You have already asked several agencies and received three different numbers with no explanation of where they came from.
Below we set out what the figure is made of, how long each stage takes and what we will need from you.
When an online store pays for itself
A store pays for itself when the customer really does place and pay for the order themselves: choose, add to cart, pay, pick a delivery method. No call and no salesperson involved. If a person closes the sale at your company, you pay for the cart and checkout, and nobody uses them. Here is how to tell the two cases apart.
An online store is the right call if
- You have more than 50 SKUs and the buyer chooses alone: by size, color or specification. They need filters, not a salesperson.
- Orders come in daily and handling them in messengers and inboxes is no longer workable.
- You already sell on a marketplace and pay commission on every sale, and you want your own channel alongside it.
- You run an accounting or ERP system and you want stock levels on the site to match the real ones.
- You plan to advertise the site and measure what a sale costs you.
An online store is the wrong call if
- You have 10–30 products and a salesperson closes the deal by phone anyway. You need a catalog website or a corporate site — cheaper and faster. More about catalog websites → · More about corporate websites →
- You have one product and you need to test demand. You need a landing page: from $800 and two to three weeks instead of $4,300 and two months. More about landing pages →
- You have no product photography and no descriptions, and no plan to produce them. A store without product photos and descriptions does not sell.
- You need to launch in a week on a $500 budget. Then a hosted platform such as Shopify is the better fit, and we will recommend one.
If none of these describes you, write to us and we will go through your case before quoting anything.
What you get at launch
All of it stays with you after acceptance: the domain, the hosting, the admin panel, the design files and the catalog are registered in your name and work without us. Whether you keep working with us is your call.
- A working store on your domain and your hosting. The access is yours from day one.
- An admin panel where you add products and change prices and descriptions yourself. No developer call needed.
- A catalog with filters, search and sorting. Categories, subcategories, and product pages with variants: size, color, configuration.
- A cart and a single-screen checkout with no forced registration.
- A connected payment gateway and connected shipping: the providers you already work with, plus pickup.
- A mobile version tested by hand: find, add to cart, pay.
- Design files in Figma. They are yours, and any other agency can pick them up.
- Training for your team, and a recording of that training. The recording helps whenever a new manager joins.
- A 30-day warranty after acceptance.
Every category and product page is a landing page of its own
The usual story: an agency builds the store, you hire an SEO specialist, they open the site and say the whole thing has to be redone. Designer again, developer again, budget again.
We are a marketing agency, and we are the ones who will run the traffic to this store afterwards. So categories and product pages are designed for search and paid traffic from the start: their own heading structure, their own copy, their own answers to the questions a buyer asks at that point. The page is written by a copywriter who knows which query it will be found by. When you launch campaigns a month from now, there is somewhere to send the traffic.
That is how we built two of the stores in our portfolio the section below.
Online store or catalog website? We will tell you in 15 minutes
Leave your email and we will reply within one business day: we will go through your range and tell you whether a cart pays off and what the store costs.
Working with us from the US, the UK or the EU
- Who owns the code. You do. On acceptance, all rights to the code, the design files and the administrator access transfer to you. There is no license fee, no hosting lock-in and no component you keep paying us for. The only case where we keep access is when you stay with us for ongoing support and want us to run the site. The domain and the hosting are paid for by you and registered in your name, so they are yours from day one. We build on standard WordPress or OpenCart, which means any agency can pick the project up after us — and your product data exports in a standard format, not into a proprietary one.
- NDA and confidentiality. We sign an NDA before you send us anything sensitive — send us yours or use ours. On a store project that matters more than usual: your price list, your margins, your supplier terms and, once the integration starts, your order data. Product data, price lists and customer records stay inside the project.
- Time zones. We work from Lviv, one hour ahead of Berlin, Vienna and Zurich, two hours ahead of London and seven hours ahead of New York. For European clients that is the same working day. For US clients our afternoon is your morning, so we can usually answer the same day. We reply by email within one business day and meet on Google Meet or Zoom. Project communication is in English, in writing, with one point of contact on our side.
- Contract, payment and law. Half the amount at the start, half after the work is delivered and accepted. The price and the scope are fixed in the contract and do not change after that. We invoice in US dollars.
What the price is made of, and what a Ukrainian agency costs per hour
We estimate the work in hours, agree the scope with you, and then put one number in the contract.
| Specialist | Rate | Hours per page | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Designer | $19/hr | 8 | $152 |
| Developer | $24/hr | 8 | $192 |
| Copywriter | $14/hr | 6 | $84 |
| SEO specialist | $24/hr | 2 | $48 |
| Total per page | $476 | ||
| Content managerfilling in a product page | $10/hr | per product, not per template | quoted separately |
Pricing it this way gives you something to compare with. Take any other proposal you receive and ask two questions: how many hours are budgeted for your pages, and who exactly is going to work those hours.
One page of a store is $476 of work by four people. Multiply that by the number of unique templates — home page, category, product page, cart, checkout, content page — and add the part that is not counted in pages: the payment gateway, the shipping integration, the product data import, the admin panel setup and end-to-end order testing.
