What an Online Store Costs to Run Each Month

You picked a plan, paid for the build and opened the store. Then the statements started arriving: a processor fee on every order, an app renewal you forgot about, a shipping tool, a tax tool, an email bill. Each charge looks small by itself, but together they can decide whether the store makes money. The answer to how much does an online store cost to run each month is not one number. It is a fixed base plus a set of charges that rise with every order and every dollar you sell. Once you can see which line is which, the next invoice stops being a surprise. You can build that list from your own statements in about twenty minutes, and you can judge from it whether your current setup still fits your store.

What does an online store cost to run each month, line by line?

A store's monthly bill is a stack of separate charges. Some come from the platform, some from the payment processor, and some from tools you added along the way. The table below lists each line with a published starting price from the vendor's own pricing page, checked September 22, 2026. These are US prices, and plans, rates and billing terms change, so treat the last column as the one that matters.

Start with the plan or hosting line, because every store has one. Shopify's pricing page lists Basic at $29 a month when paid annually, and says its plans include secure commerce hosting, unlimited bandwidth and a free SSL certificate. On a self-hosted store the software may be free, but WooCommerce's own pricing page estimates hosting at $25 to $350 a month and paid extensions at $29 to $299 a year each.

The tool lines only belong on your budget if you use them. ShipStation's pricing starts at $14.99 a month for 50 shipments. TaxJar says its Starter plan starts at $39 a month for 200 imported transactions. Klaviyo's pricing page is free through 250 active profiles and 500 emails a month, with paid email from $45 a month in the configuration checked. A domain is usually a yearly renewal, and Cloudflare's registrar says it charges the registry and ICANN cost with no markup.

Software is not the whole bill. Postage, packaging, returns, inventory or dropshipper invoices, bookkeeping and maintenance are operating costs too, even though none of them arrives as a subscription. Keep them in their own lines so you can tell a software problem from a pricing or margin problem.

Which costs stay flat and which grow when the store does well?

The split matters because it tells you what happens to your bill in a good month. Fixed lines stay put while sales climb, so they shrink as a share of revenue. Sales-linked lines grow right alongside your orders, so a busy month brings a bigger fee total even if nothing else changes. Sorting each charge into one group or the other is the single most useful thing you can do with your statements.

Fixed and step-fixed lines

These include the store plan, hosting, domain renewal, paid apps, the email plan, a tax subscription and a shipping-software tier. They change only when you upgrade, add a service or cross a usage limit. ShipStation's 50-shipment tier and TaxJar's 200-transaction tier are good examples: the price is flat until your order count pushes you into the next tier, and then it steps up.

Lines that move with every order

Payment processing is the big one. Stripe's standard US price is 2.9% of each payment plus 30 cents, so the percentage part follows your revenue and the 30 cents follows your order count. On Shopify's annual plans, online card rates start at 2.9% + 30 cents on Basic, 2.7% + 30 cents on Grow and 2.5% + 30 cents on Advanced. Postage is order-linked as well, but its amount depends on the package, service, carrier and destination rather than on the sale price.

A bigger plan is not automatically cheaper as you grow. A lower card rate on a higher tier only pays off once your sales volume saves more in fees than the plan's extra monthly cost. Run that math with your own payment volume before you upgrade.

How much do payment processing fees take from a $50 or $100 sale?

The per-order part of a processing fee weighs more on small orders. The math below uses Stripe's published pricing for a US domestic card, 2.9% + 30 cents, which matches the starting online rate on Shopify Basic. Stripe also adds 1.5% for an international card and 1% when currency conversion is required.

That is why your effective rate often lands above 2.9%. If your average order is small, the 30 cents pulls the percentage up. If you sell abroad, the international and conversion charges stack on top. Neither is a billing error; both are in the published price.

To find your own effective rate, take total processor fees for the month and divide by the gross amount processed. Do not divide by your payout, because the payout already has fees taken out. Work out platform fees and refunds separately so each number stays readable.

