How much does an online store cost in 2026? Setup costs, card fees and monthly costs

“How much does an online store cost?” actually has two answers: what you pay once to get started, and what you pay every month while the store is selling. Quotes are usually compared on the first number alone, even though after a year the second matters just as much.

Below you'll find the costs broken down by component, with the public rates of the platforms, payment processors and invoicing software used in Romania, checked in September 2026. Then what makes the price go up or down, the recurring costs many people forget and, at the end, our own prices.

The short answer

Building a turnkey online store in Romania usually costs a few thousand lei. Necesit.ro, a Romanian platform where customers request quotes from service providers, listed a range of 3,600–11,000 lei in September 2026, based on what its customers typically pay. With us, an online store starts at 7,500 lei (≈ €1,500), as a one-off payment. On top of the setup cost come the monthly costs, which depend mostly on the platform and on how much you sell.

The source of each figure is in the sections below. Rates change, so check them yourself before you sign a contract.

Shopify or a platform on your own hosting

The first decision changes almost every cost that follows. Broadly, you have two options:

• A subscription platform such as Shopify. You pay monthly, and hosting, the SSL certificate and platform updates are included. You handle products, orders and settings from the platform's dashboard.
• A platform installed on your own hosting — custom-built or based on an open-source solution such as WooCommerce or PrestaShop. There's no platform subscription, but you pay for hosting, and someone has to handle updates and security checks: you, or a maintenance plan.

What Shopify costs in Romania

On Shopify's pricing page for Romania, the plans looked like this in September 2026:

The last column is the one few people notice: if you take payments through a processor other than Shopify Payments — a Romanian one, for example — Shopify charges you that extra percentage on every payment taken through it. It doesn't apply to cash on delivery. For international cards and American Express, the Shopify Payments rate is higher: 3% + 1.25 lei on the Basic plan.

Shopify also has free themes. Paid themes in the Shopify Theme Store cost between $100 and $500 in September 2026, licensed to a single store. Many extra features — reviews, advanced filters, integrations — come from apps, and many apps have their own monthly subscription.

What a platform on your own hosting costs

There's no platform subscription here, but other costs appear: hosting (details below), paid extensions if the platform relies on them, and the hours for updates and security checks. The upside is that you only pay the payment processor's fee, with no extra percentage to the platform, and the design and checkout flow can be built exactly the way you need.

Setup costs

The price of building a store is, broadly, working time. Each point below adds hours — or removes them, if you keep it simple.

Design

A ready-made theme adapted with your logo and colours is the cheapest option. A design built around your products — the product page, filters, cart and checkout on a phone — takes longer, but it's the part customers see with every order.

Development and integrations

This covers setting up delivery, payment methods, product variants and confirmation emails, plus the links to the software you already use:

• The payment processor. Your company signs the contract, and the store connects to it.
• The courier. For the large courier companies in Romania, such as FAN Courier, Sameday or Cargus, integrations exist, either official or through third-party modules, so the shipping label is generated from the order with no addresses copied by hand.
• Invoicing software. An invoice is issued automatically for every order, if the software integrates with the platform.
• Stock management software or other sales channels, if stock has to stay in sync between them.

Loading products

Ten products with good photos are added quickly. A few hundred products, with variants (sizes, colours) and data scattered across several files, take hours of importing, checking and making photos consistent. What helps most is a clean spreadsheet with the same columns for every product: name, price, variants, description, code and photos.

Copy and legal pages

An online store in Romania needs a few documents before launch:

• Terms and conditions, with your company details, delivery, payment and warranty.
• A returns policy. For online purchases, customers generally have 14 days to withdraw from the contract without giving a reason (Emergency Ordinance no. 34/2014).
• A privacy policy (GDPR) and a cookie policy, plus the banner where visitors give their consent.
• The ANPC dispute-resolution (SAL) icon, 250 × 50 pixels, on the home page, linking to reclamatiisal.anpc.ro — as required by ANPC Order no. 449/2022, as amended by Order no. 270/2026. ANPC is Romania's consumer protection authority.

The SOL icon, required until recently next to the SAL one, has been dropped from the order: the EU's online dispute resolution platform closed on 20 July 2025 (Regulation (EU) 2024/3228). If your store still shows the old icons, replace them with the new one, which ANPC provides for free on anpc.ro.

