Building an online store can be easy thanks to platforms such as Magento. The costs of licensing these platforms can be very advantageous when you don’t have a dev team to work on an online store.
Even so, a Magento website development cost can have many variables you may not be aware of. To avoid committing mistakes when budgeting the cost of a Magento website, we’ll go over the main considerations you should have in mind and other minor fees you need to pay over the course of your store’s lifespan. Let’s begin!
How Much Does It Cost To Create A Magento eCommerce Store?
If you want to calculate a Magento website cost reliably, these are the main aspects to consider:
1. Magento e-Commerce Pricing
The first question you should ask yourself is, “How much does it cost to use Magento?”. This is the most obvious and yet the hardest question to answer.
Previously, Magento had a business model split into three categories, each with different costs:
- Magento Open Source: A free plan.
- Magento Commerce: The professional plan offers many extra features. However, the hosting in this version was the sole responsibility of the seller.
- Magento Commerce Cloud: A solution that included the hosting of the store in a cloud service and allowed for easy expansion. In order to offer this extra feature, Magento’s cloud pricing was a little higher than the regular commerce version.
However, nowadays, Magento (now known as Adobe Commerce) is sold in a single package known as Commerce Pro. The package is highly customizable with many features, and the price is negotiated upon the plan’s purchase.
The best example is cloud hosting. While previously it was included in a plan all its own, currently, AWS and Azure integration is a feature you can activate and pay for in the Commerce Pro plan.
The biggest difference is that nowadays, the Open Source plan no longer has an equivalent free version. Adobe doesn’t provide any public information when it comes to the costs of the specific features or even the Commerce Pro plan itself, but based on previous licensing information, you can expect a value anywhere between $22,000 – $190,000 per year.
This value was usually calculated based on the gross sales revenue from your store.
| Gross Sales Revenue | Plan Cost |
| $0 – $1 million | $22,000 |
| $1 – $5 million | $32,000 |
| $5 – $10 million | $49,000 |
| $10 – $25 million | $75,000 |
| $25 – $50 million | $125,000 |
The Cloud service could also scale based on this value and would be around $18,000 – $65,000.
2. Hosting
If you do not want to invest in Magento’s built-in cloud services, you’ll need to host your online store, preferably in a reliable and trustworthy hosting provider.
Depending on your choice, the prices can range between $0.90 to $80.00 per month, with the most common price being around $2.99. This will add up to $10.80 to $960.00 per year.
3. Domain
Another important component of publishing your eCommerce store is buying a domain for customers to find it easily. Website hosting will usually run between $10 – $20 per year.
4. SSL Certificate
Security is extremely important when dealing with customers and their sensitive information and payment data. An SSL certificate helps encrypt users’ information when sent to your website’s server.
SSL certificates come in many forms:
- Single Domain: Protects a single domain and subdomain. Starts at $5 per year.
- Wildcard: Protects a single domain and all first-level subdomains. Starts at $30 per year.
- Multi-Domain: Protects any number of domains and subdomains. Starts at $60 per year.
SSL certificates also have a secondary component in the form of Validations:
- Domain validation: Verifies ownership of the domain name. A good option if you do not need your visitor’s personal details. An eCommerce store will usually need a stronger level of validation. Starts at $70 per year.
- Organization validation: Verifies ownership of the domain name, as well as basic details about the organization. Still not enough security for an eCommerce store. Starts at $150 per year.
- Extended validation: Verifies the physical and legal existence of the organization in question. This is the most rigorous level available but also the most expensive. Starts at $200 per year.
If your website requires strict security measures (which it probably will, given the sensitive information your customers will need to provide you), an SSL certificate for it can go up to $1000+ per year.
5. Front-end Design & Development
Magento front-ends will usually translate to themes. These can be premade ones that you can customize to some extent, or you can develop a custom theme tailor-made for your business.
Themes can be free, or you can purchase one from the official store or third-party Magento developers. Prices range from $39 to $499.
