Costs · Margins · The business of ecommerce
Seven steps from nothing to first order, priced at each stage from official rate sheets. The build itself now costs $14 to $400; everything expensive comes after launch.
Most “start an online store” guides are feature tours. This one is a bill. Below is the sequence a first store actually goes through, in order, with the cost of each step read from official rate sheets in July 2026, and a clear line between the steps that cost money and the steps that only cost work.
Nothing in the platform bill matters if the product has no demand, and validation is free: search volume, marketplace bestseller lists, competitor stores, preorders. The only budget rule worth writing down this early: whatever you plan to spend in total, hold at least half of it back for after launch. The store is the cheap part now; you will want that money for photos and traffic.
A .com from a flat-price registrar runs about $10.44-11 per year with the renewal at the same price. Deep first-year discounts elsewhere are repaid, with interest, at renewal; our domain economics piece prices that trap across registrars. Buy the domain before the platform trial starts so the clock never runs against you.
Shopify’s current new-store promo prices the first three months at $1/month, after which Basic costs $29/month on annual billing or $39 monthly. Treat the promo months as a build-and-validate runway and budget from month four at the real number. Card processing on US online orders is 2.9% + 30 cents on Basic with Shopify Payments, and there is no per-sale commission on top; the full per-order arithmetic is in our fees-per-sale breakdown.
The official Theme Store lists 24 free themes, all built by Shopify, all passing the same review as paid listings. Launch on one. Paid themes from official-store vendors are a $100-500 one-time purchase (vendors like UTD cover both ends of that range), and the honest case for buying one arrives in month two, when you can list the $10-30/month feature apps its built-ins would replace. Buying features you have not missed yet is the most common day-one overspend.
Email capture and a welcome flow cost nothing at launch volume: Omnisend’s free plan reaches 250 contacts, Klaviyo’s free tier covers 250 profiles, and both upgrade smoothly when the list earns it (the 5,000-contact price check shows where that road leads). The same applies to analytics and search console accounts. None of this costs money; all of it costs an afternoon, which is exactly why most stores skip it and regret it.
In the US a first store can open as a sole proprietorship for free, form an LLC later (state filing fees run roughly $50-500), and register for sales tax when a state’s economic-nexus threshold says so. Rules differ by state and country and change often enough that the only durable advice is procedural: verify locally before first sale, and keep business money in its own bank account from day one.
Here is the whole guide as one chart:
The sequence ends where most budgets should begin. Everything above, done leanly, totals about $14 for the first quarter; done with a mainstream paid theme, about $394. Either way it is a fraction of what the next stage costs: product photography, first inventory and first traffic. So the closing rule is the one the chart implies. Spend money in the order it earns: photos and a fast checkout before a paid theme, a paid theme before apps, apps before ads, and not one of them before someone has actually searched for what you sell.
The platform bill for the first three months can be as low as about $14: a domain at roughly $11/year from a flat-price registrar, Shopify's current $1/month promo for 3 months, a free theme and free-tier email. From month four the baseline is $29/month (Basic, annual billing) plus payment processing. Inventory, photography and marketing come on top and vary too much to average.
No. The official Theme Store lists 24 free themes built by Shopify, and they pass the same review as paid ones. Paid themes from official-store vendors run $100-500 one-time and earn their price when their built-in features replace monthly apps, which is a month-two decision, not a day-one one.
In the US, most first stores start as sole proprietorships with no filing cost, add an LLC later (state fees roughly $50-500), and only face sales-tax registration once they cross a state's economic nexus. This varies by state and country, so treat it as a checklist item to verify locally, not something to copy from an article.
Spending the launch budget on the build instead of on demand. The store itself is nearly free now; orders are not. A store that launches on a free theme with $300 held back for photos and first ads outperforms a $400-theme store with nothing left to get visitors.