How Much Does A WooCommerce Online Store Cost?

The spread of e-commerce apps has left business owners uncertain about choosing an e-commerce platform to best serve their needs. WooCommrce, but, has shown to be the most adaptable eCommerce platform, thanks to its advanced plugin that you can use to create measurable outcomes for your online shop.

WooCommerce has lower initial costs compared to other e-commerce platforms. It’s a cheap and easy way to get an eCommerce site up and running. When you utilize WooCommerce for business purposes and create a complex online store, your expenses will rise, as with any other commercial endeavour.

WooCommerce is an open-source plugin for WordPress. But, there are additional costs involved in getting started.

How Much Will a Woocommerce Store Cost?

Incorrectly, many believe opening an online store is as simple as downloading and activating the WooCommerce plugin. But that’s stretching things a little bit. 

Although opening a WooCommerce store isn’t necessarily expensive, free does not exist in the business world. A web store cannot be launched and maintained without initial and continuing financial investment, despite the availability of free platforms like WordPress or WooCommerce.

To get the very minimum of functionality out of the free WooCommerce plugin, you may expect to pay around $10 each month. It will cost about $200 more per year to upgrade from the very minimum to include some other features. The annual cost might be over $1,000 for an elaborate WooCommerce store. 

But, there are a lot of factors that come into play when concluding after review the cost of a WooCommerce store. In this report, we’ll look at some of the main categories to help you sort out the when you really think about it cost of your eCommerce website.

A Deconstruction of Woocommerce Pricing

You must include a handful of extras to your WooCommerce cost budget to create a fully functional online store. The features are here:

Hosting

The cost of site hosting will be the first and most important expense associated with WooCommerce that you face. Web hosts are responsible for providing the space on the Internet required for every website’s existence. When it comes to the various fees associated with WooCommerce, this is one you cannot avoid.

Customers cannot get to your website in any way, shape, or formulary if you do not have hosting. So, it is not a question of whether you need web hosting; rather, it is a question of which web host you should work with.

When you first sign up for a plan with a web host, you almost always have the opportunity to use discounted introductory pricing. This is true despite the web host you pick with. Although lower prices are wonderful, they typically become invalid after a year or so, at which point renewal pricing will become effective.

 The rates for renewal are typically significantly higher than those for the beginning of the contract.

Domain Name

A domain name is an additional cost associated with WooCommerce, and there are two modalities to get one. Certain hosting companies will throw you a free domain name for the first year if you sign up for their service. 

When signing up for hosting, you can also register a domain name. After the first year, you’ll have to renew your domain for the standard charge, which ranges from about $10 to $20 each year, depending on your chosen extension.

We suggest taking advantage of this choice if at all possible. Not only will you save money on setup fees for the first year of service, but you’ll also have the convenience of handling both domain registration and website hosting from the same account.

Domain name registrars are your only option if your hosting provider doesn’t offer free domain registration or if you want to separate the two services. 

You can skip this procedure if your web server provides domain registration at no extra cost. Some hosting firms also function as domain name registrars, so you can buy a domain name from one provider and use a different business to host your website.

Most domain registrars, like web hosting companies, give introductory or introductory-year registration fees that increase the following year. 

Themes

You’ll find thousands of WooCommerce themes available, both free and paid. You don’t necessarily have to select a premium theme to build a professional WooComemrce site. But, there are some considerations to remember. 

Generally, you should pick one regularly updated lately, fully supports the latest version of WooCommerce and is fast loading, as a minimum. Furthermore, you can look for more specific themes that suit the look and niche of your site for the best results. If you are looking for a truly unique look, you can also get a theme custom-built for you by expert WooCommerce web designers.

Paid themes

A business that doesn’t make the right first impression is less profitable than one that is appealing and easy to guide you in. Purchasing a premium WooCommerce theme is something you should consider if you want to grow a successful online business or to ensure that your website has a design of the all-important possible quality.

