How much does an online store cost in 2026? What you pay to build it and on every sale

1. The short answer: three routes and what they cost

The market is there. According to Spain's competition authority (CNMC), e-commerce turnover in Spain reached €29,643 million in the first quarter of 2026, up 15.1% year on year, and the national statistics office (INE) found that 59.6% of people aged 16 to 74 bought online in the last three months of 2025.

Yet selling online is still something few businesses do. INE reports that 26.6% of companies with ten or more employees sell online, against only 8.6% of smaller ones. There is room, and there are also many stores that never pay off.

2. What drives the price up or down

Two stores that look the same can cost three times as much as each other. These are the items that move the budget:

1. 01The catalogue. Uploading twenty products is not the same as two thousand, nor is a simple product the same as one with sizes, colours and prices per variant.
2. 02Product pages. Photos, descriptions and specifications are what sell. If they need writing or shooting, that is extra work.
3. 03The design. An adapted template is cheaper than a custom design, but looks like many other stores and usually loads slower.
4. 04Payments. Card, Bizum, PayPal, buy now pay later or bank transfer. Each method is an integration with its own fee.
5. 05Shipping. Rates by weight or zone, free shipping over a threshold, in-store pickup and the connection with the carrier.
6. 06Taxes and invoicing. VAT by customer country, automatic invoices and, from 2027 in Spain, invoicing software adapted to VeriFactu.
7. 07Integrations. Connecting the store to the ERP, warehouse stock or a marketplace saves the most later and costs the most upfront.
8. 08Languages and currencies. Each language is almost another store to translate, rank and maintain.
9. 09Migration. Moving products, customers and orders from another platform without losing Google rankings takes work.

3. Shopify, WooCommerce or PrestaShop: what each platform costs

The platform is the software the store runs on. The three most used charge in very different ways, and it pays to know before choosing.

No platform is best for everything. Shopify pays off when you want to start fast without touching anything technical. WooCommerce and PrestaShop pay off when the store will grow, needs integrations or you do not want to give the platform a share of every sale.

4. What every sale costs you: payment gateways

Every time a customer pays, the gateway keeps a share. It is the cost most often forgotten when doing the sums, because it is not in the store quote, but you pay it forever.

To accept Bizum, Spain's mobile payment system, you do not sign with Bizum but with a bank that offers it, and it is switched on inside its virtual POS. So ask the bank you already work with before choosing a gateway.

The fees the merchant's bank pays the customer's bank are capped in the European Union by Regulation (EU) 2015/751: 0.2% on consumer debit cards and 0.3% on consumer credit cards. The rest is each bank's or gateway's margin, and that is where you negotiate.

5. Shipping and returns: the most underestimated cost

Shipping is not just a cost, it is also the main reason sales are not closed. According to the Baymard Institute, 40% of shoppers who abandon the cart do so because of extra costs shown at the end, such as shipping, and 20% because delivery is too slow.

Returns must be budgeted from day one. The returns research group at the University of Bamberg estimated that in Germany, the European country that returns the most, one in four parcels comes back, at an average €2.85 per item in transport and handling alone. The rate varies a lot by sector: fashion is far higher than electronics or groceries.

• Decide who pays for returns. By law the customer pays if you told them before the purchase. If not, you pay.
• Offer free shipping over a threshold, not on every order. It raises the average order and does not eat your margin.
• Show shipping costs on the product page. Do not let customers discover them at checkout.

6. What you pay every year

7. What the law requires in Spain (and what it costs if missing)

An online store has all the obligations of a website and a few more, because it sells to consumers at a distance. These are the ones most often forgotten:

Changes affecting stores in 2025, 2026 and 2027

• Withdrawal button. An EU directive requires, from 19 June 2026, a visible function in the store to withdraw from a purchase. As of November 2026 Spain has not yet written it into its law, but it is worth preparing.
• Accessibility. Since 28 June 2025, Law 11/2023 requires online stores to be accessible. Microenterprises providing services, with fewer than ten staff and up to €2 million turnover, are exempt.
• VAT on sales to other EU countries. If you sell more than €10,000 a year to consumers in other EU countries, you charge the customer's country VAT and declare it through the One-Stop Shop (OSS).
• VeriFactu. Invoicing software must comply with Spain's new regulation from 1 January 2027 for companies and from 1 July 2027 for everyone else. If the store issues invoices, the system must be ready.
• Product safety. Since 13 December 2024, the EU General Product Safety Regulation requires product pages to show the manufacturer, product identification and warnings.
• Goodbye to the EU dispute platform link. The ODR platform closed on 20 July 2025, so the link many stores have in their footer is no longer needed.

8. The most expensive thing is a store that does not convert

According to the Baymard Institute, which compiles 50 studies, 70.22% of carts are abandoned before payment. Some are just browsing, but many sales are lost for reasons that can be fixed:

Baymard estimates that a well-designed checkout can raise conversion by 35.26%, and that the ideal is to ask for seven or eight fields, while the US average is over fourteen. Every unnecessary field at checkout costs sales.

Speed matters too. In an A/B test published by Google on web.dev, the Japanese store Rakuten 24 improved only its Core Web Vitals and got 33.13% more conversions and 53.37% more revenue per visitor.

9. What about Colombia?

With us, a bespoke online store starts from COP 6,490,000, as an indicative price. It is the euro price converted at the November 2026 rate and rounded. The final amount goes in a written proposal.

The market is growing. According to the Colombian E-commerce Chamber (CCCE), online sales reached COP 145.4 trillion in 2025, up 11.1% on 2024, across 684.6 million transactions. And people pay differently than in Spain: in the second quarter of 2025, 63.9% of payments were made through PSE, the national bank transfer system, 33.3% by credit card and 2.7% in cash or cash on delivery.

What the law requires in Colombia

• Right of retraction. Customers can undo a distance purchase within 5 business days of delivery (Law 1480 of 2011, art. 47). Since Law 2439 of 2024, the refund cannot take more than 15 calendar days.
• Payment reversal. If there is fraud, the product does not arrive or is not what was ordered, customers can ask their bank to return the money (Law 1480, art. 51).
• Delivery time. If no date was agreed, the order must arrive within 30 calendar days. If it does not, the customer can cancel and get a refund (Law 2439 of 2024).
• Information and complaints. The store must identify the seller and have a complaints channel that issues a case number.
• Personal data. Law 1581 of 2012 requires authorisation to process data and a published data processing policy.
• Electronic invoicing. Anyone required to invoice must do so electronically, under DIAN rules.

Fines from the Superintendency of Industry and Commerce can reach 2,000 monthly minimum wages, and for repeat breaches it can order the website taken down (Law 1480, art. 61).

10. Twelve questions before accepting a quote

1. 01Which platform do you propose and why that one?
2. 02How many products and variants are included? Who uploads them?
3. 03Which payment methods are included? Bizum, PayPal, PSE?
4. 04How much will the platform or gateway charge on each sale?
5. 05How is shipping calculated and which carrier does it connect to?
6. 06Does it include terms of sale, returns policy and withdrawal?
7. 07Is it accessible and compliant with cookie rules?
8. 08Are invoices generated automatically? Will it be ready for VeriFactu?
9. 09Does it connect to my ERP, stock or invoicing?
10. 10Which paid extensions does it need and what do they cost each year?
11. 11Are the domain, hosting and payment accounts in my name?
12. 12What does maintenance include and what happens if something fails mid-campaign?

If a quote does not answer half of these, it is not cheaper. It just leaves out what you will pay later.