Magento Pricing: What Will Be the Development Cost for Your Store

Magento is one of the most popular ecommerce platforms in the industry today. It is an open source and very extendable platform that is ideal for setting up and scaling all major forms of ecommerce.

To many people, “Magento Pricing” becomes their point of their concern and consider it as an expensive solution. However, it’s a cost effective solution that already has 24500 active installations, and the numbers are growing every day. To give you a hint of the popularity of Magento, here’s a list of brands that depend upon Magento for either the whole or part of their business:

• Nike
• Ford
• Olympus
• Coca Cola
• Vizio
• Christian Louboutin
• Victoria Beckham
• BVLGARI
• K-Swiss
• Liverpool FC

In this article, I will discuss the interesting idea of Magento pricing and how everyone, from noobs to ecommerce veterans, needs to budget for building a Magento powered store. Magento 2 prices vary from store needs to it’s customization. Therefore, I have made multiple divisions of it along with an estimated cost.

Estimated Cost Based on Magento Edition

In order to understand the costs involved in building a Magento store, it is first important to know the cost of the Magento Platform itself. Magento comes in two major variants:

• Magento Community Edition (Estimated starting cost $15,000+): This edition is completely free. Simply download and install to set up your Magento store. You have the option of applying almost unlimited customizations to mold the store to your requirements. But building the store and making it live would include costs like domain, hosting, designing and development which would cost more than $15,000 on estimate.
  
• Magento Enterprise Edition (Estimated starting cost $30,000+): Out of the box, this edition comes with a whole lot of bells and whistles. The downside of all the features is the hefty price tag. The Magento enterprise starts from $22,000. The Magento commerce cloud pricing starts from $40,000, though some costs like hosting and additional features are covered in it but still it would need other running expenses which would make it cost more than $30,000 to $50,000.

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The Magento Pricing Plan for Community Edition

Based on the current Magento ecommerce pricing, I decided to work with Magento Community Edition; mainly because it is free. Thus, I can easily highlight the Magento pricing plan so that you can have a clear idea of the costs involved in setting up your Magento store.

Before I go into the details, here’s a table that breaks down Magento pricing:

Magento Cost for Website Development

When it comes to Magento development, you have three options: hire a web development agency, a freelancer or use your in-house dev team. Each option has its pros and cons. Since the topic of this article is Magento pricing, here is the Magento price distribution for each development option.

Magento Fees by Web Development Agency (Starting from $25 – $200/hr)

Hiring a Magento web development agency is the costliest of the three options. However, for the high price tag, you get high quality and professionalism. You will have the opportunity of working with experienced Magento developers who have the competence to turn your vision into a refined product. When done, you have the option to get consultations that continue to add value to your ecommerce store.

These agencies charge according to the expertise of the developers on their team and the value of their dev portfolio.

Magento Fees by Freelancer (Starting from $10 – $200/hr)

Hiring a freelancer is a slightly cheaper option, and there is always the chance that you’ll get what you pay for. While in the case of agencies, you get an account manager, a freelancer offers direct communication and quicker communication.

Professional freelancers also provide support once a project has been handed over. However, you should do your due diligence when hiring freelance Magento developers to avoid a bad experience. The cost of working with a freelance developer varies according to their reputation, skillset and the region. Here is a bird’s eye view to Magento pricing plan for freelancers:

• South-East Asia with a little cost: $10 – $20/hr
• Eastern Europe: $20 – $60/hr
• US, UK, and Western Europe: $150 – $200/hr

Magento Cost for In-house Development Team (Starting from $60, 000 – $120,000/yr)

Many mid-sized and large ecommerce businesses prefer in-house development teams to keep up with the rapid store-level improvements and changes. The most important benefit of such a team is very fast turnaround time and detailed control over the development cycle.
Experience has shown that in-house development costs for Magento CE and Magento EE are mostly the same. If you hire a junior developer (with less than a year of experience), you will need to budget about $60,000 – $80,000 per year. From there, the cost of the developer increases twofold for every year of experience. The salary expenses could go up to $120,000 a year for an experienced Magento developer.

Magento Themes Pricing (Starting from $0 – $200)

Picking the theme is serious business because the theme represents the frontend visual and UX of the store. For website visitors, the theme is the outlook and experience of the store. When it comes to themes, you have two options:

Choose Pre-built Magento Themes

If you have decided to buy Magento themes, be prepared to spend anywhere from  $0 – $200 and above. Many store owners start with a simple, base Magento theme and then hire a frontend developer for customization. While this approach has the benefit of precise customization, note that a frontend developer with intermediate expertise will end up costing you $50,000 – $60,000 per year.

Build Your Own Theme

This is a classic case of “ You Get What You Pay For.” All you need is a team of frontend developers and a clear idea of what you want from the theme. The cost of a custom built Magento theme depends upon the requested feature set and the efforts required to translate your vision into a functional Magento theme.

Magento Extensions Pricing (Starting from $50 – $500)

Extensions are standalone modules that extend the functionality of the Magento platform. Some extensions are available free of cost, while others could cost thousands of dollars.

A word of caution: Before finalizing and purchasing any Magento extensions, connect the developers to verify version compatibility and possible conflicts with the existing extensions. There is always a chance that an extension could cause errors and impact page load speed. Thus, the expert advice is to limit the Magento extensions on the store to an absolute minimum.

Magento extensions can cost you around $50 to $500, with the Magento pricing varying from development agency to agency and the feature set of the extensions.

As with themes, you can opt for building the extensions from scratch. However, this requires a dev team that has expert level Magento knowledge and expertise of working with Magento core. The cost of custom-built Magento extensions is generally higher than custom-built themes.

