How much does an online store cost
An online store costs considerably more than a company website with the same number of pages, because it must handle a catalogue, stock levels, payments, delivery and returns. Building an online store in Bulgaria in 2026 costs roughly from €1,300 for a simple storefront to over €10,000 for a store with warehouse integration. This article shows how the budget is assembled, which costs appear after launch and where overruns usually happen.
In short
An online store has three layers of cost: the build, the platform with its integrations, and recurring costs for maintenance, content and advertising. The build is one-off, but product descriptions, photography, the Google feed, payment fees and logistics remain ongoing costs. The most common overrun comes from a catalogue that was not prepared and from integrations agreed halfway through the project.
Table of contents
- How much an online store costs in Bulgaria in 2026
- How the platform choice changes the budget
- Which features push the price up the most
- How much catalogue preparation costs
- How much migrating an existing store costs
- Hidden costs that never appear in the quote
- Monthly running costs of an online store
- What the euro changed for online stores
- When an online store starts to pay for itself
- Common budgeting mistakes
- Frequently asked questions
How much an online store costs in Bulgaria in 2026
Building an online store in Bulgaria costs roughly between €1,300 and over €10,000 depending on the number of products, variants, integrations and the design approach. The ranges below summarise publicly advertised prices from Bulgarian studios, reviewed in August 2026.
Indicative ranges by store type
| Store type | Indicative price | Typical scope | Suitable for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small storefront | €1,300 - €2,500 | Up to 100 products without variants, standard payment and delivery | Craft production, a small brand, testing the market |
| Standard store | €2,500 - €6,000 | Categories, filters, variants, promotions, courier integration, feed | A merchant with a stable catalogue and active advertising |
| Store with integrations | €6,000 - €10,000 | Warehouse or ERP sync, price tiers, B2B access, multilingual | Distribution, manufacturing, stores with a physical outlet |
| Custom platform | over €10,000 | Custom order logic, configurators, subscriptions, cross-border markets | Businesses where a standard platform is an obstacle |
What the quoted price does not cover
The quoted build price almost always covers design, development and basic configuration. What usually sits outside it: product descriptions, photography, catalogue data entry, the feed to comparison sites, the advertising budget and maintenance after the warranty period. When these lines are missing from the plan, the store launches with a complete storefront but incomplete product content, which delays the first results by months.
Why a store costs more than a company website
A company website presents. A store processes. Every order passes through stock, price, discount, VAT, delivery, payment, notifications and possibly a return. Each of those stages has exceptions that must be built and tested. Comparing the two on price is therefore misleading. If you are still weighing the two options, the overview of how much a website costs and what drives the price is a useful starting point.
How the platform choice changes the budget
The platform determines not so much the initial cost as the cost over the next three years. Subscription platforms have a low start and a permanent monthly fee; open-source platforms have a higher start and a lower monthly cost; custom development has the highest start and the most freedom.
| Approach | Initial cost | Monthly cost | When it is a good fit |
|---|---|---|---|
| Subscription platform | Low | Constant, grows with turnover and add-ons | Fast start, standard product, small team |
| Open-source platform with a pre-built theme | Medium | Hosting and maintenance | Standard catalogue with some custom needs |
| Custom development | High | Hosting and maintenance | Non-standard logic, integrations, long-term plan |
Where subscription platforms get expensive
The monthly fee is rarely the problem. The add-ons are: filters, feeds, multilingual support, loyalty programmes, warehouse connections. Each is a separate monthly subscription, and with enough add-ons the total can reach or exceed the cost of maintaining your own system. Whether it does depends on the platform, the turnover and the number of add-ons, which is why the calculation should be run over 36 months, not over the first year.
Where open-source platforms get expensive
Open-source platforms require genuine technical maintenance: updates, compatibility between modules, security. Missed updates go unnoticed for months and are then paid for all at once. If nobody takes on that work, the advantage disappears.
Which features push the price up the most
The most expensive features are the ones that must behave correctly in every edge case: variants, stock levels, pricing and delivery. Visual elements are almost never the leading item.
