Building an online store doesn’t have to be a stressful, time consuming, expensive process – not if you’ve got the right tools that is (and we might have just the thing). It can be a fun opportunity to invest a little bit of your creativity into building something that represents your brand and shows off your products to potential customers.
But how much does an online store actually cost? This answer to this is entirely dependent on how much you decide to do yourself or how much you outsource, plus the kind of ecommerce website builder you use.
We’ve broken down the essentials your ecommerce store needs and the kind of costs you could be looking at.
The website builder
There are plenty of choices out there for ecommerce website builders, all offering different features and plugins at varying prices. It’s important you look into each option and decide what you want from a website builder before making the purchase. This could dictate how smoothly the rest of the build goes, and how much you end up spending in the long run.
Website builders like ours can start from just £11 per month.
Your domain name
Registering a domain name should be the easiest and potentially cheapest part of this process.
The TLD you choose is an often forgotten, important factor in your domain. For example, registering a .store domain tells visitors exactly what kind of site you run before they even enter your site. It also builds credibility and visibility, twice as much as you’d get with a .com domain. You can register a .store domain for just £1.
If you already know what domain you’d like, check that it’s available with our domain search. Or, if you need a little help deciding, Pip, our Domain Name Generator, is on hand. Pop in some keywords and your chosen TLD and watch the suggestions fly in.
Need more help? Learn how to use our domain name generator.
Web hosting
Your website needs a place to call home – and one with lots of great features for speed, performance and security. The web hosting you choose dictates how your site performs, and therefore how many visitors stick around. If your site is slow to load, has a lot of downtime, or low security, visitors are going to come back or even stay.
When you buy a web hosting package, you need to consider the storage levels, power and speed your business and website requires. Each web hosting provider can give you a package tailored to your business size. Depending on how much storage, power and speed you need determines the price of your hosting. Our Web Hosting packages start from 49p per month.
Site design
Our ecommerce website builder gives you thousands of free themes to choose from to get you started. They’re completely customisable, so if you’re not happy with something then make a quick edit! You don’t need to be a developer or designer to use them! On-screen assistance will be there to guide you through the process, or you can get in touch with one of our team. You can also install a number of free plugins which help with imagery, widgets, blocks and more.
Our Ecommerce Website Builder packages start from £1 per month for the first 3 months.
But if you don’t fancy doing it yourself, you could outsource to a developer. These costs can be between £100 - £1,000 depending on the size and needs of your online store.
No more stress with Fasthosts
With our Ecommerce Website Builder, you’ll get all the plugins, themes and assistance you could possibly need that’ll have your products flying off of the digital shelves. And show your visitors exactly who you are with a free domain included with every package – so you can bag that all important .store domain.
Got a question? Our team of experts are here to help. Give us a call on 0800 0612 153 or message via live chat.
