How much will an eCommerce cost per month

For me, the bare minimums is roughly:

$35 for shopping cart
$40 to be able to process credit cards
$10 for toll free phone number

It really depends - if you wanted to use a free solution like Opencart and accept payment via PayPal standard your only cost would be hosting and a domain name...

I believe that you get what you pay for and I do not advise using a self hosted cart. I personally use Shopify (their plans start at $14/month)

Costs also vary based on how you accept payment from customers. Many merchant accounts charge fees but if you go with Shopify you can use Stripe to accept payments and they do not charge any monthly fee. You can also accept payment via Google Checkout and PayPal standard (in addition to using Stripe as your merchant account). If you did this your only fixed expense would be the Shopify monthly fee.

Some additional fees could be a toll free # and advertising expenses which vary widely depending on where you are advertising and what niche you're entering.

Hope that helps!
-Anton

magento: free
stripe account: no monthly fees, 2.9% + 30 cents per transaction
stripe module for magento: free
hosting: $10-20 to start is fine. move to VPS and dedicated once you're getting traffic that warrants it. a good magento host is nexcess.net
phone: google voice until you have the revenue to justify a toll free line (generally $20 and up. grasshopper.com = win)
support: helpscout.net - free account to start, add users (for a fee) as you scale
physical product sales? shipworks + stamps.com for automated label creation and order updating. shipworks is about $15/mo IIRC and goes up depending on volume. stamps.com is another $16/mo

Not as much as some have said., you can do Woo Commerce and use PayPal and just pay for your hosting and 800 number. So it can be $20-$25 a month. That of course is without any cost of advertising, linking etc etc.

By the way I'm using Phone(.)com instead of Grasshopper and received great customer service when setting up my daughters ecommerce site. They are a nice option for an 800 number.

What sort of specialty items? Are they a straight sale or trial offer? What's your target market and budget? eCommerce is clearly a great and inexpensive way to begin a business but there are always going to be costs many owners do not think of in advance - web hosting, payment processing, product inventory / shipping, advertising.

I would begin marketing the company and product several months BEFORE launch so you have an idea on how to stock up on your supplies as it is so much easier to gauge the demand of your services (Video Games/DVDs). The best thing about an online company is you have the ability to make money before even physically selling anything right off the bat.

This is a good resource for all questions in eCommerce and Internet Marketing. Good luck!

I would do the following:

Magento: Free
Nexcess Hosting: $50-80
Toll Free Number: $10/mo
Merchant Account: 2.4%-2.9% Sometimes a gateway fee of 10-20 depending on the gateway

Magento: Free
PayPal (for order processing) : $5/ month (2.2%-3% transaction fee, + $00.30 per transaction)
Hosting: $10-15/ month
Open Web Messenger (Mibew): Free

The following posts answer your question in pretty good detail:

Anticipated costs for US citizen to run an ecommerce store in the US
Anticipated costs for foreigner to run an ecommerce store in the US

Obviously costs vary based on the route you take, but these posts should give you a very good idea of what to expect.

You can save money by waiting on credit card processing and just using PayPal for free as Maui Joe suggested. You can also wait on the toll-free number until you are getting traffic and sales. However, both will greatly increase your conversion rate, so you should get them as soon as you can.

My only piece of advice would be to educate yourself before jumping in. The likelihood of you succeeding without learning the business beforehand is almost zero!

Best of luck to you!

I love Paypal, in my view they offer a very good solution and are very user friendly.

The only time you'll get a cost from PayPal is per transaction, which is one of the lowest fees around as far as processors go or if you upgrade pro. PayPal PRO will then allow you to accept payments over the phone or in person and they'll provide you with a free swiper for your smart phone.

Magento is complex to handle fo rnewbie and non-technical person. Also its used for big and comprehensive stores with thousands of products. I recommend Opencart which is simple to handle and customize.

I run magento in Simplehelix.com just cost 19.95, include free install & upgrade service, you just need buy a theme can start your business immdiately

Regards
Dan

I suggest rather than thinking about what it will cost, think about how you're going to make money with your online stores.

The cost of building and hosting a site is insignificant. Whether you do it all yourself and host it on an $8 per month web host, or whether you hire a design firm for a couple thousand dollars and go with a proper hosted solution at $30 - $100 a month, those costs are insignificant compared to what your marketing budget should be. My point is that if you're concerned about the monthly cost of hosting, you should go back to the drawing board and re-think your plan. A properly planned eCommerce site will make enough on day one of its launch to pay for its operating costs for an entire year no matter what method of hosting you choose.

That said, go with a hosted platform (Volusion, BigCommerce, Shopify). Every time. Leave the hassle of designing a site, configuring servers and backups, etc. to someone else. Cut out all of those costs and time suckers and keep your cash for your marketing budget.

There are sites out there that you can make a free online store to start out with. They even host for free. Try Vendio, I've used them and like the way the finished stores look. They are easy to use too. You can get a domain if you want and have the store linked there easily, or just use the link they give you for a domain. You can use a link shortener/cloaker/tracker to make it easier for the user if you need. It works with paypal. The only real cost with this route is marketing and getting visitors to your site. evoice is good for toll free numbers. for a while they had a promotion where you could get one for 6months free. Not sure if that's still going on. If you see a banner for it, tell them you saw one for 6 months free recently and they will give it to you.

What kinds of products are you selling?

Been seeing a lot of Unicommerce spam in here lately.