Full cost of running an online store: fees and extras

A store's price is not the price of its platform. This guide separates what every store pays, what only some stores pay, and what the platforms do not state, for Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Ecwid and Square Online. We read each platform's own pages on 29 October 2026. Prices are US dollars, exclude tax and describe a store based in the United States; card rates and payment providers differ by country. Sums marked as our arithmetic are calculated by us from those prices for stated scenarios, which are examples and not averages of real stores. We did not test the platforms and make no claim about sales, conversion or growth.

Plans and facts for each platform are on its product page: Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Ecwid and Square Online.

• Required costs are paid whatever you sell: the subscription or, for WooCommerce, the hosting, and card processing on every sale.
• Scenario costs depend on how the store works: a payment provider other than the platform's own, apps and extensions, international cards and currency conversion, disputes, and a plan change when sales or the catalogue grow.
• Costs the platforms do not state include the domain, the price of most apps, the price of a specific host and the time the owner spends on upkeep. They are listed at the end rather than guessed.

Offers and conditions: Shopify advertises 3 days free and then $1 a month for 3 months on most plans, after which the standard monthly price applies; its subscription charges are non-refundable. BigCommerce and Square offer a free trial (30 days on Square Plus and Premium). Billing yearly lowers the monthly price on Shopify, BigCommerce and Ecwid; the pages show the monthly equivalent and do not all say when the yearly amount is charged. Square's plans are per location and cover the whole Square suite, not only the online store.

Shopify, BigCommerce and Ecwid are hosted platforms; their pricing pages do not list hosting as a separate charge. WooCommerce is self-hosted: its pricing page states hosting at $25 to $350 a month for most stores, depending on traffic and performance needs, and its hosting page recommends seven hosts without giving prices. For actual host prices and renewal terms see our WordPress hosting guide on this site. No platform here states the price of a domain, so it is left out of every total below.

Scenario assumptions, all ours: a US store selling online only; every order paid by a domestic US card; no refunds or disputes. The three levels are 40 orders at an average of $50 ($2,000 of sales a month), 100 orders at $60 ($6,000) and 250 orders at $80 ($20,000). Card cost is the rate times sales plus the fixed amount per order.

Platform fees on other gateways, our arithmetic and before the gateway's own fee: on Shopify 2%, 1% and 0.6% of the sales the third-party provider processes, by plan, which is $120, $60 and $36 if all of $6,000 a month goes through it. If Shopify Payments runs alongside a third-party provider, the transactions it still processes, such as Shop Pay and local payment methods, are charged at the standard Shopify Payments rate plus a 1.25% premium instead, so the two cases must not be added up as one flat rate. On BigCommerce the open-provider fee is charged on the order GMV attributed to those providers, and is $0 on orders through embedded providers. Ecwid charges $0 per sale; WooCommerce lists no extra fee. Outside the 41 and 38 countries these providers cover, the US rates here do not apply.

Shopify apps are billed on their own cycle and each app sets its own price, so no figure can be given here. WooCommerce lists annual prices in its catalogue: Product Add-Ons $79, Smart Coupons $99, Table Rate Shipping $119, Memberships $199, Bookings $249 and Subscriptions $279 a year. As an example only, three of them (Product Add-Ons, Table Rate Shipping and Smart Coupons) add up to $297 a year, or $24.75 a month, our arithmetic. Which features a store needs is the real question: some are built into other platforms' plans, such as abandoned cart recovery from Ecwid's Business plan.

BigCommerce plans follow trailing 12-month sales, measured as gross order value minus 10%. Core covers up to $30K, Growth up to $100K, and Scale $33,333 a month with 0.9% charged on GMV above that. Core and Growth upgrade automatically at the threshold. Ecwid plans follow the catalogue: 10, 100 and 2,500 products, then unlimited. Shopify's pricing page states no sales cap; its plans differ by card rate, staff accounts and fees.

• The price of a domain, on every platform.
• The price of most Shopify apps, and which BigCommerce or Ecwid apps a store will need.
• The price of a specific WooCommerce host beyond the stated range, and the cost of updates, backups and security, whether paid or done by the owner.
• Shopify Payments fees for international cards, currency conversion and disputes.
• Ecwid's card-processing rates, which depend on the payment provider.
• The length of BigCommerce's free trial and BigCommerce's phone-support add-on price.