Extensions

Extensions, or add-ons, are extra features distinctive to WooCommerce and may be added to your website. Some findings of extensions include payment and shipping choices. 

Because these are such helpful features for an online store, we will now discuss the fees for shipping, payments, and sales extensions.

Payments

Due to WooCommerce’s ability to work with nearly all of the top payment gateway options, your WooCommerce online store will be able to take payments via PayPal, Stripe, or any other method you choose.

But, the costs that are necessary to employ each payment gateway are distinct from one another. You will almost always be expected to pay one of two types of fees: either a regular monthly fee or a transaction fee.

You should choose WooCommerce Payments because it is the least complicated option and does not impose any monthly fees. For any purchase you make employing a debit or credit card issued in the United States, you will be charged a transaction fee equal to 2.9% + 30 cents. 

This fee is required to process the transaction, which takes place onsite. A 1% additional fee is attached to each transaction finished thoroughly employing a worldwide card.

Another popular mode of payment is through the PayPal website. If you choose to have a PayPal account that is considered basic, you will not be forced to pay a monthly fee; rather, you will be charged a transaction fee of 2.9% + 30 cents for each purchase that you make employing your account. But, clients won’t be able to pay directly from your WooCommerce website. This is because WooCommerce does not give this functionality. Instead, they will be taken to the website for PayPal, where they can complete the purchase of the products they wish to acquire.

If you move to a PayPal Pro account, which enables customers in fine their transactions without leaving your website, your customers will be able to do so. But, we have to point out that to the transaction cost, you will be responsible for a monthly payment of $30.

You are not limited to employing simply WooCommerce Payments and PayPal; rather, you have a broad choice of other payment gateway options to choose from, most of which fall within a pricing range that is comparable to one another.

Shipping

WooCommerce’s administrative dashboard offers free automated tax calculations and real-time shipping quotes from the industry’s top carriers. With the help of WooCommerce Shipping, you can print shipping labels without ever leaving your house.

There are hundreds of shipping plugins for WooCommerce, ranging in price from free to $299 annually.  

Table Rate Shipping is a $99 per year service that allows you to set up different shipping prices derived from zone, cost, weight, or quantity.

Offering shipping rates derived from distance and total trip time, with the option to add fees for heavier parcels or extra merchandise, is available for an extra $79 each year.

For just $49.00 annually, customers may enjoy the convenience of shipment tracking.

Sales

WooCommerce Bookings is a yearly subscription service that costs $249 and allows users to make appointments, reservations, and rental payments on their schedule. This is how quickly your electronic calendar will fill up.

Allow clients to pre-order things and be charged immediately or upon release with WooCommerce Pre-Orders, accessible for $129 per year.

WooCommerce Annual Subscriptions ($199): Accept recurring payments for subscription services and keep greater tabs on your income.

All of these add-ons can make your online shop more expert-looking.

Plugins

Your WooCommerce store can have dozens of additional plugins added to it by third-party developers. You can get them at no cost or for a fee, but loading times may suffer if the hosting service cannot scale to meet your needs.  

Plugins make up more generic, less important extensions. Plugins are supplemental features and functionalities that may be added to your WooCommerce store to give customers with a more exciting shopping experience.

There are hundreds of various plugins, both free and paid, that are available to pick from, which means that you have access to an unlimited number of features that may be customized for your store. The following is a list of some of them:

Marketing Plugins

The Google Analytics plugin may be installed on your website at no cost, and it can give you with many marketing data that can assist you in formulating your next move. 

You may restrict visits from site administrators to receive a more accurate picture of customer data, watch the flow of visitors from the product page to checkout, see which channels produce the most traffic, and gain insight into which pages drive the least traffic. 

All you need is a free account with Google Analytics to use this plugin, but its boons are immeasurable.

Growth Plugins

These are for translating every WooCommerce product, maintaining the same language throughout the checkout process, and sending emails to customers in their native language. The free plugin enables you to run a completely multilingual WooCommerce website.