What does a WooCommerce store cost each month after launch?

A WooCommerce store has no core subscription and no revenue share, which is real and worth something. What it does have is a stack you choose and pay for yourself: hosting, paid extensions, updates, backups and the time someone spends keeping it all working. WooCommerce's own estimate for hosting is $25 to $350 a month, and each paid extension is $29 to $299 a year. Its subscription documentation explains how those renewals work, so note each renewal date on your worksheet.

Security is also on your side of the table. The PCI Security Standards Council's FAQ says: "To be eligible for SAQ A, all elements of the payment pages must only originate from PCI DSS compliant service provider(s), and no single element of a payment page can originate from the merchant's website." In practice, a checkout handled fully by your processor can shrink your security paperwork, but it does not make your responsibility disappear. The Council says to confirm your validation requirement with your acquirer or the card brands, and there is no published dollar figure for this work, so price it from your own quotes. If you want a sense of upkeep costs, our post on what website maintenance costs covers that line on its own.

Which fees do early budgets tend to leave out?

These charges are all in the providers' own documentation, but they rarely appear in a launch budget. None of them applies to every store. When one does, it belongs on your worksheet as its own line.

• Refunded payments: Stripe says the original processing and currency-conversion fees are not returned when you refund a payment, even though issuing the refund has no fee. Refund a $100 order and you are still out the $3.20.
• Disputes and chargebacks: Stripe lists $15 per dispute on standard pricing. Shopify Payments charges a chargeback fee that it returns if you win, and its table shows $15 USD for US merchants.
• Shopify Tax after the threshold: Shopify Tax pricing becomes a variable fee once a qualifying US store on Basic, Grow or Advanced passes its sales threshold: 0.35% on applicable taxable orders, capped at 99 cents per order. That is 35 cents on a $100 taxable order.
• Tax filing and registration: Collecting sales tax is not the same as registering and filing. TaxJar describes its total cost as the plan tier plus filing costs and any registration needs. Where you owe tax is a question for a qualified tax professional or your state.
• Outside payment providers: BigCommerce's pricing page describes a separate fee when you use a processor outside its built-in list.
• Return labels and app renewals: Paid return labels, yearly app renewals and plan overages each need their own line.

A written return policy and a return-label process help keep the returns line predictable. For disputes, check your checkout's fraud settings and keep order and delivery records you could show a processor. There is no published data ranking how often each of these charges hits small stores, so judge them by your own statements rather than by a guess.

What can you leave off the budget for now?

Not every line needs money on day one. On a standard hosted plan, you do not need a separate hosting, bandwidth or SSL bill, because Shopify says those are included. You do not need a paid shipping platform at launch either; ShipStation is one option from $14.99 a month, not a requirement. The same goes for email: if your list is under Klaviyo's free limits, stay on the free tier until the workflow needs more.

Hold off on complex tax automation until you know where you have to collect tax and what your platform already provides. And do not spend an afternoon trimming a few dollars from a domain renewal while payment fees, postage and product margins go unexamined. One limit applies: a self-hosted or custom store does carry its own hosting, maintenance and security costs, so these shortcuts apply to hosted plans.

Is a hosted plan or a custom store cheaper over three years?

A monthly plan price and a build quote are not comparable numbers. The fair test is a 36-month total that puts every cost on both sides. Our post on what an ecommerce website costs to build covers the launch side; this is the running side added to it.

Add up these lines for each option:

• Initial build or migration: What you pay to launch or move.
• 36 months of platform or hosting: The plan fee, or hosting on a self-hosted or custom store.
• Apps and maintenance: Every required app, extension, update and repair over three years.
• Processing and platform fees: Calculated on your forecast sales and order count.
• Tools: Shipping software, tax, email, domain and security.
• Your own time: The hours you or your staff spend, valued at what that time really costs you.

Run the sheet three times, at low, expected and high sales, because sales-linked fees change the answer as volume moves.

