The Cost of Launching an Online Store: Setup, Fees and Hidden Costs

The answer to 'how much does an online store cost?' is usually the setup fee. But what a store costs you in its first year can be several times that invoice. Payment fees, shipping, subscriptions, accounting and advertising recur every month and grow with sales. Below we break these items down one by one and finish with a sample first-year calculation you can fill in with your own numbers.

Apart from Kodyva's own prices, the figures in this article are assumptions meant only to show how the calculation works. Real amounts vary by provider, package and volume; get current quotes from the relevant providers before you decide.

The short answer: four cost groups

The total cost of an online store comes from four main groups:

• Platform: the setup fee followed by a subscription or maintenance cost.
• Transaction costs: payment fees and shipping paid on every order.
• Legal and financial costs: legal texts, invoicing setup, accounting.
• Marketing: money spent to bring visitors to the site.

The first looks like a one-off; the other three grow with orders. Many founders budget around the first item, which is why cash can get tight in the first months.

Platform choice: a hosted package or a site you own?

There are two basic models, with different cost structures.

With hosted packages (local platforms or foreign ones like Shopify), the setup fee can be low or zero, but you pay a subscription every month or year. Packages are usually tiered by product count, features and staff accounts. Foreign platforms may charge in foreign currency, so the TL cost moves with the exchange rate. There can also be extra transaction fees depending on your payment setup, plus theme, app and plugin fees. Check current package prices and extra fees on each platform's own site.

With a site you own, you pay a higher setup fee but no monthly platform subscription. Instead you have hosting, domain and maintenance costs. At Kodyva, the price range for e-commerce setup is 35,000 to 80,000 TL; the exact price depends on scope and is stated in the quote. A separate yearly budget for server and maintenance should be added. The advantage is that you aren't tied to a platform subscription and can have features added without switching platforms. Whichever model you choose, ask for ownership terms for the code, data and domain to be written into the quote.

Which is cheaper depends on the time frame. In year one a hosted package is often cheaper. By year three or four the picture can change, especially if you use many paid apps on top of the subscription. In our article comparing Shopify, İkas and Ticimax we covered which items to look at.

Payment and shipping costs

These two are the most overlooked items and the ones that grow fastest with sales.

On every card sale, the payment provider takes a fee. The rate depends on the provider, your negotiation, the number of instalments and the settlement period (how long until the money reaches your account). With instalments the rate usually rises; some providers add a fixed fee per transaction as well. Get current rates from providers as a written quote. We explained the difference between bank POS and payment institutions in a separate article.

A quick calculation. Say your store has 100,000 TL monthly turnover and your average fee is 3.5 percent. Under that assumption you pay 3,500 TL a month, or 42,000 TL a year, in payment fees. Run the same calculation with your own rate and you'll see this item can reach a size comparable to the setup fee.

Shipping depends on the package's volumetric weight (desi) and your contract. Sending through a corporate account is often cheaper than walking into a branch. If you offer 'free shipping', that cost lands on your product price or your margin; if you don't, you accept that cart abandonment may rise. Then there are returns: in categories like clothing, returns are more common, and you need to decide in advance who pays for return shipping.

Packaging is another item. Boxes, filler, tape and labels look small per order but add up to a noticeable amount over a year.

Legal texts, invoicing and accounting

A distance sales agreement, a preliminary information form, return terms and KVKK privacy texts are usually found on online stores; settle which ones you need with a lawyer. Having a lawyer prepare or check them is a one-off cost that depends on scope. Free templates are tempting, but a return clause that doesn't fit your business can cost more at the first consumer complaint.

If you use electronic invoices you work with an integrator; decide which document type suits you with your accountant. Integrators usually sell a yearly subscription or credit packages based on invoice count. Choosing a service that integrates with your site removes the hours you would otherwise spend issuing invoices by hand.

Accounting costs vary by company type, city and monthly transaction volume. A sole proprietorship's monthly accountant fee is usually lower than a limited company's. For a store processing dozens of orders a day, expect this fee may rise because of the volume of invoices and returns.

Marketing budget

Visitors don't arrive on their own when the site goes live. In the first months, most sales often come from paid ads, social media or marketplaces. Organic traffic, the free visitors from Google, builds over months.

How much to set aside? Giving a fixed percentage would be misleading, since it varies by industry and product price. But you can ask yourself: what is the most I can spend to win one customer? If your average basket is 800 TL and gross profit is 300 TL, spending more than 300 TL on ads per customer on a first purchase means a loss. If customers are likely to buy again, you can stretch that limit a little.

Think of the first three months of ad spend as separate from the setup budget, as 'tuition'. The goal in that period isn't profit; it is learning which product, which audience and which channel works.

Sample first-year cost table

The example below is a hypothetical calculation for a small store selling through its own site and aiming for an average monthly turnover of 100,000 TL. Apart from Kodyva's items, the amounts are assumptions; fill in the open items with quotes you get yourself.

• Site setup (your own site): 35,000 to 80,000 TL at Kodyva, one-off; exact price in the quote.
• Hosting, domain and SSL: yearly, depends on traffic and server type; get a quote.
• Maintenance and updates: 2,500 to 7,500 TL a month at Kodyva, 30,000 to 90,000 TL a year.
• Payment fees: about 42,000 TL on a yearly turnover of 1,200,000 TL at an assumed 3.5 percent.
• Shipping: about 162,000 TL a year at 150 orders a month and an assumed 90 TL per package. Part of this can be passed to customers.
• Packaging: multiply your own per-order packaging cost by your yearly order count.
• Invoice integrator: yearly subscription or credits; get a quote.
• Accounting: depends on company type; get a quote from your accountant.
• Legal texts: one-off; get a quote from your lawyer.
• Advertising: if you set aside, say, 10,000 to 30,000 TL a month, that is 120,000 to 360,000 TL a year.

Two things stand out. First, the setup fee can be a small part of the total. Second, in this example shipping and advertising are the two largest items, and both are tied directly to order volume. A store that doesn't reflect shipping costs in its prices correctly can lose money the more it sells.

To run your own numbers, copy the list into a spreadsheet (Excel or Google Sheets) and enter your expected order count, average basket and the quotes you received. Those ten minutes tell you which price is sustainable far more clearly than any setup quote.

If you get stuck on the platform side while working out the numbers, we can do the cost comparison for a hosted package versus your own platform together at Kodyva.