Magento Pricing: How Much Does It Cost to Run a Magento Store?

Starting an online store with Magento isn’t always straightforward. There can be unexpected costs and tricky financial hurdles to watch out for. Therefore, it's a must for any business to evaluate any factors related to Magento pricing beforehand.

If you don't know where to start, LitExtension – #1 eCommerce Migration Service has done the work for you. In this guide, we will break down all those fees that might add up to your Magento pricing:

• Why pick Magento for your online store;
• An overview of all Magento pricing plans;
• A rough guide to Magento Open Source pricing;
• Magento Commerce & Magento Cloud pricing;
• Comparing Magento eCommerce pricing with other platforms.

Let's get the ball rolling!

Why Choose Magento?

Magento eCommerce stands out in the digital marketplace for these good reasons:

• Performance: Magento is tailored for eCommerce, offering notable speed and functionality that can be critical for online store operations.
• Community support: Magento's open-source model allows for a collective development effort, which can lead to diverse contributions and support options.
• Search Engine Optimization: Magento’s architecture benefits SEO practices and accommodates various external tools for enhancing search visibility.
• Customization: The platform provides an extensive array of themes, which can be great in tailoring the visual aspect of an ecommerce site to match a company’s branding.
• User experience: Magento’s design philosophy emphasizes user experience, potentially leading to faster and more secure transactions.
• Dashboard interface: The backend interface of Magento is designed to be intuitive, which may facilitate the management of store performance and the analysis of business metrics.

More than just an eCommerce platform, business owners can also enjoy a supported omnichannel journey with Magento POS.

Magento Open Source Pricing Breakdown: An Estimation

1. Magento domain name cost ($10–400/year)

When establishing your eCommerce business, you can purchase either an expired domain name or a brand-new one. That’s why the annual Magento 2 pricing for domain names can vary:

• Brand new domain: Typically priced between $10 and $15 per year, a brand new domain allows you to create a unique brand name and grants you complete control over it. Also, opting for a new domain reduces the risk of inheriting poor-quality backlinks.
• Expired domain: The cost of expired domains ranges from $20 to $400 per year. By selecting an expired domain, you may benefit from faster search engine rankings and quicker indexing by search engines. Furthermore, the existing high-quality backlinks associated with these domains can enhance your store’s visibility on search engine results pages (SERPs).

2. Magento hosting cost (from $10/month)

There are four primary categories of web hosting available: shared hosting, virtual private server (VPS), dedicated server hosting, and cloud hosting. For a robust Magento website, a VPS is often the most suitable choice.

The monthly Magento pricing for these services can range from $10 to $850, depending on your data storage needs and the chosen hosting provider.

Crucially, before settling on a hosting service, you must verify its compatibility with Magento. Numerous providers offer dedicated hosting solutions that are fully optimized for Magento. 

3. Magento SSL cost ($50–300/year)

The Magento pricing for an SSL certificate can range from $50 to $300 per year, depending on the type of certificate and the provider.

Domain-validated (DV) SSL certificates only verify domain ownership. They are the most affordable option, typically costing between $10 and $100 annually. Meanwhile, Organization-validated (OV) SSL certificates, which provide higher assurance by verifying domain ownership and basic company information, usually range from $50 to $200 per year.

Extended-validation (EV) SSL certificates offer the highest level of assurance and display the company name in the browser's address bar. They can cost between $100 and $500 per year.

4. Magento design cost ($0–5,000+)

When it comes to designing your Magento website, you’re presented with 2 distinct paths:

• Utilize an off-the-shelf Magento theme.
• Design a custom theme ideally suited to your requirements.

For a standard theme, the Magento 2 cost related to the design can vary from $0 to $500. Alternatively, crafting a personalized design necessitates engaging a professional web designer.

On the other hand, Magento developers can create a tailor-made theme in 40 to 160 hours. With the base rate starting at $40 per hour, the total cost can exceed $5,000.

It’s essential to acknowledge the growing trend of mobile usage and its contribution to revenue. Hence, you should ensure that your website is responsive across various devices, such as tablets and smartphones, to provide a user-friendly experience for mobile shoppers.