Developing a custom theme will be far more expensive since you’ll probably have to hire freelancers or a consulting company to do it for you. A theme can take 3 – 4 weeks to complete. At an average rate of $61 – $80 per hour, expect prices for a custom theme to go about $7320 – $12800. This price can go even higher with a consulting company.
Appearance is one thing, but content is quite another. You’ll need to also create the pages of the store. Most notably:
- Homepage
- Store Product List Page
- Product Page
- Shopping Cart Page
- Checkout Page
Usually, these will be set up at the start, but they will need, at the very least light tweaking to incorporate branding. Accounting for a week of work for the minimum requirements, at the same rates, you’re looking at $2440 – $3200 for front-end development.
So, in the end, we have two important questions that we can now answer:
- How long does it take to build a Magento website? Around 4 -5 weeks.
- How much is a Magento Developer? At an average rate of $61 – $80 per hour, building a Magento site can cost anywhere between $2,440 – $16,000+.
6. Extensions
Extensions are an important part of any Magento eCommerce store since they help store owners add extra functionality to their stores. These can have a wide variety of purposes:
- Accounting & Finance
- Customer Support
- Sales
- Marketing
- Payments & Security
- Shipping & Fulfillment
- Content & Customizations
- Reporting & Analytics
- Site Optimization
Extensions can be free or can go up to a whopping $15,000. The prices will vary wildly depending on the features a particular store needs, so it’s hard to give out a good estimate.
7. Discoverability
Discoverability can be broken into two important parts: SEO and Digital promotion. They are both equally responsible for driving potential customers to an eCommerce store, especially if the store sells niche products or services.
SEO services usually run between $6,600 – $10,400 per year.
Digital promotion can take many forms, each with its own pricing:
- Pay-per-click advertising: $108,000 – $120,000 per year
- Email marketing: $3,600 – $60,000 per year
- Social media marketing: $10,800 – $240,000 per year
- Content marketing: $24,000 – $120,000 per year
It’s important in this particular case to determine which type of digital promotion you find the most appealing and beneficial for your business. If you’re unsure about any particular method’s viability, test it out before rolling with a full plan.
8. Payment Fees
Payment providers will not have any set up costs, but will usually take a cut of each of your sales in order to provide their service. As an example, let’s look at three of the most known and commonly used payment services on the web:
- PayPal: 3.49% + $0.49 per transaction
- Stripe: 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction
- Authorize.net: $300 per year & 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction
Total Cost
| Item | Cost |
| Licensing | $22,000 – $190,000+ / year |
| Hosting | $10.80 – $960.00+ / year |
| Domain | $10 – $20+ / year |
| SSL Certificate | $205 – $1,000+ / year |
| Front-end Design & Development | $2,440 – $16,000+ |
| Extensions | $0 – $15,000 / extension |
| Discoverability | $6,600 – $540,000+ / year |
| Payment Fees | around 2.9% + $0.30 / transaction |
How Much Does It Cost to Maintain a Magento eCommerce Store?
Creating a store is only the beginning. Magento e-commerce business pricing invariably includes the maintenance of the store and all related services, such as the back-end and front end.
Those costs can quickly mount up if you’re not careful, so if you truly want to know the answer how much does Magento cost? you need to take them into consideration as well.
Besides the costs of yearly services we’ve listed previously, here are the others you should know about (the rates used are the ones established previously):
| Item | Cost / Year |
| Magento updates (including extensions) | $1,525 – $2,000 |
| Bug fixing | $1,220 – $1,600 |
| Development of new features | $6,710 – $8,800 |
| Performance optimization | $1,525 – $2,000 |
Conclusion
We hope to have given you a comprehensive guide that answers the question, “How much does it cost to use Magento?”. Of course, prices may differ depending on your specific circumstances, but we’ve strived to make a guide that would reliably predict Magento enterprise costs.
If you’re looking for Magento developers for your own online store, DistantJob can help you get the talent you need. We can easily find you a suitable expert with competitive rates, and that can easily fit your company culture. Interested? Contact us!
