7-Step Guide to Magento Cost Estimation

cost of running a magento store
Last updated Mar 26, 2021

Content

Chapter 1

When to Invest in Magento?

Chapter 2

Domain Cost

Chapter 3

Magento CMS Price

Chapter 4

Magento Hosting Cost

Chapter 5

Designing & Development Cost

Chapter 6

Magento Extensions Cost

Chapter 7

Maintenance & Customization Cost
CHAPTER 1:

When to Invest in Magento?

Magento is taking over the eCommerce market because it’s open source and offers great flexibility. If you don’t have enough budget (and by enough I mean $10,000 initially), I wouldn’t recommend going for Magento since your budget will shape your website’s security & speed.

From maintaining a website to shipping cost, you will have to manage everything. But the most important of all is “How much would Magento cost?”

Magento can greatly benefit your business. But you need to assess your business requirements carefully.

To asses your business, ask your these questions:

1. Is your website a major source of income or just an hobby?

If you drive sales from your website then you should consider Magento seriously. It gives you power to customise and control functionality. You can start with Magento Community Edition.

2. Do your website exist just for the namesake?

If you’re thinking of directing your visitors to other sales platforms (likely Amazon, Instagram, etc) then you should consider some simpler content management systems. WooCommerce could be a good option. 

CHAPTER 2:

Domain Cost

Choosing the right domain name is crucial for your website. It becomes your identity.

While purchasing a domain, choose registrars who provide domains with no hidden cost and no surprise renewals.

Purchasing a domain for your store is not a simple task. Here’s a quick video that will help you with choosing the perfect domain name for your business:
1. Choose an easy to remember the name

2. A brand new domain would cost you between $10-15 per year. Top Level Domains are generally more expensive.

3. Aged Domain: It could cost you thousands of dollars depending on the domain value.

4. Purchasing a high-value domain will give you higher DA (Domain Authority) and PA (Page Authority). This gives you SEO benefit as well.

CHAPTER 3:

Magento Edition Cost

 Magento is customizable and diverse. Choosing the right edition for your company is going to make a huge difference in the overall Magento cost.

Choosing the right edition depends on the type of business – small or large, traffic, and revenue.

There are 3 versions provided by Magento:

1. Magento Community Edition (CE)

  • Free
  • No support
  • Over 4,500 extensions are available

All the customizations you need would be done by an agency, freelancer, or you/your team.

Choose CE if your website traffic is less than _.

2. Magento Enterprise Edition (EE)

  • License cost starts from $22,000 a year. The cost goes up as per the revenue of the website.
  • EE offers 24*7 technical Support
  • Takes care of security, DB management, and speed.
  • 1,000+ extensions available.

3. Magento Commerce Cloud

  • Starts at $2000 per year (includes hosting)
  • Offers scalable solutions for flexible needs and traffic
CHAPTER 4:

Magento Website Hosting Cost

A web host makes your website active on the internet. They provide you resources to reach your audience.

The cost ranges from $20 to $500 depending upon the traffic, SKUs, database, maintenance requirement, etc. 

When it comes to Magento, choosing the right host will impact your website speed and overall user experience. Here are types of Magento hosting:

1. Shared Hosting

You share server resources with other websites. Although it costs less, it will have weak security, hacking due to a bad neighborhood, and frequent downtime.

2. Dedicated Hosting

You’ll have a server dedicated to your website. The security is tight and resources are enough for your website to handle the load.

Fixed costs even if you’re not utilizing all the resources.

3. Cloud Hosting

It is the future of web hosting. Most of the Magento stores are already on the cloud for an efficient hosting experience. You can have dedicated resources, bulletproof security, and scalable solution.

Pros and cons of using shared, cloud and dedicated hosting.

Understanding the Magento Hosting Cost

The cost majorly depends on the size of your website and the traffic it receives.