A hosted plan is often the cheaper choice when a standard catalog, checkout, integrations and workflow fit what it includes. Hosting, security infrastructure, updates and a supported checkout come bundled, and if that covers your store, stay put. Do not pay for custom development just to get away from a plan fee.

A custom store can make sense when your required workflow, integrations, performance or checkout control cost more to patch together on a hosted plan than to own. That usually shows up as a stack of apps doing one job each, duplicate fees, or hours of manual work every week. The reverse also holds: do not stay on a hosted plan only because its entry price looks low, if apps, transaction terms and manual labor make the full total worse. Neither option is cheaper for every store; your requirements and volumes decide it.

How do you check your own statements in twenty minutes?

You can do this tonight with the bills you already have. The goal is one sheet that lists every charge and says what kind it is. Once it exists, pricing, upgrades and cancellations become decisions you can make with numbers. Work through it in this order.

Pull every bill into one list

Open the platform invoice, the processor's fee report, app subscriptions, the shipping invoice, the domain renewal, the email invoice, the tax tool bill and any bookkeeping or maintenance invoice. Give each line seven columns: vendor, service, amount, date or cadence, category, fixed or variable, and keep, cancel or review.

Tag each line by how it is charged

Mark every charge as fixed, per order, percent of sale, threshold or overage, or occasional loss such as a refund or dispute. Keep postage and cost of goods in separate lines from software, so a margin question never hides inside a software total.

Work out your real fee rate

Divide processor fees by gross processed. Then divide platform transaction and tax fees by the sales they apply to. Finally, add all sales-linked fees together and divide by gross sales. Compare those rates with your plan's published terms.

Decide what stays

Cancel a service only when it is unused or duplicated and removing it does not break checkout, tax, shipping, subscriptions or email flows. An app that looks idle may still be doing a job in the background, so check what depends on it first.

Frequently Asked Questions About how much does an online store cost to run each month

How much does Shopify cost per month?

Shopify's pricing page listed Basic at $29 a month on annual billing when checked on September 22, 2026. Add card processing from 2.9% + 30 cents per online sale, plus any paid apps and tools you choose.

What is the WooCommerce monthly cost?

The core software is free. WooCommerce estimates hosting at $25 to $350 a month and paid extensions at $29 to $299 a year each, plus processing, maintenance and your own time.

What are the main ecommerce running costs?

A platform plan or hosting, payment processing fees, paid apps, shipping software and postage, a sales tax tool, email, domain renewal and marketing. Returns, inventory and bookkeeping belong on the list too.

Why are my payment processing fees higher than 2.9%?

The 30-cent charge on each payment raises the rate on small orders, and international cards and currency conversion add 1.5% and 1% on Stripe's standard pricing. Refunds also keep the original fee.

How much does shipping software cost?

ShipStation's Starter plan was listed from $14.99 a month for 50 shipments when checked. Postage is a separate cost that depends on package, service, carrier and destination.

Does Shopify include hosting and SSL?

Yes. Shopify says its plans include secure commerce hosting, unlimited bandwidth and a free SSL certificate, so a standard hosted store does not need a separate hosting bill.

Moving Forward

Your store's monthly cost is a fixed base plus charges that grow with every order. The plan, hosting, apps and tool tiers stay flat until you upgrade, while processing fees, per-order charges and postage rise with sales. Refunds keep the original processing fee, disputes carry their own charge, and tax tools can add a variable fee once you pass a threshold. With those lines sorted on one sheet, the next statement holds no mystery.

That sheet pays off every month after. You can price a discount or a free-shipping offer before you run it, renew tools on purpose instead of by default, and compare platforms on the same 36-month basis.

If the numbers point to a workflow your current setup cannot handle, Web Leveling can map it with you before anything changes. Our custom e-commerce development work builds stores on Stripe that you own outright, and if your sheet says the hosted plan is the cheaper fit, we will tell you to keep it. We work with small and medium businesses across the country and overseas. Send us what your monthly statements are showing, and we will help you read the three-year numbers.

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