How much does an ecommerce website cost in the US? Platform plans, card fees, build prices and 3-year totals

The short answer

A US store selling $5,000 a month pays about $2,450 a year to run on Shopify; an established brand pays six figures. In both cases the platform plan is the smallest part of the bill. On 17 October 2026, Shopify's plans ran from $29 to $359 a month billed yearly, and Shopify Plus from $2,300 a month. The card fees on every sale cost far more: in our three example stores below they are 71% to 76% of the three-year bill.

• Platform: $29 to $359 a month on Shopify, BigCommerce, Squarespace or Wix billed yearly; WooCommerce is free software, with hosting that WooCommerce itself estimates at $25 to $350 a month for most stores.
• Payments: 2.5% to 2.9% plus 30 cents per online card sale on Shopify Payments, depending on the plan; Stripe's standard US rate is 2.9% plus 30 cents.
• Build: we read the profiles of 79 US-based Shopify Partners; the 48 that publish a price for a store build start at a median of $887, a quarter at $200 or less, and four at $5,000 or more.
• Three years, all in: about $8,600 for a store selling $5,000 a month, $58,400 at $40,000 a month and $212,000 at $150,000 a month, with the arithmetic below.

To price your own project from published figures, try our free website cost calculator. If you want a store built or rebuilt, our ecommerce development service explains how we scope one.

What the platforms charge

These are the US prices on each platform's own pricing page. Shopify and Squarespace change their prices by the visitor's country, so for those two we read the US version of the page as captured by the Internet Archive; the dates are under the table.

Prices are per month, billed yearly unless marked. Sources: Shopify pricing (US page captured 17 October 2026), Shopify Plus pricing, BigCommerce pricing, Squarespace pricing (US page captured 13 October 2026), Wix plans (USD reference prices, yearly subscription) and WooCommerce pricing, all read on 17 October 2026.

Four things in that table change the bill more than the plan price:

• BigCommerce prices by your sales. Each plan has a cap on trailing 12-month sales, measured as gross order value minus 10%, and the plan "auto-upgrades" when you pass it. A store selling $5,000 a month ($54,000 of BigCommerce GMV a year) is already past Core's $30,000 cap. Scale covers $33,333 of GMV a month and charges 0.9% above that; past it, the Performance plan starts at $1,499 a month billed annually.
• Squarespace Basic takes 2% of online sales. On $5,000 a month that's $100 a month, more than the $10 a month you save against Core.
• Wix lists online payments from Core up. Its Light plan ($17) doesn't include them, and Wix says its prices vary by location and shows USD for reference.
• WooCommerce moves the cost to hosting and upkeep. Hosting ranges from Pressable's $250 a year (one site, up to 30,000 visits) to SiteGround's WooCommerce plans, which start at $2.99 a month and renew at $17.99. You also carry plugin updates and security yourself, or pay someone to.

Speed differs by platform too. Our website platform speed report shows how real visitors experience stores on each one, by country.

Payment processing is the biggest bill

The plan is a fixed cost; payment fees grow with every sale. These are the published US online card rates:

Sources: Shopify pricing, Stripe pricing, PayPal merchant fees and Wix Payments service fees, read on 17 October 2026.

On Shopify, the processor choice has a second cost. If you take cards through a third-party provider instead of Shopify Payments, Shopify adds its own transaction fee on top of the provider's: 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced and 0.2% on Plus. A store selling $40,000 a month on Grow would pay Shopify an extra $4,800 a year ($480,000 × 1%) before the provider's own rate. BigCommerce works the other way round: it charges no fee for orders through its listed "embedded" providers, which include Stripe and PayPal, and 2%, 1% or 0.6% for any other.

Two cautions. Our examples use the standard card rate; rewards and corporate cards cost more (Shopify's "premium" rate), and international cards add a point or more. And refunds rarely return the fee: Wix, for example, states that a refund doesn't return the original processing fee.

Themes and apps

A theme is the store's design template. On 17 October 2026 the Shopify Theme Store listed 1,326 themes and style presets, 24 of them free. In the first 480 paid listings we read, prices ran from $100 to $500, with a median of $320, shown as a single price with no monthly fee.

Apps add the features a theme doesn't have, and most bill monthly in USD through your Shopify invoice. A typical starter set, priced on the Shopify App Store:

The pattern to watch is apps that charge a percentage. Recharge's Starter plan takes 1.49% plus 19 cents of every subscription order, on top of the card fee. On WooCommerce the equivalent costs are extensions, which WooCommerce prices at $29 to $299 a year each.

Sales tax tools

Most stores need software to work out the right rate for each US address. Where you have to collect, register and file depends on each state's rules, so ask an accountant; this section compares tool prices and isn't tax advice.

Sources: Shopify Tax pricing, TaxJar pricing and Avalara pricing, read on 17 October 2026; Squarespace from its US pricing page.

The pricing models point in different directions. Shopify Tax grows with your order count but files nothing; Avalara charges per state but includes the returns. At 1,500 orders a month with a $100 average order, Shopify Tax costs up to $525 a month if every order is in a state where you collect, while Avalara for five states costs $333 a month on yearly billing.

