for yours.

The true cost of a custom or self-hosted platform

If you run your own platform, you're paying for everything a hosted plan bundles: servers, bandwidth, a content delivery network, backups, security patches, uptime monitoring and keeping card payments compliant with industry security rules. You're also paying for the people who look after all that.

The biggest cost is usually the one that doesn't show up on an invoice: technical debt. Every plugin that isn't updated, every workaround nobody documented and every version you skip makes the next change slower and riskier. We don't recommend self-hosting unless you have professional IT support and a reason a hosted platform can't meet. If you're weighing a move, our guides to what to expect from a Shopify migration and moving to Shopify cover it.

Payment processing

Every card payment costs a percentage plus a small fixed fee. With Shopify Payments in the US, online card rates start at 2.9% + 30¢ on Basic, 2.7% + 30¢ on Grow, 2.5% + 30¢ on Advanced and 2.25% + 30¢ on Plus. International cards add 1%.

If you use a third-party payment provider instead of Shopify Payments, Shopify also charges a transaction fee on top of that provider's own rates: 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus. On a busy store, that alone can decide which plan is cheaper overall. Work it out with your real monthly sales, not the headline plan price.

Theme, brand and design

Shopify's free themes, including the Horizon family, are a strong starting point, and you can change layout, colors and fonts without code. Paid themes on the Theme Store are a one-off purchase.

Shoppers decide whether to trust you quickly, and your design does a lot of that work. Most stores reach a point where a theme's settings aren't enough to look the way they want, and that's when design or development help comes in. Budget for it as a project, then for small changes through the year.

Apps and add-ons

The Shopify App Store has thousands of apps for email, reviews, subscriptions, SEO and almost anything else. Many have a free plan; paid ones are usually a monthly subscription, and some charge by usage or order volume.

Apps are where costs creep. Each one is small, but ten of them add up, and some also slow your store down (see why an app can slow down your store). Once a year, list every app, what it costs and what it earns you, and uninstall the ones that don't pull their weight.

Custom development and custom apps

No platform fits every business exactly. When you need something no app does, such as a specific integration with your warehouse or ERP, or a checkout rule that's unique to your business, you're into custom development. That might be a small theme change or a custom app built only for your store.

Costs vary widely with the scope and the developer, so get a written brief and a fixed quote for anything significant. Our guide on writing a job brief for developers helps you get quotes you can compare. And remember that custom code needs looking after: Shopify updates its APIs regularly, and a custom app that isn't maintained eventually stops working. Our guide to apps, custom code and the options in between helps you choose.

Ongoing maintenance

This is the cost people forget. Themes get updates, apps change, Shopify ships new features, and things break at the worst moment, usually during a sale. Maintenance covers:

• updating your theme and checking that customizations survive the update;
• removing leftover code from apps you've uninstalled;
• fixing broken links, images and redirects;
• checking speed and accessibility;
• testing checkout after any change.

You can do this yourself, pay a developer by the hour when something breaks, or use a monthly care plan with a team that already knows your store. Pasilobus offers monthly store care for Shopify stores; get in touch if you'd like to talk it through.

Plan your budget

1. Add up your fixed monthly costs: plan, apps, email and other tools.
2. Estimate per-sale costs from your expected revenue and your payment rates.
3. Set aside a yearly amount for design, development and maintenance, and keep it separate from marketing.
4. Review everything once a year. Plans change, apps get replaced by built-in features, and some tools stop earning their keep.