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Graphics and Brand Collateral Pricing (Starting from $10,000 – $18,000)

Online stores require a brand image to differentiate them from the competition. This includes a brand color scheme, logo and associated visual elements (collectively known as the Brand Collateral). Similarly, in this age of visual media, a store needs high-resolution product images and videos to attract visitors and persuade them to make a purchase. These require the services of a competent graphic artist, who generally charges $23 – $25 per hour.

Product Images

Product images play a crucial role in improving the traffic and sales of an online store. A high-quality image (several images are always better) presents the finer details and increases the level of trust that eventually results in a sale.

Product Videos

These days, video is the leading trend in ecommerce and no store can overlook the importance of a well-produced video. In addition to product publicity, videos are essential for a general store promotion.

Domain for the Store (Starting from $10 – $500)

For visitors, the domain name is the name of the store. Thus, you need to dedicate a lot of time to pick the store’s name and find a domain name that accurately reflects your choice. Make sure that the name (and thus the domain) should be attractive and easy to remember.

You can acquire a domain name in two ways: Buy a brand-new one or shop around for an Expired Domain. Both choices have their benefits and directly impact the Magento pricing for your online store.

Brand New Domains

Brand new domains generally cost you from $10 – $15 per year.

Expired Domain

The price of expired domains generally varies between $20 – $500.

Magento Hosting Pricing (Starting from $40)

At this point, I am assuming that you have selected a theme, the extension line up, and the domain name for your store. Furthermore, the store has been completely developed and is ready for the take-live stage.

This brings us to the most important and critical price factor of the entire Magento pricing process: the choice of the hosting solution for your store. Your decision at this point decides the fate of the store. Here’s why.

As a store owner, your primary focus is on growing your business. This is a full-time job that leaves very little time for challenges such as server management and security. My recommendation is to go for a best Magento hosting solution that takes care of server management and security.

Another important benefit of managed Magento hosting is on-demand scalability. When available, you can scale up (increase) server resources anytime you see fit. This is particularly useful during Holiday Sales season when ecommerce stores experience more-than average load in terms of traffic.

Allow me to introduce Cloudways, a great managed Magento hosting solution that is ideal for stores of all description and sizes. With the choice five industry-leading IaaS partners ( AWS, GCE Cloud, DigitalOcean, Vultr and Linode), you can enjoy all the benefits of managed cloud hosting without going over your budget.

You Might Also Like: IaaS vs PaaS vs SaaS

Launching your server AND the Magento application takes just minutes. Here is the simple process:

Step 1: Launch a New Server

Sign Up/Login to Cloudways with your credentials. Click Servers in the top menu bar, and click the green Launch button.

Step 2: Select Your Magento Version

Choose the latest Magento 2.4.x application with Elasticsearch.

Step 3: Name your Server, Application, and Project

Give recognizable names to your server, application, and project.

Step 4: Select the Cloud Provider

As mentioned above, you can pick from five cloud providers. For the purpose of this guide, I am going with DigitalOcean.

Step 5: Select Server Specifications

Select the server specifications that are slightly higher than your current requirements. If you need help, either contact Cloudways support or your Magento developer to help you pick the best server specifications for your store.

Step 6: Select Server Location

Select your desired server location from the drop-down menu. In my case, I have selected “London”.

Step 7: Launch the Server

Cloudways provides an estimate of the monthly and hourly cost of operating the server. If all checks out, click Launch Now.

That’s how simple it is!

You can also check the detailed Magento hosting price to pick suitable plans for your store.

Request Cloudways Product Demo With One of Our Expert

Magento Search Engine Optimization Pricing (Starting from $60,000 – $80,000/yr)

Ecommerce is a very competitive business and Google is the battleground where it all plays out. If your store is not in the top ten results for the target keywords, you simply do not matter to the competition. Thus, this is an important item in the Magento ecommerce pricing list.

In order to get into Google’s Top Ten results, you need to up your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) game. For this, you need to hire either an agency or freelance SEO specialist with a proven track record of getting Magento stores ranked high in Google search results. The services usually cost around $44,000 per year.

In general Magento SEO experts provide a host of related services including:

• Website Audit
• Keyword Research
• Competitor Analysis
• Revise and Redo Product Pages
• Page Speed Optimization
• Google Analytics integration and reporting

Magento Store Maintenance Pricing (Starting from $80 – $125/hr)

The list of Magento Pricing is not over yet.

During the course of daily operations, your Magento store would require fixes and routine maintenance activity to ensure smooth performance. This means that you need to budget for scheduled and on-demand maintenance.

Maintenance contributes towards store stability and prevents potential issues from disrupting store operations. Generally, maintenance includes the application of updates and security patches. The cost of these activities depends upon the scope, frequency, and expertise required for the job.

Magento Support Pricing (Starting from $30,000 – $40,000/yr)

Regardless of the size, your store requires active support in case things go wrong. Support activities generally overlap with maintenance and the same vendor provides both scopes of services.

An important factor to consider is the customer support that you would have to provide. This is a very diverse domain with multiple channels and activities. Typical Magento customer support specialists
will cost you around $40,000 per year.

How Much Does an Ecommerce Website Cost to Build and Host?

Wrapping Up

There is no exact quote for Magento Pricing. The main reason behind this uncertainty is the wide range of options and choices that store owners can avail while building their Magento stores. In this context, the Magento pricing list reflects the decisions of the owners and how they wish to achieve their business goals. In addition, the cost of Magento website development can vary from vendor to vendor, depending upon the experience and reputation of the service provider.

If I have missed out a cost item or you would like to add to the discussion, the comments section below is the place to go!