What it costs to have a store built

US agencies rarely publish build prices, but Shopify's Partner Directory asks each partner to state a price per service. On 17 October 2026 it listed 1,311 partners with a primary location in the US. We opened the first 79 in the directory's default order and recorded each one's price for "Store build or redesign":

Across the 48 that publish one, the lowest price each states ranged from $1 to $10,000. The median was $887; a quarter started at $200 or less and a quarter at $1,800 or more; four started at $5,000 or more. Some examples from agencies' own profiles:

• IT-Geeks (Salt Lake City): store build or redesign from $10,000, including theme setup, payment and shipping configuration and training.
• Lanternsol (Cincinnati): $5,000 to $25,000.
• LaunchCoast (Topanga, California): $2,500 to $8,000, with the starting price covering "store configurations, theme setup, theme design and content setup".
• Adex Labs (Dallas): from $1,800.

Read those numbers as entry prices, not quotes. They're self-reported, and the lowest describe setting up a purchased theme, not designing a store. A range such as "$1 to $75,000" tells you nothing. And a US primary location doesn't mean the team works in the US.

What moves a real quote is the work behind the pages:

• Design. Customizing a $320 theme is a small job; a custom theme with its own product, collection and cart templates is a design project.
• Catalog and migration. Importing products, customers and orders from another platform, with redirects for every old URL, is its own line item; our guide to website migration cost prices it, and the migration SEO checklist covers keeping your rankings.
• Integrations. An ERP, a warehouse (3PL), subscriptions, B2B price lists or several markets and currencies each add build and testing time.
• Accessibility. Checkout, filters and product pages need to work with a keyboard and a screen reader, which is also a legal question in the US.

For the cost of a non-store website in the US, see how much a website costs in the US.

Three stores, three years

To see where the money goes, we priced three stores on Shopify for 36 months, from published rates only. The assumptions:

• Starter: $5,000 in sales a month, 100 orders, $50 average order. Basic plan, free theme, free apps, $1,000 setup by a partner (about the directory median).
• Growing: $40,000 a month, 500 orders, $80 average order. Grow plan, a $320 theme, Judge.me Awesome, Shopify Email at 20,000 emails a month, $5,000 build.
• Established: $150,000 a month, 1,500 orders, $100 average order. Advanced plan, Judge.me Awesome, Shopify Email at 120,000 emails a month, $25,000 custom build (the top of Lanternsol's published range).

All three use Shopify Payments at the plan's standard online rate and Shopify Tax on every order (an upper bound: you only pay it on orders from states where you collect). Plans are billed yearly. Domain, shipping, marketing, staff time and maintenance are left out.

How each line is calculated:

• Plan: $29 × 36; $89 × 36; $359 × 36.
• Card fees: Starter, 2.9% of $180,000 in sales plus 30¢ on 3,600 orders, or $5,220 + $1,080. Growing, 2.7% of $1,440,000 plus 30¢ on 18,000 orders, or $38,880 + $5,400. Established, 2.5% of $5,400,000 plus 30¢ on 54,000 orders, or $135,000 + $16,200.
• Apps: Growing, Judge.me $15 × 36 = $540, plus Shopify Email for 10,000 emails a month above the free 10,000, $10 × 36 = $360. Established, $540 plus 110,000 paid emails a month, $110 × 36 = $3,960.
• Shopify Tax: free for the first $100,000 of sales, then 0.35% of each order. Starter, 1,600 orders after month 20 × $0.175. Growing, 16,750 orders after the first 1,250 × $0.28. Established, 53,000 orders after the first 1,000 × $0.35.

The build looks like the big decision, and it's the one you make once. The card fees come back every month, which is why the processor and the plan tier are worth a spreadsheet of their own.

When Shopify Plus pays off

Plus costs $2,300 a month on a 3-year term, against $359 for Advanced billed yearly: $23,292 a year more. Its card rate is 0.25 points lower (2.25% against 2.5%). On card fees alone, Plus pays for itself at about $9.3 million in card sales a year ($23,292 ÷ 0.0025). Below that, the reasons to move are features (B2B catalogs, checkout customization, more locations, priority support), not savings.

What Dardo charges

Ecommerce builds are quoted after a short review of your brief, because the price follows the catalog, integrations and design work rather than a page count. Our contact form offers optional budget ranges of under USD 5,000, 5,000 to 15,000, 15,000 to 30,000, 30,000 to 60,000 and over 60,000. Our published recurring prices are on the pricing page: website maintenance from USD 79 a month and monthly SEO with reporting from USD 299 a month; our guide to what SEO costs compares that with the market.

What to do next

1. Put your own monthly sales, order count and average order into the table above; the card fees will tell you which plan tier fits.
2. Ask every builder to quote the same scope, with the theme, apps, integrations and migration on separate lines.
3. Check the processor before the plan: on Shopify, a third-party processor adds 0.6% to 2% on every sale.

All prices here are dated snapshots from each company's own page, and they change; check them before you sign. If you want Dardo to build or rebuild your store, send us your brief.