Card payment fees

The fee is paid on every order paid by card, so over time it can end up exceeding the cost of building the store. The standard rates published by processors working with Romanian businesses, checked in September 2026:

Cash on delivery doesn't go through the payment processor, but check in your courier contract what collecting cash on delivery costs.

The recurring costs many people forget

After launch, a store has costs that don't appear in the build quote. They're worth putting in a spreadsheet before you choose a platform:

• The domain. A .ro domain costs roughly €7–12 a year, plus VAT: RoTLD, the official registry, charges €12, while the registrars Hostico, HOSTGATE and ROMARG listed between €6.99 and €9.99 a year.
• Hosting, if you're not on Shopify. Plans designed for online stores started, in September 2026, at €4.99/month with Hostico (€7.99 on renewal) and at €14.99/month with HOSTGATE, for PrestaShop or OpenCart, both excluding VAT.
• Renewal prices. Many domain and hosting offers are promotional for the first year. At HOSTGATE, for example, a .ro domain costs €7.99 to register and €9.99 to renew, excluding VAT.
• Apps and extensions. On Shopify, many features come from apps with a monthly subscription; on WooCommerce or PrestaShop, from paid modules.
• Invoicing software. Oblio costs €29 a year, with unlimited invoices. With SmartBill, invoicing plans cost between €5.84 and €9.82 a month + VAT, and the online store plugins and API are included in the Platinum plan. Both are integrated with RO e-Factura, Romania's e-invoicing system.
• Deliveries, paid per parcel, according to your courier contract.
• Maintenance: updates, backups, checking payments and forms after every change. On a platform installed on your own hosting, someone has to take care of this every month.
• Your own time: new products, orders, returns, replies to customers. It doesn't appear on any invoice, but it has to be counted.

What makes the cost go up or down

The build cost goes up when:

• you have hundreds of products, with variants and data scattered across several places;
• you deliver through several couriers, with weight-based rates or collection from your shop;
• the store has to connect to stock management software or other sales channels;
• you sell in several languages or currencies;
• descriptions and photos have to be created from scratch.

And it goes down when:

• you start with your main products and add the rest yourself after launch;
• you already have a spreadsheet of products and photos for each one;
• you deliver through a single courier, at a flat rate;
• you use the existing integrations of your courier and invoicing software rather than custom-built links.

If you're just starting out and don't yet know what sells, a business website with your main products can be a cheaper start. We've covered separately how much a business website costs and how to compare quotes.

Checklist before you ask for quotes

1. How many products will you have at launch, and how many variants do they have?
2. Do you have a spreadsheet of products and photos for each one?
3. Which courier do you use, and how do you calculate delivery costs?
4. Which processor do you want to take card payments through, and do you already have a contract?
5. Which invoicing software do you use?
6. Who writes the descriptions, terms and returns policy?
7. Shopify or a platform on your own hosting: what does each cost after 12 months, with all the fees?
8. Who handles updates, and what happens if payments stop working on a busy day?

What an online store costs with us

We show our starting prices openly. You receive the final quote in writing, estimated in hours, before we start, and payment is in two instalments: 30% upfront and 70% on completion. Our prices are in Romanian lei; euro amounts are approximate.

Worth knowing about our offer:

• We build stores on Shopify or on our own platform; with both, you manage products, prices and stock yourself.
• We draft all the policies — terms, returns, privacy, cookies — around how you work, and you approve them before launch.
• If you need it, we write the website copy; the hours are included in the estimate.
• A store takes us 3–4 weeks on average; the timeline depends mostly on the number of products and on how ready the documents, photos and copy are.
• The domain and hosting aren't included in the price: you pay for them separately, a small amount per year or every 2–3 years.
• In the client portal you can see what was done and how many hours it took.
• We also handle maintenance for websites built by other companies.

What we include, step by step, is on our online store development page. If you already have a store and want to see how it's doing in Google, our free SEO audit shows its technical issues in about a minute. And if you also have a physical shop, a complete Google Business Profile helps customers in your area find you — see Local SEO and Google Business.

Would you like to work out the cost of your store together? Get in touch and tell us what you sell, how many products you have and which software you already use.