The cost of a Magento store starts as low as $2,000 per year for a barebones store without any customization and it can cost well over $100,000 per year to build and manage a custom-made store. Magento is available in two primary editions: Magento Open Source and Magento Commerce. The Open Software License 3.0 covers Magento Open Source software, making it free to download and use. Magento Commerce is a subscription-based platform that starts at approximately $1,600 per month for its Starter plan. Magento Commerce Pro plans are priced based on annual gross merchandise value and average order value of a store.
Adobe doesn’t publicly disclose its pricing strategy for Magento Commerce. To get a quote, you would need to contact their sales team, who will first review your business’s demands and turnover and then prepare a quote tailored to its requirements. While there are no restrictions on using either of the editions, Magento Commerce is commonly preferred by emerging businesses with online sales averaging $5-$10 million and above annually.
Magento Open Source software provides basic ecommerce functionality to enable anyone to build an online store from scratch. However, it’s worth noting that even the basic functionality that’s offered with Magento Open Source is often more than your average ecommerce store might require. It comes packaged with catalog management capabilities that allow it to support various product types, including Configurable, Virtual, Downloadable, Grouped, and Bundle products. It provides mobile-optimized shopping and integrations with checkout, payment, and shipping solutions as well. But most importantly, Magento Open Source is entirely extensible and can be extended and customized to achieve any design or functionality desired using third-party themes and extensions. Its extreme extensibility makes it a tough competition for most paid premium ecommerce platforms and even Magento Commerce itself. However, being free software, it does not receive any support from Adobe. Tackling bugs and troubleshooting issues will require some degree of technical proficiency.
Magento Commerce ships with all the functionality of Open Source and includes a WYSIWYG page builder, advanced marketing tools, B2B functionality, and business intelligence dashboards. Stores using Magento Commerce receive 24/7 technical support from Adobe as well as dedicated customer success managers.
But the costs of building and running a Magento store don’t end there. The advantage of using Magento to build a website is its high degree of customizability. While Adobe has detailed documentation available for those who wish to develop their themes and extensions, possessing the knowledge of its supporting technologies is a must. It’s often a lot more efficient to approach Magento developers or agencies for customization or even to purchase readily available third-party extensions to achieve custom functionality. On average, hiring a freelance Magento developer or an agency can cost anywhere from $25-$200 per hour, depending on the developers’ experience. It’s undoubtedly a lot cheaper than hiring an experienced in-house developer that could cost anywhere from $60,000 to $120,000 per year. Outsourced custom development costs for extensions and themes can range from $10,000 to $50,000 on average, making them a lot cheaper than hiring an in-house team of frontend and backend developers.
Beyond the development costs of a store, factors such as hosting, maintenance, and support also contribute to Magento costs. While hosting plans usually start cheap, a small Magento store with a few hundred products can expect to spend anywhere from $50-$120 per month on self-managed shared servers. For larger stores, hosting costs increase significantly, especially when using dedicated servers and storage, taking the costs anywhere from $300 to $1,000 and above depending on the store’s size and volume of orders it processes.
Store maintenance is crucial for stress-free operations as downtime can end up costing a business severely. Most Magento development agencies offer store maintenance plans starting from around $80-$125 per hour and upwards. If you would like to have an agency on retainer for maintenance and support, that could cost upwards of $20,000 per year depending on the agency’s experience and quality. While some store owners with technical skills can get away with maintaining their stores themselves and save on those costs, professional support is invaluable. Ensuring all customizations and extensions are compatible with Magento’s updates requires a thorough understanding of all factors involved and is usually beyond the scope of a store owners’ expertise.
There is no fixed pricing for building or operating a Magento store. With the number of options that Magento offers as an ecommerce platform, the sky is truly the limit for how far a store owner can spend on building an online store. For those on a budget, starting small and adding customizations and functionality as the business’s demands grow is the best way to use the platform without being overwhelmed by upfront costs.