Example 1

  • Number of visitors: Up to 1000 visitors daily
  • Hosting type:  Managed Cloud Hosting (AWS)
  • Approximate Cost: $150 per month

Example 2

  • Number of visitors: Up to 50 visitors daily
  • Hosting Type: Shared Hosting
  • Approximate Cost: $30

Note: I personally recommend using Managed Hosting services if you’re on Magento and wish to focus on core activities like Sales, Marketing, Customer retention, and employee management. Webscoot offers Managed Cloud Hosting which guarantees:

  • Bulletproof Security
  • Under 3-sec Site Speed
  • Automated Backups
  • 24*7 Support
  • Performance Optimization & Maintenance
CHAPTER 5:

Website Designing & Development Cost

To make your store look outstanding, you need a good website design and a better development execution.

There are a lot of options available in the market but before you finalize one, read their reviews to get a full picture.

Magento Designing Cost

Most people ignore designing but they forget how important it is to deliver a conversion optimized user experience. It helps in building a brand identity.

Ways of designing a Magento store:

1. Hire web designers

A good web designers will take care of the conversion optimization, seamless user experience, intuitive UI, and SEO. On an average, the cost ranges from $1,000 to over $100,000.

2. Purchase and implement Magento 2 theme

A cheaper and easier way of designing a Magento website is via theme. The only drawback is customization. The cost ranges between $0 to $200. In fact, if you want to customize themes, costs become higher & highly unpredictable.

Price could range from $1000 to $3000 if you do everything without hiring a web designer.

Website Development Cost

For developing your Magento store, you can choose to hire a web agency or a freelance developer. You can also have an in-house team of developers.

1. Hire Agency

Pros

  • Experienced and certified Magento developers
  • End-to-end solutions

Cons

  • Expensive (Usually ranges between $30,000-$60,000 for CE website)

2. Freelance Web Developer

Pros

  • You have full control over your website
  • Relatively inexpensive (Ranges from $15 to $100 per hour)

Cons

  • Quality may not be up to the mark
  • Difficulty in assessing the progress 

The cost of the website may depend on the complexity, the number of functions required, customization, and the qualification of the developer. 

3. In-house Developer

Pros

  • Keep up with the progress and incorporation of feedback along the way.
  • Contract-based

Cons

  • Additional costs
CHAPTER 6:

Magento Extensions Cost

People prefer Magento because of its flexibility. Choosing the right extensions will boost your store’s capabilities.

While choosing extensions, look for these:

  1. Activeness on support forums
  2. Latest Updates
  3. Integrations
  4. Reviews

Magento Extension Cost

Magento extensions are a significant addition to your website. The Magento extension cost depends on your functionality expectation and demand.

A website needs a minimum of 10 extensions which might cost you anywhere between $1000-$2000. Some of the top Magento Extension you should have are:

1. One Page Checkout by Template Master

  • Faster Checkout with Ajax
  • Geolocation Support
  • Google Address Autocomplete Integration
  • Delivery date option
  • Coupon Code application

Price: $189

Madison plugin showing checkout page with order summary

2. Astra Security 

  • Malware Scanning
  • WAF
  • GDPR consent
  • Blacklist Monitoring
  • IP/Country Blocking

Price: Starts from $9 per month

3. SEO Toolkit by Amasty

  • Make your product reviews SEO-friendly
  • Generates relevant meta tags
  • Helps in optimizing URLs
  • Helps in building robust sitemaps

Price: Starts from $290

CHAPTER 7:

Optimization & Maintenance Cost

An unstable Magento store can lead to loss of revenue and customers.

Once you’re all set and done with setting up your Magento store, maintaining and optimizing the store is all the more important. In fact, it needs to be done on a regular basis to ensure faster performance.

If you choose a good Managed Magento host, they will take care of speed optimizations, bulletproof security, and other critical aspects of the website.

The other way is you can hire a developer to optimize things. It ranges from $20 to $80 or even more. 

A Speedy ECommerce Gets More Sales!

40% of your visitors will abandon cart if it loads for more than 3 seconds. With faster and optimized hosting, load your site faster than your competition.
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1 Comment

  1. Shaik

    very informative, appreciate if you could throw some light on Budget and RAM to host Magento eCommerce website on AWS, brand new website to start with 500 visitors a day (Multi vendor)

    Reply

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