Magento has around 130,000 active online stores, indicating its widespread use. This prompts us to examine the platform’s pricing in a simplified review.
They say that Magento can be used with no charge, but it’s expensive to use. How can a platform be free and high-cost at the same time? Let’s delve into a review of the platform’s pricing. In this examination, we outline the approximate costs for various Magento versions and emphasize why opting for the Open Source version may not be as budget-friendly as it initially appears.
Determining the cost of ecommerce websites, especially with Magento, is complex due to factors like website intrication, custom features, hosting, and integrations. Our guide offers a simplified approach to price calculating and provides insights into the annual cost of a Magento website.
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Table of Contents
Elements that influence Magento prices
Magento pricing
Conclusion
Elements that influence Magento prices
Shop owners consistently seek precise estimates for the costs associated with a Magento ecommerce website. However, various factors come into play, influencing the overall Magento price, such as:
- Modules. There are factors that can influence Magento cost such as what modules are on the website, how customized they are, whether there is even an analogue of them in another part.
- Theme. In this case, the price depends on how you want your online store to look in terms of design. It can be a ready-made theme, a new completely custom-made one, or a purchased theme. Don’t forget to include a designer price in working on the theme if needed.
- Website customization. Integrations can be different. For example, you may need integration with a shipping system, which is not ready for Magento. Then we do it ourselves and configure it. There are cases when integration is already installed, but we need it to work a little differently. Businesses must assess the necessity and financial implications of each customization to manage their Magento pricing effectively.
As you can see, the more the website differs in appearance and functionality from the standard, the more expensive it will cost. In the upcoming sections, we’ll explore the vital aspects to consider when handling Magento ecommerce pricing on a website.
Magento Pricing Breakdown
Magento Website Development Cost
Alongside website development and payment for Adobe license, there are other expenses that an online store requires. These expenses support the work of the website and Ecommerce business. They include charges for hosting, domain, SSL certificate, theme, and extensions. You also have to pay transaction fees to the payment gateway provider and shipping fees. Let us take a look at each type of payment.
1. Magento license cost
There are two versions of Magento.
- Open Source (former Magento Community) is a free version that you can download and customize.
- Adobe Commerce (former Magento Commerce) is a paid version with additional functionality. You can use the cloud version or on-premise. The Adobe Commerce price starts from $22,000 per year for the on-premise, and Adobe Commerce cloud pricing is $40,000 per year. Magento Cloud pricing also depends on the chosen plan and additional features that are needed.
The Open Source version of Magento is often perceived as more cost-effective, given that the platform itself is free. However, the process of crafting and deploying a robust website entails expenses for development, extensions, and hosting. Prior to selecting a hosting service or determining the website’s appearance, a crucial decision revolves around whether to opt for an Adobe license. If the affirmative echoes, aligning your hosting strategy with Adobe Commerce Cloud becomes imperative for seamless integration.
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Visit the page2. Magento hosting cost
If you have no intention to buy Adobe Commerce Cloud, you have to choose the hosting yourself. Magento hosting prices depend on the chosen type: shared hosting, VPS hosting, dedicated hosting, and cloud hosting.
The hosting types are different, and you have to evaluate the website to choose the right one:
Managed shared hosting
This type involves multiple users utilizing the same server infrastructure, creating a shared pool of resources such as bandwidth, storage, and processing power. This cost-effective hosting option allows numerous websites to coexist on a single server. However, the downside lies in resource allocation. If one user consumes a disproportionate amount of resources, it can impact the performance of other websites on the same server.
Despite this potential drawback, shared hosting remains an attractive choice for small websites with moderate traffic. The low monthly cost makes it an accessible option for individuals and businesses on a budget. Typically the price ranges from $1 to $15/month. A good example of shared hosting is Krystal Hosting, GoDaddy, and Hostinger.
VPS hosting
It uses virtualization tech to divide a physical system into virtual servers, giving users full root access to software and OS control without messing with others. Your digital space is your own, so no disruptions to fellow users.
As for the price, VPS hosting comes in at $10-$210 per month, making it a practical choice. It often throws in perks like better security, scalable resources, and improved performance compared to shared hosting. In a nutshell, VPS hosting is a straightforward, cost-effective solution that hands you control in the digital realm without unnecessary frills.
Dedicated hosting
This type of hosting is perfect for enterprise-level companies and websites that need full control over the hosting environment. These hosting plans provide users with comprehensive control over their server environment, enabling customization of software, operating systems, and general configurations.
Pricing is primarily determined by factors such as bandwidth, storage space, and RAM. The associated costs typically range from $80 to $500 per month.
Cloud hosting
It uses multiple virtual servers for website hosting, ensuring reliable uptime and scalable performance. It minimizes susceptibility to physical hardware issues by relying on a network of remote servers. If one server experiences downtime, another takes over seamlessly to sustain continuous website operation. It’s easy to set up, allowing data backups and access from anywhere at any time.
The only drawback is that you can’t precisely estimate your budget beforehand. These hostings cost from $10 to $315 per month and depend on the resources a website is using. A good example is MageMojo.
Wrapping it up with the hosting, shared ones are often not enough for Magento websites. Usually, they require more resources, so the most common choice is VPS and cloud solutions. Small and medium businesses have to pay $60-$150 per month, which means $700-$2000 annually.
3. Cost of a domain name
The domain issue is the same as SSL certificate one. Most hosting providers offer a domain name for free in addition to the hosting plan. But you have to spend only $10-$20 per year for the domain. So it’s better to choose the one more suitable for SEO and marketing than to stick with choices that some hostings can provide.
