How Much Does a WooCommerce Site Cost in 2017?
Originally posted at the Mode Effect blog here.
It’s never been easier to start an online business. Specifically speaking, an e-commerce based business. If you’re just getting started there are so many great platforms at your fingertips to get online and start selling. It’s likely you know these platforms well.
Before we get into pricing on WooCommerce I strongly recommend a great article by our friends at WP Site Care on how much a WordPress site should cost.
It’s also likely you’re here because you’re weighing the use of WooCommerce. You might already know that WooCommerce powers close to 40% of the small business e-commerce shopping cart market. That is a tremendous standing in such a competitive market. That’s huge!
The Stability of WooCommerce long-term
In 2015 WordPress.com’s parent company Automattic acquired WooCommerce (see article here).
At this time the WooCommerce’s market share was around 30% (see below)
What does this mean?? We can assume big thing are in store for the platform. Knowing the folks at Automattic personally, we can speak of the commitment to growing the e-commerce platform. Needless to say, WooCommerce is a stable and solid platform to build your online business with.
The added bonus is that you can actually own your content, website code, IP, etc. This isn’t the same for hosted e-commerce platforms as you might already know.
Common Assumptions on launching a WooCommerce site
The fantastic thing about WordPress is that it has the world’s most powerful CMS and most users have an easier time using it to maintain their content. The assumption is that WooCommerce is built in this same way. Ease of use. Strap-on WooCommerce to WordPress, add some products, and you’re off and selling! Unfortunately, this is where users hit a technical roadblock.
You already know that WordPress themes are affordable. Domains, website hosting, (need to write a recommendation article for Woo hosting to link to) and other things have been made a little more simple to find, purchase and setup which serves the non-technical user/founder.
If you’ve had experience putting these together you’ll find a few additional steps to setting up a WooCommerce site more tricky. It’s tougher to configure than a simple WordPress blog or marketing website. It requires some technical know-how and planning that you need to plan for.
The reality is WooCommerce is a technical responsibility for a business owner.
This is a positive thing since as we mentioned before you own the content and information on the platform! (See other companies we’ve built awesome things for) We’ve had the pleasure of working with some great companies to help them build a platform they can scale and use as a powerful piece of IP to bring their company more value.
Okay, so…you might be asking me at this time. Why would it be a positive to build a site that I have to now maintain on a technical level? WordPress is easy. Etsy and Shopify are easy! Why would I expect to WooCommerce to be more of a technical headache?
It’s true you can set up a store on a hosted platform and start selling fast. It’s an easy process honestly. Again this is why you’ll need to be clear of what you’re looking to achieve with your business. If you’re not intentional you could launch on a hosted platform and quickly outgrow the limits and find yourself needing to start over! This means you’ll need to go back to the drawing board on technical plans, SEO, and audience.
As a business owner, it’s important for us at Mode Effect to give you the brutal honest truth. You know profits and huge success doesn’t come overnight. No magic, no tricks, you’ve got to put the work in! In the case of all of our long-term happy clients, we give them honest and strategic feedback to help grow their business.
There’s so much noise online to drive you towards platforms to host your business on. It’s overwhelming! Wouldn’t you rather invest and build your online business on a more sustainable platform that affords you ownership? I thought so!
Okay, so where do I start?
You’re at the point of setting up your store on a self-hosted platform. Or you just prefer WordPress / WooCommerce to use for your store. Let’s look at all the items you’ll need to get started.
Foundational pieces you’ll need:
Domain — $10 (a year)
Godaddy, Namecheap, etc.
WordPress / WooCommerce theme — $20–100 (one time or yearly)
Woocommerce, Elegant Themes, etc
Website hosting — $10–100 (per month)
Godaddy (shared), WP Engine, etc
SSL Certificate — $50+ (yearly)
You can get this with your website host
Secondary items you’ll need:
WooCommerce Extensions
Below are a few crucial extensions every WooCommerce site should be running.
Credit card purchasing — Free
Stripe, PayPal, Amazon, etc. You’ll need to be sure you have an account for either of the credit card services. In most cases, it should be free to set up, but you’ll be charged an industry standard 2.9% fee.
Shipping — $79+ (yearly)
Marketing Extensions
This is a broad topic so we’ll just cover the foundational pieces here. If you have further questions on the best way to go about marketing your WooCommerce store, please see our guide to effectively marketing your online store.
E-mail marketing — (from $49 yearly)
Mailchimp, Constant Contact, etc
Cart-abandonment — (from $50 per month)
Recommendations: CartHook, etc
SEO — (from $49 yearly)
Recommendations: Yoast, All in One SEO, etc
Security Recommendations
If you’re running your WooCommerce site on a shared host (Godaddy, Bluehost, etc) you definitely need to add on security to avoid any hacks to your website.
Malware protection — ($299 yearly)
Recommendations: Sucuri, Sitelock, etc.
These items should bring you to a great starting point for your WooCommerce website. Then all you have to do is launch and go make sales! Easier said than done right? To be honest I don’t envy your spot. It’s hard work being a business owner and being responsible for your success. One of the best skills a business owner can have is the ability to scale their efforts. This is why having a technical partner for your business is so crucial.
WooCommerce Cost Recap
Since we’ve taken a good look through the items any store owner needs to launch their business on WooCommerce let’s go through a quick recap of the costs to expect for launching your online store. These calculations are based on median pricing and a conservative approach to launching your store.
Up-front / Annual Costs
Domain $10
Theme $60 (median)
Hosting $350
SSL Certificate $50
Extensions $200
Credit Card (%) $500
Security $300
Total $1,500 (per year)
Most business owners can afford this investment I’d imagine. You also have a good grasp on how to approach selling to your audience and bringing in the business you need to attract to be successful, so it’s great to have these expectations clear on the standard items that can’t be negotiated on to get started.
One key item to plan for is your time. Here we see business owners waste value time in getting their business launched due to lacking technical skills. This is a roadblock to your goals and personal success.
Not only can it delay your launch but it can cause headaches and liability issues for your business and your customers once your store has launched. Imagine having someone stealing personal information from your site and spamming your customers!
Wouldn’t it be tremendous if we had a one-stop solution in place to get this process done in a timely fashion? So you could focus on filling orders and running your business? We know that this takes and have prepared a WooCommerce starter service that includes all of the items your business needs to get launched.