Design Plugins

The WooCommerce Customizer is an entirely free plugin that will help you customize your online store to save you time and keep you from getting headaches. 

The Customizer plugin simplifies making minor adjustments by supplying a settings page that allows you to add and save your customizations although not having to write a single line of code. This makes it possible to perform tasks such as personalizing button wording and labels, which would normally need writing some code.

Security

A get sockets layer (SSL) certificate is the most basic (and important) security measure for any online company. It encrypts the information transmitted between a customer’s machine and your website. 

If a site has an SSL certificate, the URL will begin with “https,” and a padlock icon will appear in the address bar to reassure customers that their data is get.

Usually, a basic SSL certificate is provided free of charge as part of the web hosting package.  

But, since you’ll be dealing with consumers’ sensitive financial details, e-commerce sites need better security than a free SSL can give. Depending on your required capabilities, more all-inclusive SSL subscriptions can be purchased for just $7–$150 annually from most hosting providers.

Antimalware

Regarding protecting your website, an SSL certificate is the best place to start. You can research anti-malware software if you truly want to be preemptive. There are also site providers that offer reductions in price for this security have.  

Prepackaged Business plans, which give the highest level of anti-malware protection, can cost anywhere from $149.99 to $499.99 per year, depending on the plan’s features.

The two features trusted antimalware solutions offer are automatically cleaning malware and recognizing and naming threats. 

Most solutions offer these additional perks:

• Google’s blacklist tracking
• Analyzing files one by one
• Analyzing plug-ins
• Reports of weekly scans
• Safety against XSS scripting
• Security against SQL injection

Developer 

You won’t need to worry about hiring a web developer when overseeing a WooCommerce store on the smaller or middle-sized end of the range. Developers can handle the nitty-gritty technical stuff that will push your website’s functionality and design to the next level of excellence. 

But, their services are available at a hefty price, and the perks don’t justify the cost unless the size of your online shop is rather large or you want to scale!

If you have a larger website and decide to hire a developer, it will cost between $1,000 and $6,000, depending on the project, equivalent to $60 to $150 hourly. WooCommerce offers a directory of developers confirmed as sound as WooExperts, allowing you to select one with the assurance that they have the skills necessary to build a WooCommerce store.

The Cost of Maintaining a WooCommerce Store

You can build an online store of any kind with the help of the WooCommerce plugin for WordPress, which is free and uses open-source software. But once you’ve finished thoroughly the installation, how much will it cost to use WooCommerce?

Continuous maintenance charges may be related to your online store’s operation, particularly if your business grows. 

1. Store Updates

After building your online store, one of the major responsibilities is making sure the program and the content are also each week updated. If your content is outdated, customers will be confused and dissatisfied, which could hurt your business no matter how great your goods or services are. That’s why you must also each week update your store’s information and content to keep it fresh and on-point.

WordPress itself, as well as the themes and plugins that you’re employing, receive regular updates. Besides providing necessary security patches, updates may introduce new features or repair bugs. That’s why you have to update your website.

At most, new versions of plugins, themes, and websites are released every few months.

To what extent you need to update depends on your own situation. Some improvements, but, could best be handled by an expert. It’s usually billed hourly or contained within in a recurring service package. 

A freelance developer with experience might be hired for $20-$100 per hour. Employing a company for their specialized knowledge and assistance can cost as much as $200 for up to an hour.

A maintenance plan is a recurring fee. It consists of backups, security upgrades, and standard site updates. Depending on the specifics of your plan, monthly maintenance fees can range from $50 to $150.

2. Technical and Development Support

You should seek technical assistance when problems arise with your website. 

Support forums are a good place for free assistance, but you should proceed cautiously, as advice given by strangers who don’t know your website’s content and setup might not always be helpful.

It’s also important to bear in mind trying to solve technical problems by piecing together code from the Internet might lead to even more complications. 

