"What does a webshop cost?" is the most asked and worst answered question in e-commerce. Search for it and you find answers ranging from a few hundred euros to half a million, usually without any explanation of where the difference comes from. Ask an agency and you get the equally unhelpful "it depends".
It does depend, but on a knowable, short list of things. In this article we break the cost of a webshop into its four real layers: the platform licence, the build, the integrations and the running costs, with Shopware as the worked example. Not because it is the only option, but because it is the platform we build on most, and because its pricing illustrates the one principle this whole article turns on: the sticker price is never the number that matters. The total cost of ownership is.
What Shopware itself charges
Start with the layer people usually mean when they ask what Shopware costs: the licence. Shopware's current plans, per its own pricing page (prices excluding VAT):
- Community Edition is free and open source. There is a catch that matters: under Shopware's Fair Usage Policy, access to the Shopware Account and Store requires a paid plan once the shops linked to your account pass €1 million in gross merchandise value over the preceding 365 days.
- Rise starts at €600 per month and adds direct Shopware support and AI-assisted features.
- Evolve starts at €2,400 per month and is the relevant plan for most B2B shops, because this is where B2B Components live: quote management, approval flows, budgets, organisation units and more.
- Beyond is custom priced and adds features like customer-specific pricing via API and Digital Sales Rooms.
Two nuances save you from surprises later. First, GMV is measured per instance and pools every sales channel and storefront on that installation, so a multi-brand group reaches the threshold as a group. Second, "from" means from: the actual plan price scales with GMV, so ask for a quote on your numbers rather than budgeting the floor price.
What Shopware notably does not charge is a penalty for your payment choices. There is no platform surcharge for using an external payment provider, a cost that on other platforms can double your payment bill, as we calculated in what payments really cost at €500,000 revenue.
What actually drives the build price
The licence is the predictable part. The build is where webshops that look similar end up costing very different amounts, and in our experience the difference comes down to four drivers.
Design and theme. A professional shop on a configured standard theme is a fraction of the cost of a fully custom design. The honest question is not "do we want custom" but "where does custom earn money": usually the product page and checkout, rarely the blog template.
Functionality. Standard catalogue and checkout are covered by the platform. Costs grow with what is specific to your business: product configurators, B2B features like customer-specific assortments and quote flows, multi-language and multi-storefront setups.
Integrations. The most underestimated line on every quote. A webshop that must exchange orders, stock, prices and product data with an ERP or PIM is a different project from a standalone shop. This is exactly why we work with an integration layer like Alumio rather than point-to-point custom links: the first integration costs real money either way, but every next one gets cheaper instead of more entangled.
Migration. Replatforming from Magento, Lightspeed or Shopify adds data migration, URL and SEO preservation and often a cleanup of years of product data. Budget it explicitly; "we'll just export and import" is where timelines go to die.
The running costs nobody budgets for
A webshop is not bought, it is operated. Next to the plan fee, three recurring posts belong in the budget from day one.
Hosting. E-commerce hosting that holds up under a Black Friday peak is not a €10 shared-hosting line. For most of our shops this runs through our partner Hypernode, where the platform is built for exactly this workload.
Maintenance and updates. Shopware ships minor releases monthly. Keeping your shop current, secure and fast is ongoing work. A common rule of thumb, and it is a rule of thumb rather than a law, is to reserve 15 to 25 percent of the original build sum per year for maintenance and incremental improvement.
Plugins and subscriptions. Payment plugins, search, reviews, e-mail marketing: individually small, collectively a real monthly line. List them before you go live, not after.
Cheap becomes expensive: compare the total, not the sticker
This is the trap in most cost comparisons. A SaaS platform with a low monthly entry can be the cheaper choice for a small shop, and quietly become the expensive one as you grow: per-store app costs, transaction surcharges and forced upgrades scale with your success. We worked through a real example in the real cost of multiple brands, where one Shopware instance replaced what would have been a stack of separate store subscriptions.
The reverse trap exists too: over-buying custom development that a standard feature or plugin would have covered. The defence against both is the same: compare total cost of ownership over three years, not the price on the first invoice.
Three realistic scenarios
To make this concrete, here are the bandwidths we would sketch in a first conversation. These are broad market indications for the one-off build, deliberately wide because scope decides everything; your own quote follows from your requirements, not from this table.
A starter B2C shop on Community Edition, standard theme with brand styling, standard checkout, no ERP integration: roughly €15,000 to €40,000 to build. The licence is free until the Fair Usage threshold; hosting and maintenance are the main running costs.
A growing B2B shop on Evolve, with B2B Components, customer-specific pricing and a live ERP integration for orders, stock and customers: roughly €40,000 to €100,000 to build, plus the Evolve plan and the integration platform subscription as running costs. The ERP integration is typically the largest single post.
A multi-brand or international setup with multiple storefronts, PIM, several integrations and custom functionality: from €100,000 upward. Here the platform choice itself becomes the cost lever, because one Shopware instance carries multiple storefronts where SaaS alternatives multiply per store.
Frequently asked questions
Learn more about what your webshop should cost
An honest webshop budget has four layers: licence, build, integrations and running costs. Any quote that only shows you the second one is not a cheaper offer, it is an incomplete one. And the cheapest platform on paper is not the cheapest one in year three; the total cost of ownership is the only number worth comparing.
As a Shopware Business Partner and official Alumio partner, Memo builds Shopware webshops and the integrations behind them, and we would rather give you a realistic number early than a nice one twice. Want a cost estimate based on your actual requirements instead of a generic range? Request a free intake or book an introduction call, and we map your project and its real budget.