E-commerce app development cost

It depends far more on scope than on the sector, and quoting a single figure here would be the least useful thing this page could do. What e-commerce & retail does decide is the floor: 4 compliance regimes may apply, you will be asked to integrate with roughly 7 systems of record, and 6 distinct roles typically touch the workflow — all of that before a single feature. The calculator below is already set to this sector; answer the rest and it returns a cost range, hours, timeline, team and running costs for your own scope.

Use a platform unless you have a specific reason not to. Shopify plus a headless front end covers what most stores need, and it absorbs PCI scope, tax calculation and fraud screening. Build custom when your pricing, bundling or fulfilment logic cannot be expressed in a platform, when you are running a marketplace rather than a store, or when the buying experience itself is your differentiator. A common middle path is a platform for commerce plumbing and a custom app for the experience.

Against an existing web store, native apps typically add 50–70% rather than doubling cost, because the catalogue, cart, orders, payments and admin already exist — you are paying for client surfaces and store distribution. What you get is push notifications that actually reach people, saved payment with biometric confirmation, and better repeat-purchase behaviour. For a store with meaningful repeat purchase it is usually worth it; for a considered one-off purchase it usually is not.

It is a planning estimate, not a quote. The band shown is roughly plus or minus 15–20% for a well-defined scope, and wider while requirements are still moving. It is built from engineering hours per discipline, converted at our blended delivery rate, so the hours are directly comparable to a real proposal line by line — but a firm price needs a technical specification, which is the step after budgeting.

No, deliberately. The headline figure is one-off development cost. Monthly cloud infrastructure, metered vendor fees and annual maintenance are calculated separately and shown alongside it, because they are recurring operating costs rather than capital build cost. Adding them together produces a number that means nothing.