Online Store Costs: From €50 to €12,000 for the Same PrestaShop

The Same PrestaShop: €50 or €12,000 Depending on Who Sets It Up

Spring 2016. An individual wants to open an online store to sell a few products and asks a known IT professional for a quote. The figure seems exorbitant, and they say so. In the same conversation, another professional claims that the store can be set up in two hours for less than the cost of a dinner. Both are right, and that's precisely the problem.

From €50 to €12,000 for the Same Content Management System

A PrestaShop installation using the "next, next, next" method on shared hosting can cost €50. This includes the installation and little else: the store is hosted alongside others on the same VPS, with plugins unupdated and maintenance left to the owner. Some call it a store, others call it a sieve.

A step up, a "toy store" with a template bought from Themeforest for $50 is around €400-€500: two or three hours of work, lunch included. A WordPress site with a custom template ranges between €1,000 and €1,500. And a "real" platform starts at ten thousand and has no upper limit. An entrepreneur detailed that his store cost him zero euros in 2003, €1,000 in 2006, €6,000 in 2012, and €12,000 in 2016. The same store, four prices, thirteen years.

Installing the Software Takes Ten Minutes. That's the Misunderstanding

"They don't charge for hitting the keys, but for knowing which keys to hit," summarizes one of the IT professionals. PrestaShop installation is, indeed, a matter of minutes. What is billed is not that, but the knowledge that allows solving what the software doesn't include out-of-the-box: shipping, invoicing, payment gateways, backups.

The trap lies in the frameworks. As long as everything goes as planned, anyone can set up something presentable. As soon as the business needs a function not supported – it always needs one – you have to touch HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and PHP to modify it. That's where the two-hour estimate falls apart.

---

What Doesn't Appear in the First Quote

SEO. An online store without positioning doesn't sell, and positioning isn't installed; it's maintained. Calculations on the table speak of €1,500 per month for SEO, SEM, and ads for a professional platform. Translations, product photography, and text add up separately.

And then there's the client. Several developers admit they have stopped accepting small orders, not because of the money, but because the project turns into a daily support relationship: the buyer wants the website managed every day. Charging little and maintaining a lot is a combination that burns out.

Is It Cheaper to Order Outside Spain?

The option of freelance programmers in India, with rates of $5 to $10 per hour, comes up. For a very limited and supervised project, it works; for a store that is the business, testimonials are less enthusiastic. There's talk of complete rewrites after using cheap providers and contracts fulfilled minimally. The hourly savings are paid for in revisions.

The rule that repeats: anyone asking for €60 per hour will have to back it up with a client portfolio, experience, and language proficiency. Anyone charging five will have to account for the other aspects.

The Ending No One Calculated

The individual who initiated the inquiry advised their relative against dealing with the high-priced IT professional, annoyed by the quote. The relative sought other avenues. The discarded professional, according to later accounts, ended up in a redundancy process.

There is no consensus figure. There is a range of €50 to €12,000, and each number carries a different scope that is almost never put in writing before signing. That's where the calculation gets stuck.