They are all the time badly worded, misinterpreted, or carried out improperly. Because they aren’t built with your site and specific difficulties in mind, even what appears to be harmless code can create errors and compatibility issues.

How much money can you lose on new customer orders due to a delay in noticing or fixing an error? Eventually, hiring a web developer may be more cost-effective.

3. Marketing and Organic Discovery

Tools for search engine optimization (ORGANIC DISCOVERY), such as Yoast, offer ideas and functionalities that can be used to improve the search engine rankings of your website. Both have free choices, with premium upgrades available for both plans.

Additional plugins are primarily used for marketing and have very similar upgrade routes. If you decide to upgrade, you must renew your license annually. This is a condition of upgrading. We have to point out that, you will need to think about the expenditures involved with the rest of your marketing initiatives.

You can, to point out, create and run social media advertisements, write blog content also each week, interact with those who read it, and more. There is a chance that you can get by with some free marketing, but other opportunities will need investment from you, the amount of which will depend on your financial situation.

If you are not interested in doing things yourself, you should employ an expert to handle your continuing requirements for ORGANIC DISCOVERY and marketing.

Implications of not Maintaining your WooCommerce Store

Do you believe that keeping a website maintained and up to date is something you should do? For their financial stability, some individuals choose not to pay for the maintenance of their websites at all. It is a terrible idea.

In the beginning, it will only help you save a tiny amount of money, but if you fail to manage your website, it could lead to many problems that are substantially more expensive.

An updated website design or content may result in a better user experience, eventually new to your site staying farther down the search results page. This can be avoided by also each week updating your website with fresh, on-point content. So, it is extremely important to ensure that the functionality of your website is kept intact.

Factors that Will Affect Maintenance Costs

Before you begin the maintenance of your website, you need to consider the following factors:

1. Whether you will hire developers

It will save you a important amount of money if you can do a DIY if you have previous knowledge in computer programming and enough free time.

In that case, you can hire a website maintenance service to handle of it. You won’t have to stress about overseeing your website if you hire website maintenance providers, so you can focus more on making sales.

To better comprehend your eCommerce website, familiarize yourself with the platform’s fundamentals. As your company expands, so will your website; when this happens, you may need outside assistance, such as from a qualified developer or agency.

2. Store traffic

Bigger websites will necessarily demand a more powerful server, increased resources, and additional time because of the volume of visits they receive. 

Because of this, the amount that you pay for the upkeep of your website will increase in direct proportion to the number of people who visit it.

Savings Maxims When Setting Up a WooCommerce Store

1. Start small

Beginning on a modest scale is highly recommended to reduce your expenses to a minimum. Creating an online store with little overhead costs is a good place to start if you are unsure whether or not e-commerce is the best route for you. This can need beginning with the free edition of an e-commerce store builder or employing the available free themes.

Beginning with a modest aim can reduce the amount of start-up capital you need and make it simpler to adjust course if your initial concept is unsuccessful. When your company gains traction, you can upgrade to a more powerful e-commerce platform.

2. Add more plugins as your business grows

After you have finished setting up your store, you will most likely not use all of the WooCommerce plugins that are currently available right away. So, it would make better financial sense to progressively add more plugins and features as your business expands than doing it all at once. 

This will not only cut costs during the initial setup of the store, but it will also allow you to divert the money into more important demands to ensure that you have a solid e-commerce store.

3. Use bundled pricing

Boost of discounted packages. To point out, domain registration and get sockets layer (SSL) certifications are common extras hosting companies offer. Look into a WooCommerce marketing all-in-one solution.

Recap

Don’t put off dealing with your time and money constraints any longer. Falling for free software is tempting, yet even WooCommerce costs money.

Although WooCommerce is free, you’ll need a hosting plan and a domain name to get it up and running. After those basic elements are in place, the cost of your WooCommerce store is entirely up to you; the many available extensions allows for customization on any scale.

Remember to stay within your financial means when investing in security, marketing, and other technology for your WooCommerce store.