Variants and attributes
A product with size, colour and material is not one product but a matrix. Every combination has its own stock level, sometimes its own price and its own image. A variant-heavy catalogue changes both the database structure and the work on the Google Shopping feed.
Pricing and promotions
Promotion logic is among the most underestimated items. Quantity discounts, time-limited campaign prices, vouchers, price tiers for business customers and bundled offers each require their own rules and testing. Added after launch, this logic usually costs twice as much.
Delivery, payments and returns
- integration with one or more couriers and label generation;
- delivery pricing by weight, volume or zone;
- card payment, cash on delivery and instalments;
- the returns and refund process.
Warehouse or ERP connection
Synchronisation with an external system is a project in itself. It requires an agreed exchange format, a frequency, error handling and defined behaviour on mismatches. This is also where additional costs most often appear mid-project if it was not specified at the start.
How much catalogue preparation costs
Catalogue preparation is often comparable in cost to the development itself, and it almost always sits outside the build quote. It covers category structure, product descriptions, images, attributes and feed data.
Product descriptions
Descriptions copied from the supplier create duplicate content across the whole segment and rarely rank. A unique description does not mean a long text - it means concrete data: dimensions, material, compatibility, what is in the box, warranty. Those are exactly the details that both search engines and AI systems extract most easily.
Images and media
Product photography is an investment with a direct effect on conversion and on product approval in Google Merchant Center. Requirements such as a clean background, consistent framing and sufficient resolution are not an aesthetic preference but a condition for the product to be eligible in shopping results.
Attributes and feed data
For products to appear in shopping results, the feed must contain correct identifiers, availability, price, shipping and return policy. The required and recommended attributes are listed in the Google Merchant Center product data specification. In practice, missing attributes are the most common reason products get disapproved.
How much migrating an existing store costs
Migrating an existing store to a new platform costs more than building a new store of the same scope, because data transfer, URL preservation and a period of parallel operation are added to the development. This is the project type where accumulated organic traffic is most often lost.
What has to be transferred
- products, variants, attributes, categories and media;
- customer accounts, order history and delivery addresses;
- discounts, vouchers and price tiers;
- reviews and ratings, where they exist;
- email subscribers and marketing consents.
Why URLs are critical
Every old product and category URL must receive a permanent redirect to its new equivalent. Bulk-redirecting everything to the home page is not a solution and leads to lost rankings. The redirect map is prepared before launch, not after, and is checked against a real list of currently indexed URLs.
When migration is worth it
Changing platform is justified when the current one obstructs growth: it does not support the integrations you need, it cannot handle the load, or the cost of add-ons exceeds the cost of a custom solution. Changing platform for visual reasons almost never pays off - the visuals can be changed within the current platform.
Hidden costs that never appear in the quote
The hidden costs of an online store are the ones paid to third parties: payment providers, couriers, advertising platforms and module subscriptions. They are not in the build quote, but they are part of the cost of every order.
Payment fees
Every payment method carries a fee. Cash on delivery adds both the courier fee and the risk of refused parcels. Card payment adds the provider's fee. With a low average order value, these percentages determine whether the store is profitable at all.
Logistics and returns
Returns are not an exception but a normal part of e-commerce. The cost of return shipping, inspection and restocking has to be part of the calculation when the margin is set.
Module and tool subscriptions
Tools for email, chat, reviews, filters and analytics look inexpensive individually. Together they form a permanent monthly item that is rarely planned in advance.
Monthly running costs of an online store
The monthly costs of a store fall into four groups: technical maintenance, content, advertising and fees on sales. A store with no monthly traffic budget usually never reaches the volume at which it pays for itself.
Technical maintenance
A store has more moving parts than a company website, which means more updates, more monitoring and a shorter acceptable response time. Store downtime directly results in lost revenue, not an inconvenience.
Content and categories
New categories, buying guides and comparisons are what bring organic traffic beyond individual product pages. To see which elements a systematic review covers, look at what an SEO audit for an online store includes.
Advertising
Many new stores rely on paid traffic in the first year while organic visibility builds up. How that budget is structured is covered in the article on Google Ads for online stores. If you are looking for cheaper traffic over the long run, compare the cost with how much SEO costs and when it delivers.
