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WooCommerce Pricing – What to Expect While Launching a WooCommerce Store

Updated on December 21, 2021

6 Min Read

Planning and launching an online venture is exciting. Starting a digital business is becoming easier, and it is now perceived as a viable investment option that can generate passive income generally on par with other options such as stocks, forex, or mutual funds.

Unfortunately, very few stores barely survive beyond their first year of operations because of various reasons such as lack of motivation, weak product lineup, incomplete market research, or incompetency in operations.

However, the most common reason why many ecommerce stores fail to go further than the drawing board is misconceptions about the actual cost of launching the store.

The following article does not cover the entire WooCommerce cost of doing online business, but it does address various pricing involved in running an online store.

How Much Does WooCommerce Cost?

WooCommerce is a free-to-use WordPress plugin. Since both are free, in theory, you can start a store for $0,  given that you already have a place to host it and a bunch of products to sell.

However, things are not that simple in a not-so-perfect world. While running a WooCommerce-powered store, you have to consider other costs that are essential for running a profitable business.

I will cover these costs one by one, and by the end of this article, I hope you will have a better understanding of the major items to include in setting up the budget for launching and maintaining WooCommerce stores.

Domain Cost

A domain is an address on the web that is easy to remember and relatable to the nature of your business. I am sure you can find a million bad domain choices on the web, but you can easily avoid this wrong decision by thinking it through or using online tools that suggest relevant domain names for your online store.

For example, I get so many relevant suggestions for my dairy farm store by using one of these free tools. 

domain suggestion tool

It is difficult to put a specific price tag on a domain. In fact, the final cost varies on factors such as the registrar, extension (.com, .net, .io), and the uniqueness of the domain.

If you are not very picky but lucky, you can get your desired domain for under $10! All you have to do is to search for the right phrase.

Let me give you an example for my dairy farm store; instead of hunting for the dairyfarm[dot]com domain – which by the way, can cost me a fortune (if available), I can try close variations such as “everydaydairy.com”. Go check it out; it might still be available.

The domain cost is not directly linked with the WooCommerce store cost, but it is important to have a relevant domain before selling online.

Domain Cost: ~$10

WooCommerce Hosting Cost

Your domain is your business address on the web, but you still have to get a place where your WooCommerce store can live. This place is known as web hosting, and it also contributes to your monthly WooCommerce cost.

You can share a dorm room, rent an apartment or live in a house all by yourself. Similarly, you can either host your eCommerce store on shared hosting, VPS, managed Cloud hosting, or dedicated hosting.

A comparison of these different types of hosting services is out of the scope of this article. However, you can read a detailed comparison of shared, cloud and dedicated hosting written by my colleague Mansoor on this blog.

Hosting the eCommerce store on a cloud server has tons of benefits. And if you decide to go with managed cloud hosting, it can cost you between $30 to $100, depending upon the hosting provider.

Cloudways managed WooCommerce hosting starts at as low as $10/month and offers a powerful solution where your WooCommerce store runs on a high-performing cloud server powered by a robust hosting stack and an intuitive platform.

For equally tailored hosting solutions, our Web Hosting Pricing Calculator stands ready. It recommends an optimal server size aligned with your traffic and includes a comprehensive Cloudways comparison against top competitors.

woocommerce hosting pricing

Cloudways does all the heavy lifting for you and manages the server so you can invest your time in building and managing the online store.

Managed WooCommerce Hosting with Cloudways: ~$10

WooCommerce Theme Cost

When it comes to a WooCommerce theme, you have literally thousands of options to choose from, both at the official WordPress repository and third-party marketplaces. Although you can use great free WooCommerce themes to design any online store, a free theme usually does not come with exclusive support and may not be the right fit in its original state.

The other option is to go shopping for a premium WooCommerce theme which is custom-built and comes with dev support. A premium WooCommerce theme supports WooCommerce core, popular extensions, and customized elements & widgets for unique store branding.