4. SSL certificate
SSL certificate protects your website and the data of your customers. It encrypts their payment details and other information passing between the customer and a checkout system.
In most cases, you get a free SSL certificate with your hosting. For example, you get a free certificate if you buy Adobe Commerce Cloud.
If your hosting plan does not include an SSL certificate or you need a different type, you have to spend $7.66-$3,400 per year.
5. Magento web design cost
Theme implies the visual attractiveness of a website and UX. Some themes are free templates, and the others cost from $25 to $500. You can acquire them from the official store, find alternatives, and buy them from Magento partners, or get a custom solution.
There are three options of how you can use Magento themes for your website: install a ready-made theme, customize a ready-made solution, and create a fully custom theme. Let’s take a closer look at every option.
Install a ready-made theme
In most cases, a ready-made theme is cheaper. There are even some that are freely available in the Magento ecosystem. But you will have to make some sacrifices in terms of how your website looks with that type of theme.
Customize a Ready-Made Theme
There is also a more expensive solution, but it is still cheaper than getting a custom theme – get a ready-made template and pay some extra to customize it to your needs. It usually requires much less time for a designer and frontend developer to change a ready-made topic than to create one from scratch. That is a common solution and typically costs about $3,000-$5,000, including the hours of both designers and developers.
Use a Fully Custom theme
What is great about the customized theme is that the team creates it according to the business and its branding. It will consider the items you sell, your ICP, and the specifics of your unique selling proposition. However the customized theme is more expensive and can cost you up to $10,000, depending on the rate of a frontend developer and designer.
6. Magento 2 development cost
The spending to develop a Magento website depends on the complexity of the solution you want as a result. Basic websites with an out-of-the-box design are cheaper and require fewer development hours. While a custom site with a unique theme, complex integrations, and interesting functionality may affect the Magento website development cost. Building such an ecommerce store requires lots of developer hours, which leads to more hours of QA engineers, not to mention designer work and business analyst help.
If you need a simple website, there is no need to overpay, but remember that Magento is a complex system, and if coded poorly at the beginning, difficulties might occur in the future if you decide to develop your website.
The average Magento development rate is $50 – $150 per hour, according to the Clutch.
7. Extensions
Every Magento feature is an extension but a pre-installed one. So when you buy Adobe Commerce, you get the same core as Magento Open Source with pre-installed extensions that widen its functionality. It means extensions are natural for Magento. Usually few extensions are installed. They are necessary for integrations with payments, shipping, analytics, and marketing automation.
That’s why Magento is so flexible and can be used for any ecommerce business: every feature is possible. There are over 3,500 extensions on the Magento official marketplace. The pricing is very different: from free up to $150,000. You should also include the cost of setting up and solving possible compatibility issues between modules.
8. Payment providers fees
Owning an ecommerce website means that besides paying for the website maintenance, you also have to spend money on getting the purchase done and delivered. It means a business gives some percentage of income to its payment gateway and shipping providers.
Magento fees usually depend on the providers, the type of product, and customer location.
By default, Magento has integration with PayPal, Stripe, Braintree, Authorize.net, Amazon Pay, etc. But the system allows adding other payment gateways. The transaction fee is 2%-4% per order.
It’s more complicated with shipping carriers, as everything depends on the method of shipment, type of product, and distance. So, Magento 2 pricing may vary a lot.
9. SEO & digital promotion
Magento’s suite of SEO features is designed to elevate the visibility of online stores, providing essential tools for optimizing and enhancing their online presence. Let’s have a closer look at some of the more common features that contribute significantly to an effective online promotional strategy.
Magento has about 600 extensions to help in promoting your online store. One extension could cost you from free up to $1100. Remember that one extension is not enough to fully promote your website.
The Magento 2 SEO extension provides a comprehensive suite of SEO features, encompassing keyword optimization, meta tag management, sitemap generation, and various others. Also, to the cost of SEO costs, you need to include the cost of an hour of an SEO specialist. Notably, professional SEO and promotion services often incur an average annual cost ranging from $10,000 to $40,000.
10. Magento support and maintenance services cost
There is hardly an online store that does not need constant updates and changes. So this is also an important component of Magento ecommerce price. Every business wants to be more convenient for customers, better automated, and appealing. These upgrades are crucial, so it all needs to be handled by a tech team.
Most of the time, maintenance includes such tasks as:
- theme upgrade,
- implementation of uncommon payment or shipping integrations,
- development of new features to improve customer experience,
- implementation of custom import, return, and pick up points services,
- development of a complex custom product with non-default attributes,
- bug fixing.
The Magento website is a complex system that needs constant monitoring and upgrades. The rate of such a specialist varies from $50 to $100 per hour. And you’ll need from several hours per month to a full-time specialist depending on your website. So keep this in mind while calculating Adobe commerce pricing.
We asked our team lead Mike Soiko, how much time our developers usually spend on Magento website maintenance:
Sometimes, the maintenance tasks are small, one developer can do them in 3-5 hours per month. But we have some projects that require a team of three developers, a QA engineer, and a designer to work full time. These are large projects that constantly need some upgrades and implementation of new functionality. Website development never stops for such projects. © Mike Soiko, technical Team Lead
Conclusion
No agency can estimate the exact amount of money you have to spend to build and maintain an ecommerce website on Magento. To calculate the Magento implementation cost, you need to consider many aspects:
- the complexity of the website
- number of products you are selling
- the level of customization you need
So the prices vary a lot from business to business, but you still can estimate the approximate budget when you know if you are going to buy the license and what hosting you intend to use.
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