The Cost of Magento E-commerce Store
Over the years, Magento has been perceived as a complicated and expensive solution for eCommerce. But how true is that? Do you need to invest up to $100,000 to get your e-store to generate revenue? To answer that question, let’s compare two Magento editions.
Magento Open Source VS Magento Commerce
Is Magento Commerce worth it?
Unlike Magento Open Source, the Commerce Edition provides businesses with Gold or Platinum support options. From $22,000 a year, you receive Magento’s support, improvements, and additional features. It’s the right choice for enterprise-grade businesses that process hundreds or even thousands of transactions daily.
An important detail about the Commerce edition: the price you pay depends on the revenue volume. For example, if your business revenue exceeds $25 million, the Magento Commerce support might cost up to $190,000 per year.
Don’t forget about the hosting, developer’s salaries and other additional costs that add to the final invoice.
Is Magento Open Source free of charge?
You can indeed use official Magento’s Open Source version to create your eCommerce site, assuming that you have programming skills and experience with the platform. More than likely, this won’t be the case for most business owners. So, you need to be ready to hire a freelancer or agency to customize and maintain your store for an additional cost, because the Open Source Edition doesn’t include support.
In this case, you have two options: you can either build an in-house team to ensure you have full control over the development process or hire a digital agency to take care of Magento for you.
In-House Magento Development
Building a team from scratch isn’t easy; you will spend your time choosing developers, project managers, and QA specialists. While it gives you a sense of control over all the development processes, it isn’t a low-cost solution. To develop a great Magento site, you’ll need the following experts in your team:
- Frontend developer (JavaScript, HTML, CSS)
- Backend developer (Magento PHP)
- UX/UI designer
- DevOps for infrastructure tuning
If your business requires a more complex solution, you might need to add a few more positions to this list. It’s a good option for large enterprises with multi-million dollar annual revenue. A junior Magento developer will cost you about $60-80K per year on average, while a certified senior developer will likely cost twice as much. When you add the cost of software integrations and the infrastructure stack you’ll probably choose an experienced Magento agency.
Hiring a Professional Magento Agency
You might wonder why to choose an agency when you can find freelancers to do the job. Working with freelancers is cheaper, but usually, there’s a reason for that. Freelancers’ availability and reliability are often questionable. Besides, when looking for a freelancer, you might fall for low-cost deals that do not necessarily guarantee your candidate has enough professional experience to deliver high-quality results.
Choosing an agency is the best way to ensure you get the best value for money. Not only do you get a full team of professionals to implement all your ideas when developing a store, but it also allows you to find the most personalized solution to meet both your needs and your company’s budget.
The most critical thing in the development process is identifying your business needs so the agency can find the best way to meet them. It allows you to focus on business planning and marketing strategy while limiting technical worries.
There’s no single answer to how much an agency would charge you for a project. As we mentioned before, it depends on your business size, the level of customization, the features complexity, and integrations, and, of course, on the agency you choose to work with. The price range may vary from $8,000 and higher.
When choosing an agency, make sure to pay attention to what’s included in the quote, what kind of additional services they provide, and what their project minimum is.
Here’s the checklist from Decima Digital that you should keep in mind before investing in a Magento store:
- Price is not everything. To get better ROI and stand out from the competition, you need to invest as much as needed.
- Be ready for extra costs. You might not realize you need additional features or solutions until the middle of the development process.
- Don’t cut corners when it comes to expertise. Developing a Magento store takes more than a pair of hands. It involves a frontend and backend developer, and SEO specialist, analytics experts, and a web designer to cover all aspects of the site’s development.
- There’s always a need for maintenance so don’t think of it as a one-time expense. The world of Magento and eCommerce is constantly changing, and there are always new security vulnerabilities. Keeping your store up-to-date is just as important as launching.
- Have a clear vision of your roadmap and goals. There are legitimate shortcuts that can save startup costs. Check around for Magento-specialized managed-to-host providers that remove the need to hire infrastructure teams. Plenty of online marketplaces offer high-quality themes (skins) that eliminate most of the resources spend on front-end customizations.