The product page template is done once. The product pages themselves run into the hundreds, and each has to be filled in: name, price, specifications, photos and copy for that particular product. A content manager does this, and we quote it separately from development — $10 an hour for filling in a product page and writing the copy for it. Three hundred products and three thousand are different amounts of hours, so we name this figure after we see your price list.
Three packages
- Design on a proven grid
- Catalog with filters
- A product page with variants
- Cart and checkout
- One payment provider
- Nova Poshta
- Admin panel
- Training
- 30-day warranty
- A custom design rather than a grid-based one
- Advanced filters by specification
- Integration with a CRM or 1C: products, prices, stock levels
- A customer account with order history
- A “related products” and “frequently bought together” block
- Category pages written for search queries
- A full second language version
- Wholesale prices and separate terms for B2B customers
- Promo codes, discounts, campaign collections
What pushes the price up
Every item below is additional hours multiplied by a rate.
Number of SKUs
Up to 300 is the base package. From 300 to 3,000 you need more complex filters and separate work on catalog performance: a page listing 2,000 items loads nothing like a page listing twenty, and the buyer notices first. More than 10,000 SKUs with frequently changing prices is a conversation about a different platform.
Integration with your ERP, CRM or warehouse system
The most expensive item after design. Pushing products to the site is one job; syncing stock, prices and order statuses in both directions is another. How many hours it takes depends on the state of your product data: if the same item is spelled three different ways in your system, that has to be sorted out first. CRM integration starts at $300, depending on the system and on the data that has to move.
Number of languages
A second language is not a toggle. It is another pass by the copywriter across every template plus a layout check: German and Polish words are longer and buttons move. The cost depends on the type of site.
Non-standard features
A configurator, vehicle-fitment search, a made-to-order calculator, booking, shipping calculated by dimensions. We quote these separately and show the hours before we start.
Whether your content is ready
The most common reason a timeline stretches. If the photography and the descriptions exist, we take them and work; if they do not, that is a separate job and it has to start in parallel with the design. Otherwise the store is finished and there is nothing in it to sell.
How long the build takes and what we need from you
From 21 to 40 business days. Below is what that consists of and where the delay usually appears: most often when nobody on your side has looked at the designs or sent the access.
| 01. | Brief and structure3–5 business days | we go through your range and your competitors and build the category structure. | the price list or item list, two or three stores you like, and one person who makes decisions. |
|---|---|---|---|
| 02. | Wireframes3–5 business days | we lay out the pages — what sits where, how a buyer reaches the cart. | one hour-long call and feedback within 2 business days. |
| 03. | Design5–9 business days | home page, category, product page, cart — in your brand style. | sign-off on the designs. One round of revisions is inside the timeline. |
| 04. | Build and development7–13 business days | we build the store and connect the payment gateway, the shipping and the admin panel. | the merchant account details and the contract with the carrier. Without them the payment gateway cannot be connected — and this is where store projects stall most often. |
| 05. | Integrations and testing2–5 business days | we connect your ERP or CRM, load test products and walk every purchase scenario by hand. | access to your accounting system. |
| 06. | Launch and training1–3 business days | we move the store to the live domain, train your team and hand over the access. | the domain and the hosting. |
Stores we built and then ran traffic to
We usually run the advertising for the stores we build: the site first, then the campaigns. So the numbers in these cases cover both the site and the advertising.
What we build on, and why
We build online stores in two ways, and the difference between them is fundamental. The platform is chosen before the contract is signed.
WordPress with WooCommerce
Test a niche or start on a small budgetThis is the fast start: a small range and a limited budget. The store works — catalog, cart, payments, shipping, all in place. You get a working sales channel for less money and sooner.
There is a limit: WordPress was built for websites, and commerce sits on top of it. While you have a few hundred SKUs and a modest order flow, that is not felt. As the range grows, every new capability — product variants, several warehouses, complex order statuses — arrives as another plugin, and holding them together gets progressively more expensive.
OpenCart
The store is your main sales channel, not a window next to the marketplacesThe platform was built for trade, and it shows at every step:
- The range grows without rebuilding the site. The same structure works for three hundred SKUs and for three thousand.
- Product variants, stock and multiple warehouses are part of the system rather than an add-on.
- The admin panel is designed for a manager working orders every day.
- Order fulfilment is handled as a workflow: statuses, shipping documents and carrier integrations rather than a plugin chain.
Custom-built store
A job neither platform can do without workaroundsWe write it from scratch, without a CMS: your own data structure, your own cart, your own admin panel. This costs more and takes longer than both options above, but the store follows your sales logic instead of bending it to fit someone else’s.
- A non-standard sales model: a configurator, made-to-order pricing, wholesale and retail with different rules in one place.
- Deep integration with your accounting or production system, with no ready-made module for it.
- Heavy load: hundreds of thousands of items, or peak sales the platform cannot handle.
- You are ready to keep a developer on hand: custom code cannot be picked up in a day by anyone except its authors.
