What an online shop costs in 2026

What are the cost items of an online shop?

Five items, and only one is visible on a tool's pricing page. The platform first: either a monthly subscription or a commission on sales. Then the domain, optional at the start. Payment fees, taken on every transaction and usually left out of the maths. Visuals, which cost time or money. And acquisition, meaning what you spend to bring visitors.

The order of importance surprises beginners: at the start the first two items are negligible and the last two are the whole budget. People compare subscriptions for weeks, then discover the project's real cost is the time spent photographing and writing.

A sixth item appears on no invoice and weighs more than the other five: setup time. Two weekends spent choosing a theme are two weekends the shop doesn't sell.

• Platform: monthly subscription, or commission on sales.
• Domain name: order of magnitude CHF 10 to 20 a year, optional at the start.
• Payment fees: around 3 % of the amount, plus a fixed fee per transaction.
• Visuals: free on a phone, a few hundred francs with a photographer.
• Acquisition: budget is yours, to start only once the page converts.
• Time: the most expensive item, and the only one no price list shows.

Subscription or commission: which costs less?

It depends entirely on your volume, and the tipping point is simple to calculate. A subscription is a fixed cost: it lands every month, including the ones where you sell nothing. A commission is variable: it only fires on a sale.

Below the tipping point, a subscription makes you pay for waiting. Above it, it becomes the cheaper option, since the amount stops moving as revenue climbs. The calculation is one division: divide the monthly subscription by the other option's commission rate, and you get the monthly revenue above which the subscription is worth it again.

For a maker whose business is seasonal — summer markets, the year-end season — the trade-off tilts clearly: four quiet months on a subscription cost four subscriptions, four quiet months on commission cost zero.

Mopsee doesn't sit in either column: creating and publishing cost nothing, with no subscription, no card, and no commission on sales either. Only the payment provider's fees remain, as on any online shop.

What do payment fees really cost?

It's the item almost nobody folds into their margin, and it's structurally the same everywhere: a percentage of the amount taken, plus a fixed fee per transaction. Reckon on the order of 3 % plus a few tens of centimes for a European card — the exact schedule depends on your provider, the card's country and the payment method, and is checkable on their pricing page.

The fixed part is what hurts on small baskets. On a CHF 15 sale, a fixed 30 centimes weighs 2 % more than on a CHF 150 sale. That's a concrete argument for bundles, minimum orders, or a slightly higher range.

Two useful clarifications. These fees go to the payment provider, not the platform: they stack on top of its commission, if any. And a refund generally doesn't give them back to you — so a return costs more than the amount refunded.

How much should you budget for where you are?

Two scenarios cover the vast majority of cases. The beginner's: a few sales a month, a shop just opened, no ad budget. The growth one: several dozen sales a month, an established range, some paid acquisition.

The table below gives monthly orders of magnitude, excluding the production cost of what you sell. Payment fees are expressed as a percentage of revenue, since that's how they behave.

What to read in this table isn't the bottom row: it's the shift of weight from one column to the other. At the start, almost the whole budget is time. In growth, acquisition becomes the first item — and that's the sign the business works.

What shouldn't you cut?

Photos. They're what sells, especially for a handmade object: the customer can neither touch nor try, the image is all they have. A recent phone by a window does honest work; a cluttered background and backlighting kill a good piece.

Not the description either. A page that gives neither dimensions, nor material, nor shipping time generates questions instead of orders — and it's unreadable to search engines and to the assistants recommending products today.

Cut without regret, on the other hand, on anything that hasn't proven itself: the domain bought before the first sale, the logo commissioned before the name is settled, the premium theme, the automation app for three orders a week, and advertising launched on a page that doesn't convert yet.

• Keep: decent photos, complete descriptions, a stated delivery time.
• Defer: bought domain, paid logo, premium theme, apps.
• Only run ads after converting visitors you brought by hand.
• Watch the weight of the fixed payment fee on your small baskets.