You’ve probably already heard of WooCommerce (we mentioned it in our article“Which CMS Should You Choose?”) if you’re looking to set up your own WooCommerce online store, but you’re wondering how much it costs. For your information, creating a WordPress site is free, but it’s a basic setup and doesn’t include features specific to your e-commerce needs.
When you opt for a basic WordPress installation, security remains very limited (no automatic backups, no vulnerability management, etc.). This significantly reduces your chances of achieving long-term success amid the flood of e-commerce sites on the web.
Having a store whose homepage isn’t attractive enough to keep visitors engaged doesn’t help your business at all either. It’s therefore essential to rely on high-quality tools to make your pages more credible and appealing. If these factors are important to you, a WooCommerce store should be a good fit—price included.
How much does a WooCommerce store cost?
For an online store, it’s impossible to give a specific price up front. It all depends on your budget. Although WooCommerce is free, other costs may apply. It’s important not to focus on the means, but rather on the expected results.
To set up a fully functional WooCommerce store, you should budget between 2,000 and 15,000 euros. The exact budget will depend on the plugins and additional features you choose, as well as the service provider. All associated costs depend on the backend aspects of WordPress and WooCommerce.
The Hidden Side of WooCommerce
WooCommerce is a plugin developed for WordPress. Even though the plugin itself is free, there are still some costs to consider for certain tasks, such as:
- Website development;
- Web hosting and setup;
- Design and themes;
- How it works;
- Additional features.
Website Development
To have your website built, you'll need to pay for several essential services, such as:
- SEO
- customer dialogue
- the protection of the site.
SEO
The SEO system helps you optimize your content. As a result, your site will rank higher in search engine results. We recommend using the Yoast plugin for this task. This tool costs $49 per year (a freemium version is available ). However, you can take it a step further by seeking recommendations from an SEO consultant to achieve real results over time.
Customer Communication
To build customer loyalty, you need to stay in regular contact with your customers. Mailchimp is the perfect email marketing tool to help you achieve this goal. Pricing depends on the volume of emails and the number of subscribers to your newsletter.
Protection of the Site
Website security is essential for your business. You don’t want to invest all your money in development and design only to have your site compromised in the end. Sitelock can help you with this. You also have Jetpack, which protects you from direct attacks and threats.
Web Hosting and Setup Fees
You've finished designing your WooCommerce store; now you need a hosting provider to get it up and running. When it comes to hosting, you have several options. Among them, you can rent a server from SiteGround for €3.50 per month.
You can do the same with WordPress hosting, the price of which may vary depending on your needs. Aside from hosting, there are also other costs to keep in mind. These mainly include:
- Domain Name: Once you've finished designing your WooCommerce store, it's a good idea to give it a domain name so that customers can access it directly. WordPress can provide you with free domain names as part of its hosting package;
- Logo: On WordPress, you can download logos for free if you wish. However, these logos are known to lack credibility and sophistication. To get a good logo, you must hire professional graphic designers. Their services come at a cost, and the price can vary from one designer to another;
- The SSL certificate: It adds credibility to your WooCommerce store and sets it apart from the rest. It helps customers feel secure when they shop with you;
- WordPress Monitoring: The moment you start using WordPress, your site is immediately supported and monitored. GoGeek provides full monitoring of your site for €10.61 per month.
Design and Themes
There are free themes you can customize for your website. But these free themes aren't very high quality. If you want your website to be excellent, you should consider custom themes.
First, it’s important to note that free themes are common on the internet. Their features and performance are basic, and anyone can easily access them. Paid themes guarantee regular updates and dedicated customer service.
Second, this allows your visitors to browse the site smoothly, while minimizing problems and glitches.
Finally, high-quality themes ensure your site stands out. If it’s well-designed, everyone will remember it forever. You can also pay for additional features to enhance your site, such as a logo and background image.
Operating expenses
Most of the operating costs are free on WooCommerce, unless you want something specific. These free features on WooCommerce include:
- Products featured on the pages;
- Unlimited customization of your website;
- Categories, tags, and product search;
- Market your products however you like.
Aside from these free WooCommerce extensions, there are other features that you must pay for in order to use them. For example, most extensions related to payment processing are free. However, if you want to send invoices and print shipping labels, you’ll have to pay.
Additional Features
It is essential that you maintain communication with your customers. To do so, you need to invest in high-quality promotional strategies. These strategies include:
- Social media marketing tools: Some social media plugins are free, but if you want to take things further, you’ll need other paid tools. Social media is very important for building an audience and increasing visibility,
- Professional marketing services: There may be times when you lack the skills or are unavailable to handle marketing tasks. For this reason, you can pay someone else to do it for you. The cost can run into the thousands of dollars a month,
- Customer Service and Support: If you have a large number of customers, you’ll need to hire a professional to help you. If that doesn’t work for you, you can invest in chatbots and a CRM solution like Salesforce to gain more insights into your customers. Salesforce starts at €22.19 per month.
There are many other features you can pay for and include to enhance the quality.
Do you need to purchase all the features?
With WooCommerce, it's important to know which features to invest in based on your needs. There are a considerable number of free and paid plugins available. The only difference is that paid features are generally of higher quality than free ones.
However, you can't buy everything, which is why the features that are useful are more than enough. You can contact an expert to get guidance on the most important paid features. That way, you'll know what to prioritize when making a purchase. The rest can, of course, remain free.
Rest assured, you can't open a WooCommerce store without spending some money. However, you can't afford to pay for everything right from the start. So prioritize your needs before you pull out your credit card.