A premium WooCommerce theme can add somewhere between $30 to $200 to WooCommerce pricing. Various elements, such as licensing, support, add-ons, and renewals, also affect the final price of the theme.

WooCommerce Theme Cost: ~$89

WooCommerce Store Development Cost

WooCommerce theme covers the development cost pretty much. However, depending upon your level of expertise and business needs, you might need to hire a professional developer to customize the store exactly as per your requirements. You’ll need to pay even more if you take help from third-party WooCommerce services for your store.

You can either hire a developer through various freelancing platforms or hire an agency depending upon the nature of work and timeline. Both options have a similar impact on WooCommerce development costs. You need to decide the option that fits your budget requirements.

Freelance developers usually charge hourly rates that can vary between $40 to $120 an hour. This may seem pretty straightforward, but things can get out of hand quite easily if you do not have a detailed action plan and observe strict deadlines for the project milestone.

WooCommerce Store Development: ~$55/hr

Popular WooCommerce Plugins Cost

Let’s look at some of the best WooCommerce plugins that are needed to run almost any kind of WooCommerce store. Remember, it is not always mandatory to use a paid plugin. Sometimes, even free plugins can get the job done.

Essential Plugins

Plugin Type Cost
Stripe Payment Gateway FREE (2.9% + 30 cents per transaction)
WooCommerce PDF Invoices Invoicing FREE
Yoast for WooCommerce SEO $69/year
WooCommerce Google Analytics Analytics FREE
Product Import/Export plugin Utility FREE (premium starts from $69)
MalCare Security Security FREE (premium starts from $99/year)
UpdraftPlus Backup FREE (premium starts from $42/year)
WooCommerce Restaurant Food Ordering System Restaurant FREE

Shopping Cart Plugins

Plugin Cost
WooCommerce Abandon Cart FREE
WooCommerce Checkout Manager FREE
Discount Rules for WooCommerce $49/year

Marketing Tools

Plugin Type Cost
Beeketing Marketing/Sales FREE + Premium Add-ons
WooCommerce Wishlist Sales FREE
WP LiveChat Communication FREE (premium starts from $16/mo)
MailChimp Email Marketing FREE till 2000 contacts
Facebook for WooCommerce Social Media FREE

Other WooCommerce Cost Involved

Depending upon the scale of your business, you might need to consider other WooCommerce items needed for running the online store.

Virtual Assistants

Virtual assistants are the professionals available on a contract basis to take care of a variety of business-related tasks such as answering customer queries, processing online orders, communicating with vendors, working on generating sales leads or managing the store.

Virtual assistants can be a great fit for your online business, particularly when you are in the process of scaling the business. However, very few virtual assistants join as full-time employees because of the way they work and how they multitask between clients.

You can hire virtual assistants from a number of platforms like Upwork, Fiverr, LinkedIn, or Freelancer. Depending upon the niche, they can cost you somewhere between $8 to $20 per hour.

Virtual Assistant: ~$10/hr

Shop Maintenance

Just like any business, your online store also requires frequent maintenance that can add to WooCommerce pricing. The tasks included in the list can be:

  • Plugins renewal fee.
  • Theme renewal fee.
  • Store updates.
  • Troubleshooting issues, etc.

Final Thoughts!

I hope that by reading this article, you have a better understanding of how much does WooCommerce cost. It is crucial for an owner to know the cost of doing business before doing business. Although there are various costs involved in WooCommerce, it is still one of the inexpensive solutions to start an online business.

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Mansoor Ahmed Khan

Been in content marketing since 2014, and I still get a kick out of creating stories that resonate with the target audience and drive results. At Cloudways by DigitalOcean (a leading cloud hosting company, btw!), I lead a dream team of content creators. Together, we brainstorm, write, and churn out awesome content across all the channels: blogs, social media, emails, you name it! You can reach out to me at [email protected].

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