What Does It Cost to Build Your Own Online Store?
The answer to “what does a site cost” reassures most people: setup is cheap. What breaks the reassurance is the bill that repeats every month. 💻
Short answer: setup runs ₺15-60K, and monthly operating costs excluding advertising sit around ₺3-10K.
Below we cover the setup bill, monthly fixed costs, hidden lines and the break-even calculation.
The setup bill
BU BÖLÜMÜN ÖZETİ
- Line by line
- The custom software trap
- Photography lowers your ad bill
Lines paid once.
Line by line
Platform setup and theme ₺5-25K, product photography and content ₺5-15K, company registration and accountant ₺8-15K, payment gateway application and SSL ₺1-3K, legal texts (distance selling, privacy) ₺1-3K. 📊
The custom software trap
Custom development commissioned with zero sales is this channel’s most common unnecessary expense. A hosted platform carries most businesses through the first year; custom work makes sense when volume strains off-the-shelf tools.
Photography lowers your ad bill
The cheapest way to get more sales from the same ad budget is strengthening the product page. When good images and a clear description lift conversion, acquisition cost falls and the ad bill shrinks.
Monthly operating costs
The real bill, repeating every month.
Fixed lines
Platform subscription and domain, email marketing tool, shipping integration, accounting fee, storage rent if any. The total sits in a ₺3-10K band. Advertising isn’t included and is usually larger than all of them combined. 🧭
Payment processing
Every collection carries a gateway fee, and instalment sales raise that rate noticeably. Offering instalments grows sales but you must price knowing it thins the margin.
Hidden costs
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- Cart abandonment
- Returns and return shipping
- Maintenance and updates
Not in the budget, but out of the till.
Cart abandonment
A visitor brought in by advertising disappearing at checkout means that ad money was wasted. Forced registration and surprise shipping fees are the two most common causes of this invisible loss.
Returns and return shipping
Returns under the right of withdrawal arrive with shipping costs attached. A price built without knowing your return rate doesn’t hold at month’s end.
Maintenance and updates
Plugin updates, speed issues, security patches — all cost time or money. A broken checkout page can lose a month’s ad budget in a single day. The margin side sits in the own store margin article.
Where to cut, where not to
Here cuts touch conversion directly.
Cuttable
Expensive custom design, numerous plugin subscriptions, unnecessary stock imagery, early warehouse rent.
Not cuttable
Site speed, a simple checkout and product imagery. All three set the conversion rate; savings here come straight out of the ad budget.
Break-even point
Break-even calculated without advertising is misleading.
The logic
A store with ₺6K of monthly fixed costs and a 35% average contribution margin breaks even at roughly ₺17K of revenue. But add the ad budget to fixed costs and the figure grows fast; a realistic calculation is made including advertising. Channel comparison on the e-commerce sector page.
📝 Field Notes
A store owner commissioned ₺120K of custom software; the site had three hundred visitors a month. None of the problems the software solved were his problems. Spent on advertising and content, the same money would have multiplied that visitor count. He eventually moved to a hosted platform and put the difference into traffic. A site is the most expensive investment made where there was no problem. 💻
📖 Quick Glossary
Gateway fee: the payment charge deducted from every collection. Cart abandonment: the share of visitors who quit at checkout. Distance selling contract: the legally required sales agreement. Conversion rate: the percentage of visitors who order.
⚡ Quick Summary
Setup ₺15-60K, monthly ₺3-10K excluding advertising. 📊 Custom software is the most common unnecessary expense. Hidden lines: cart abandonment, return shipping, maintenance. Not cuttable: site speed, simple checkout, imagery. Break-even is calculated including advertising.
🎯 Next Step
Let’s build your setup and monthly cost table with break-even revenue: quote form · free digital audit. 🤝
Frequently Asked Questions
Sık Sorulan Sorular
Hosted platforms give predictable monthly costs; open-source systems have no subscription but bring server, maintenance and development expenses. Total cost of ownership depends on your team’s capability.
Distance selling contracts and disclosure notices are legal requirements, and generic templates can carry risk, so adapting them to your business is advisable. This small line is cheap against potential complaints and penalties.
Yes; the more instalments, the higher the gateway fee and the thinner the margin. Instalments lift conversion, so the decision belongs with pricing.