From an experienced freelancer, a working e-commerce store costs $3,000–$12,000 in 2026 — the low end for a template-based store with client-supplied products, the high end for custom design, migrations, and complex shipping or tax logic. Agency builds run several times higher for the same scope.
| Build type | Freelancer range |
|---|---|
| Template-based store (client provides content) | $3,000 – $5,000 |
| Semi-custom store + payment/shipping setup | $5,000 – $8,000 |
| Custom design, migration, integrations | $8,000 – $12,000 |
| Monthly care plan after launch | $300 – $1,500 /mo |
2026 market ranges · public surveys, marketplace data, and 54+ client projects · reviewed July 2026. Freelancer pricing for US and EU clients, not agency pricing. Methodology →
What moves the number
- Product count and data quality. Forty clean products import in a day; four thousand messy ones are a project of their own.
- Payments, tax, and shipping complexity. Multi-region tax and live shipping rates add real engineering.
- Who writes the content. Client-supplied copy is the biggest schedule risk; handling it adds 30–50%.
- Migration from an old platform. Never bundled free — it's a separate line item.
The single largest driver of an e-commerce quote is not design — it’s data. Forty products with clean images, descriptions and variants import in an afternoon. Four thousand with inconsistent naming, missing images and three different variant schemes is a separate project that happens to end in a website.
Ask for the product export before quoting, or before accepting a quote. It answers more of the pricing question than any conversation about design will.