What the euro changed for online stores
Since 1 January 2026 the euro has been Bulgaria's official currency at the fixed conversion rate of EUR 1 = BGN 1.95583. Under Article 15(2) of the Law on the Introduction of the Euro in the Republic of Bulgaria, as amended in State Gazette No. 65 of 8 August 2025, the mandatory dual-display period runs from 8 August 2025 to 8 August 2026. For stores this is a technical and an editorial task at the same time.
What to check in the store
- prices in the catalogue, the cart and the order confirmation;
- delivery pricing and free-delivery thresholds;
- the feed to Google Merchant Center and the currency in it;
- price blocks in order emails and in PDF documents;
- old promotional pages and blog articles that quote amounts.
Why this is also an SEO task
A mismatch between the price on the page and the price in the feed leads to disapproved products and lost visibility in shopping results. A detailed checklist is available in the article on the euro and Google Merchant Center.
When an online store starts to pay for itself
A store pays for itself when the gross margin on orders covers the cost of traffic, fulfilment and maintenance. That depends far more on average order value and repeat purchases than on the cost of the build.
The three numbers that decide everything
- Average order value. At a low value, fees and delivery eat the margin.
- Conversion rate. It determines how much traffic is needed for the same revenue.
- Share of returning customers. It separates a store that buys every sale from one that builds a base.
How to calculate the break-even point
The arithmetic is simple: take the gross margin on an average order, subtract the payment and delivery fees, and what remains is what you can afford to pay to acquire one customer. If the cost per order from advertising exceeds that figure, the store operates at a loss regardless of turnover. This is exactly why average order value matters more to survival than visitor count.
Why repeat purchases decide the outcome
In businesses with repeat purchases, the first order often carries a lower margin because of the acquisition cost, while subsequent orders can raise the total customer value. Retention tools - email, restock notifications, discount programmes - therefore often influence the result more than another round of campaign changes. In a store where purchases are one-off by nature, the arithmetic has to work from the first order.
When the problem is not the advertising
If traffic arrives but orders do not, the problem is usually on the page rather than in the campaign: unclear delivery cost, missing stock information, a cumbersome registration or checkout process, slow loading. That situation is described in detail in the article on where an online store loses sales before the advertising even starts.
Common budgeting mistakes
Preparing the catalogue last
When product data is collected only after the store is built, the launch slips by months. Catalogue preparation has to run in parallel with development.
A zero traffic budget
A store that exhausts its budget on launch day has no way of collecting data on what sells. The first two or three months need advertising funds precisely to produce that information.
Integrations agreed on the fly
A warehouse connection added after the structure is finished almost always forces rework. If such an integration is expected within a year, it belongs in the brief from the start.
Copying supplier descriptions
A catalogue built entirely from supplier descriptions is identical to that of every other retailer of the same brand. Nothing in it distinguishes the store in the results, and visibility stays almost entirely paid. The practical approach is to rewrite the descriptions of the best-selling products rather than the whole catalogue at once - this limits the cost and lets you check whether it works before expanding.
No plan for the catalogue structure
Categories, filters and URL structure determine how the store will rank. Changing them later means mass redirects. How that foundation is planned is described in the article on planning an online store. For an estimate based on your own catalogue, see the online store development service.
Frequently asked questions
How much does an online store with around 200 products cost?
For 200 products with standard variants, courier integration, card payment and a Google feed, the indicative cost on the Bulgarian market in 2026 is between €2,500 and €6,000. The main difference between quotes comes from whether the design is custom and who prepares the product descriptions and photography.
Is a subscription platform cheaper?
It often has a lower initial cost, but not necessarily. The total depends on the platform, the configuration, the paid add-ons, the turnover and the integrations you need. Run the comparison over 36 months, including every module and service you will actually use: filters, feeds, multilingual support and warehouse connection.
What are the monthly costs after launch?
The permanent items are hosting or a platform subscription, technical maintenance, payment and delivery fees, the advertising budget and content work. In an active store, advertising and sales fees usually exceed the technical costs by a wide margin. The monthly budget should therefore be planned alongside expected turnover rather than as a fixed sum.
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