If the store is your main sales channel rather than a window next to the marketplaces, we recommend OpenCart. If you need to test a niche or start on a small budget, WooCommerce will do the job. We propose a custom build only when we see on the call a job neither platform can handle.
When neither of the two will do
- A multi-vendor marketplace where sellers have their own accounts and settlements.
- Complex B2B logic: individual price lists per account, multi-step order approval, payment terms.
- A mobile app as the primary sales channel.
What you will need after launch
A store at launch can take orders, but it has no products or visitors yet. What follows is work we also do, quoted separately. We list it now so you can budget for it from the start.
- eCommerce analytics.
- Google Analytics 4 with add to cart, begin checkout and purchase events, so you can see which step people leave on and what each channel brings in revenue. Quoted separately.
- Ad account connection.
- Meta pixel, Google Ads tag and the product feed for Google Shopping — so your campaigns count orders rather than clicks. Also quoted separately.
- Copy and product photography.
- If the content does not exist, our copywriter writes the descriptions and a photographer shoots the range. Priced against the brief and the result you need.
- Populating the catalog.
- Uploading 300 products and uploading 5,000 are different jobs, so we count content manager hours at $10 an hour. The total depends on the volume and on the state of your price list.
- Domain and hosting.
- Paid for by the client, for every type of website. Registered in your name, so you stay the owner; we can select, buy and configure them.
- Promotion.
- SEO and paid search, to put people in front of the store. Same team that built it: the categories are already written for queries, so nobody has to invent them twice.
- Support.
- Updates, backups, security. From $70 a month for basic support up to $500 for full coverage.
- Changes after acceptance.
- New sections, new features, seasonal campaigns. Billed in hours at the same rates.
The terms we work on
- The contract. It sets out the scope of work, the price and the timeline. Anything not in the contract is quoted separately and shown to you before we start.
- Payment in two parts: half at the start, half after the work is delivered and accepted. The amount is fixed in the contract.
- A 30-day warranty after acceptance. We fix anything that was agreed in the contract and does not work correctly, free of charge. Reworking a section or changing a design you have already approved is new work and is quoted separately.
- A 30-day warranty from acceptance. Anything agreed in the contract that does not work correctly, we fix at no cost. Rebuilding a section or changing a design you already approved is new work and is billed separately.
- Response time to a warranty request: we reply within one business day.
- The access is yours. The hosting, the domain, the admin panel, the analytics and the repository are all registered in your name and handed over on acceptance.
- The rights to the code and the administrator access transfer to you on acceptance. We keep them in one case only — if you stay with us for support and want us to run the store.
- 13 years in business, more than 160 projects delivered.
Frequently asked questions
Who owns the code once the project is delivered?
You do. On acceptance, the rights to the code, the design files and the administrator access transfer to you, along with the domain and the hosting, which are in your name from the start. There is no license fee and no proprietary CMS, and your product data exports in a standard format. We keep access in one case only: if you stay with us for ongoing support and want us to run the site.
Do you sign an NDA?
Yes, before you send us anything sensitive. Send us your template or use ours. On a store project this comes up immediately, because the first thing we ask for is your price list.
What is your time zone overlap with our team?
We are in Lviv: one hour ahead of Berlin, two ahead of London, seven ahead of New York. European clients get the same working day. US East Coast clients get our afternoon as your morning. Everything is written down in English and confirmed by email, so the overlap matters less than it would with a phone-first vendor.
Which payment gateways and carriers do you connect?
The ones you already work with. The integration itself is part of the build; what varies is how many of them and whether the provider has a documented API.
How much does an online store cost?
From $4,300, and up to $11,000 for the largest package. Each package has its own fixed price and scope, listed above. We estimate in hours at $14 to $24 an hour depending on the role — $476 for one page — agree the scope, and the number goes into the contract before the work starts.
How long does it take?
From 21 to 40 business days depending on the package, which is roughly one to two calendar months. The stage-by-stage breakdown is in the timeline block above. Most delays come from merchant account paperwork and content on your side.
Can you improve our existing store instead of building a new one?
Often yes, and often cheaper. We look at the code and the admin panel and tell you whether the store is worth improving or would cost more to repair than to rebuild. A technical audit starts at $400, and we credit it against the build if you go ahead.
Who uploads the products?
By default you do — that is what the admin panel is for. We load test items, show how it works and record the training. If there are thousands of SKUs, we take the upload on as a separate service, priced by the number of items.
Can you connect our ERP or accounting system?
Yes. One-way means products and prices pushed to the site. Two-way adds orders and stock levels flowing back. The second is more expensive and needs access to your system at stage 5. The complexity depends on the state of your product data, so we give the figure after we have looked at it.
Will the store rank in Google?
The technical foundation will be there: speed, mobile, correct headings, product structured data, a sitemap. Categories and product pages are written for search queries as a matter of course. But positions themselves are months of separate work — that is promotion, not development. For EN-language markets we would start with paid search and the product feed rather than wait on organic.
What happens when you deliver the store and leave?
We do not leave, and we do not hold on to you either. The 30-day warranty is included. After that: support from $70 a month, changes billed in hours, or running it yourself — all the access and all the design files are already yours.
