What an online shop really costs

The six lines of the bill

An online shop costs in six ways: the platform that runs it, the fee on every payment, the domain with its certificate, the legal pages the law requires to sell to consumers, the photographs and texts of the products, and shipping with returns. Quotes and price lists almost always show one or two of these. The others arrive later, once the shop is open and going back costs more than having counted them in from the start.

• Platform: a monthly subscription, or software plus hosting, or a subscription that also covers the site and whoever runs it.
• Payments: a percentage plus a fixed amount on every order, and sometimes a second percentage taken by the platform.
• Domain and certificate: a few euros a year, but registered to you.
• Legal pages: privacy notice, terms of sale, the right of withdrawal with its form, cookies.
• Photos and texts: the line that decides whether the shop sells, and that nobody puts in the quote.
• Shipping and returns: labels, packaging, the time to prepare parcels and the handling of whoever sends one back.

The platform: three ways to pay for it

The first way is the subscription of a template platform such as Shopify, Wix or Squarespace: Shopify's entry plan costs 36 € a month, or 27 € a month paid a year in advance, on the Italian price list read on 23 October 2026. The second is free software, WooCommerce on WordPress: the program costs nothing, but the official site puts hosting between 25 and 350 dollars a month for most shops, plus paid extensions. The third is the all-inclusive subscription, where the shop is part of the site and somebody runs it for you: with us the site costs €29.99 a month and the shop €25 a month, €54.99 in total. Activation is a one-off €150.

The three figures are not comparable as they stand, because they buy different things: in the first you pay for a tool and use it yourself, in the second you pay for infrastructure and build yourself, in the third you pay for a service in which the work is included. The right comparison is between the platform line as a whole and the sum of the other five lines, which changes a great deal depending on who handles them.

Payment fees: how to read them

Every card payment costs a percentage plus a fixed amount, and the fixed amount weighs more than the percentage on small orders. On a 30 € order, 1.5% plus 0.25 € comes to 0.70 €; 2.1% plus 0.30 € comes to 0.93 €. On a hundred orders a month the difference between the two rates is about 23 €, which is more than many subscriptions. Then look at whether the platform keeps a second percentage when you do not use its own payment system: Shopify adds 2% in that case, on the price list cited. In our shop you pay only the card fee, Stripe's, 1.5% plus 0.25 € on standard European cards at the time of writing, and no percentage of ours.

Domain, certificate and who owns them

A .it or .com domain costs a few euros a year and the security certificate is almost always free today: it is not a line that weighs on the bill. What weighs is whose name it is in. If the domain belongs to the supplier, the day you change you lose the address customers have saved, the reviews that cite it and the place it has earned on Google. Ask in writing that the domain be registered to your business and that you be given the access to move it. In our subscription domain and hosting are included, and if you arrive with a domain of your own we connect it.

Legal pages: the cost nobody puts in the quote

To sell online to consumers in Italy you need a privacy notice saying what you do with data, terms of sale, information on the 14-day right of withdrawal with its form, and cookies handled properly. These are not formalities: the Consumer Code requires them, and a missing one is the first thing an angry customer or a competitor reports. Having them written costs money; doing them yourself by copying another site costs more when they go wrong. On do-it-yourself platforms you write them or pay an app; in our shop the site generates them from your business's details and updates them when something changes, and you can replace them with your adviser's.

Photos and texts: the line that decides whether you sell

A product that looks bad online does not sell, and this cost appears on no price list because nobody invoices it. You have three roads: a photographer for a day, which for a small catalogue is often the most sensible spend; an afternoon with a phone, natural light and a clean background, which is enough for simple garments and objects; or the supplier's photos, which every other shop also has. Texts follow the same logic: three lines of your own are worth more than a copied spec sheet. Count the time in, because it is the one line you cannot delegate entirely.

Shipping and returns

A label for a small parcel within Italy costs a few euros through the services that aggregate couriers, less if you already have a contract with a courier of your own; add packaging and the time to prepare the parcel. Returns belong in the sum from day one: by law a consumer can return within 14 days, and your shop has to say who pays the return shipping. A shop that also offers collection on site lowers this line for whoever is nearby. In our dashboard the label prints from the order, through the aggregated couriers or your own contract, and a return puts the product back in stock.

The bill for a shop with twenty orders a month

Take a small, real shop: twenty orders a month at 40 € each, 800 € in takings. Card fees come to between 17 and 23 € a month depending on the rate; the domain under 2 € a month; the platform runs from a few tens of euros a month if you do everything yourself to €54.99 a month if the site and the work are inside it; shipping is paid by the customer or absorbed by you; photos, texts and legal pages cost once at the start and then time. The monthly total lands between 60 and 100 € on almost every road, and the difference between the roads is not the price: it is how many of these lines stay on your shoulders.