Last but not least, don’t forget to verify the compatibility of a new theme with your existing Magento version before implementation. This is to ensure that the design performs well on your online store. If you feel that choosing a suitable theme from Magento is too difficult, please check out the top 10 best Magento themes.

5. Magento extensions cost ($60–600/extension)

The Magento eCommerce platform equips you with fundamental functionality to operate an online business. However, Magento stores usually enhance their capabilities by incorporating additional extensions for customer support features, improved layered navigation, and advanced search.

You can discover and add these extensions from the Magento marketplace to your store. While some are free, most high-quality and advanced ones require a one-time fee. The average Magento pricing for an extension typically ranges from $60 to $600, depending on the specific features offered and the extension provider's reputation.

6. Magento SEO & marketing cost ($10,000–40,000/year)

Running an online business is fiercely competitive. Therefore, you have to make substantial investments in website promotion and SEO to attract customers. However, if you specialize in niche products and services, you might be able to bypass this step. Otherwise, the average annual cost for SEO and promotion services typically falls within the range of $10,000 to $40,000.

This Magento pricing covers a variety of strategies aimed at enhancing online visibility and driving traffic to the website. It includes costs for keyword research, content creation, backlink building, and implementing SEO best practices to improve search rankings. Additionally, promotional expenses may encompass social media marketing, pay-per-click campaigns, email marketing, and other digital advertising efforts to attract and retain customers.

7. Magento payment cost (2.9% + $0.30/transaction)

Stripe, Authorize.net, and PayPal are the leading payment processors for Magento stores. They stand out for not imposing any initial setup fees. That said, they do charge for transactions, with rates beginning at 2.9% and an additional $0.30 per successful payment.

To ensure you select the most economical option for your enterprise, we suggest conducting thorough research to find a payment service provider that aligns with your specific business needs and financial considerations. This approach will help you balance transaction costs with the benefits each service offers, such as security, customer support, and integration capabilities.

8. Magento development & maintenance cost (from $50/hour)

In eCommerce, there are 5 key pages for customer loyalty and engagement, thereby enhancing conversion rates:

• Homepage;
• Category page;
• Product page;
• Shopping cart page;
• Checkout page.

Customizing these pages to align with your brand’s aesthetic—even when utilizing a free Magento theme—requires about 40 hours of development work. Tasks include crafting banners, modifying the color scheme of text, icons, and buttons, and repositioning elements.

Given that Magento developers charge an average of $50 per hour, the baseline Magento cost for developing a site begins at $1,800.

Further, maintaining and updating a Magento site is an ongoing process requiring your attention. Maintenance tasks often involve:

• Theme upgrades;
• Implementing unique payment or shipping integrations;
• Developing new features for a better customer experience;
• Custom import, return, and pick-up point services;
• Complex custom product development and bug fixing.

Depending on the complexity of your site, you may need a specialist for a few hours each month or on a full-time basis, with hourly rates ranging from $50 to $100. This investment ensures your site remains up-to-date and operates smoothly.

Magento Commerce & Magento Cloud Pricing

Besides the Magento Open Source, we have two other Adobe Commerce editions for larger businesses, with extra features and more robust security measures: Magento Commerce (Commerce Pro) and Magento Commerce Cloud (Managed Services). These two Magento enterprise pricing structures are determined by your yearly average gross sales revenue. They offer 5 distinct cost levels to accommodate varying business needs.

The main difference between the two editions is that Magento Commerce (Commerce Pro) pricing doesn’t include hosting services. As a result, you’ll need to arrange and pay for hosting separately. This may fall around anywhere from $10 – 50/month.

Please remember that for Commerce Pro and Managed Services editions, you can submit a ticket for technical issues and receive remote support. However, their response time and scope are restricted to Magento’s built-in functionality. That’s why you might still require your dedicated Magento development team to address issues related to third-party extensions, integrations, and custom logic for immediate support. Normally, the hourly rate to hire them will range from $50 to $250.

Magento Pricing vs Other Platforms Comparison

If you’re interested in how Magento eCommerce pricing stacks up against its main rivals, here is an important summary: