Ecommerce website design in Sydney: what an online store really costs
An online store build is $3,490 plus GST with us, published, and from about $3,500 at the Australian studios that publish anything. The rented alternative, Shopify, starts at $42 a month on an annual plan plus fees on every sale, at Australian list prices checked 2 September 2026. The price is not the real decision, though. The platform is, and picking the wrong one costs more than any build.
Sydney is full of ecommerce web design quotes that cannot be compared, because they are for different things wearing the same name. One is a designed page with a payment link. One is a WooCommerce store on a site you own. One is a Shopify subscription with a theme on top. All three sell things online, they suit different businesses, and any designer who quotes you before asking which one you need is guessing.
The three ways to sell online
A designed page with a payment link
If you sell a handful of products, or you sell services with the occasional product on the side, this is usually the answer, and it is the one agencies rarely lead with because it is the cheapest. A well-designed page with a Stripe or PayPal payment link takes money exactly the way a store does. There is no cart, no stock system, no plugin stack to maintain. Our one-page builds start at $690 plus GST and a five-page business site at $1,490. When a customer only ever buys one or two things at a time, a cart adds friction rather than removing it.
WooCommerce: a store on a site you own
WooCommerce is the store system for WordPress, and it runs more online stores than any other platform. You own the whole thing: the code, the product data, the customer list, the hosting. There is no monthly platform fee and no transaction fee beyond what your payment gateway charges. That ownership is why most of our store builds are WooCommerce website design. The honest trade is that it is software you are now responsible for. WooCommerce, WordPress and every extension ship regular updates, and an unmaintained store holding customer details is a security problem, not just a stale website.
Shopify: a store you rent
Shopify is a genuinely excellent platform with the best checkout in the business, and if you run real inventory with variants, stock levels and refunds, we will often tell you to use it. You pay for that forever: Basic is $42 a month on an annual plan or $56 paying monthly in Australia, plus a card rate of 1.75 per cent and 30 cents, plus a 2 per cent fee on every sale if you use a payment gateway other than Shopify Payments, all checked 2 September 2026. Stop paying and the store is gone. We compare Shopify against a built site in detail here.
The three, side by side
| Option | Upfront | Ongoing | Fees on each sale | You own it |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Payment-link site | $690 to $1,490 +GST | hosting | your gateway’s card rate | Yes |
| WooCommerce store | $3,490 +GST | hosting + maintenance | your gateway’s card rate | Yes |
| Shopify Basic | theme + setup | $42/mo annual, $56/mo monthly | 1.75% + 30¢, plus 2% on other gateways | No |
Shopify figures are Australian list prices from shopify.com/au/pricing, checked 2 September 2026; Grow is $114 a month and Advanced $431 a month on annual plans. Our prices are the ones we publish. The comparison that matters is not $3,490 against $42, it is $3,490 once against $504 a year plus a slice of every sale, for as long as you trade.
What actually costs money in a store build
The build price is the visible cost. These five decide whether the project runs to budget, and most of them sit outside any developer's quote. Online store setup in Australia also has three local layers that overseas tutorials skip entirely: GST, shipping zones and gateway choice.
Product data and photography
Every product needs a name, a description that sells it, a price, variants, dimensions and weight for shipping, and photos that do not look like they were taken on a kitchen bench. For forty products that is a solid week of somebody's time before any design happens. It is the single most common reason store builds stall, and no platform fixes it. Budget for it honestly, or launch with ten products done properly rather than forty done badly.
Shipping rules and zones
Australia makes this harder than it looks. Australia Post charges on the greater of actual and cubic weight, so a light, bulky parcel costs more than the bathroom scales suggest, and sending to regional WA or the NT costs a multiple of metro Sydney. Your store needs shipping zones that reflect that, or a flat rate priced so the far-flung orders do not quietly eat your margin. Free shipping over a threshold works, but only when the threshold clears your real average shipping cost.
GST configuration
Once turnover reaches $75,000 a year you must register for GST, and prices displayed to Australian consumers must be GST-inclusive. That means the store is configured for inclusive pricing with a 10 per cent rate, GST applied to shipping charges, GST-free treatment for exempt goods such as basic food, and export sales to overseas customers generally going out GST-free. Getting this wrong is not a design flaw, it is a tax problem, and it is cheaper to configure correctly on day one than to repair at BAS time.
Payment gateways and their fees
Whichever platform you pick, a gateway takes a cut of every sale, and in Australia the usual choices are Stripe, Square and PayPal, with Afterpay or Zip on top if your customers expect instalments. The instalment services charge merchants several times a card rate, so add them because your customers use them, not by default. The structural difference matters more than any single rate: on Shopify, a gateway other than Shopify Payments carries that extra 2 per cent fee on every order. On a WooCommerce store you pay your gateway's rate and nothing on top.
The maintenance nobody budgets for
A brochure site can sit untouched for a year and lose nothing. A store cannot. Plugins and platforms ship security updates, gateways retire old API versions, stock drifts, and a checkout that breaks on a Friday night loses orders, not enquiries. On WooCommerce that means a real maintenance arrangement, not hope. On Shopify the platform maintains itself, which is a genuine part of what the subscription buys, though the apps you bolt on still bring their own fees and their own breakage. Either way, a store is a running system, not a finished artefact, and it should be budgeted like one.
When not to build a store
A fair share of the ecommerce enquiries we get end with us recommending something smaller, so here is the list in plain terms. Do not build a store when:
- You sell services. A booking or quote flow converts better than a cart ever will.
- You sell fewer than about ten things. A designed page with a payment link costs a third as much and looks better.
- Demand is unproven. Test with a payment link, a pre-order page or a marketplace before spending $3,500 on infrastructure for sales that may not exist.
- Nobody has time to run it. Orders, returns, stock and product content all need an owner. A store without one decays in months.
If any of those describe you, start smaller. The upgrade path from a five-page site to a store is straightforward. The path back from an abandoned store is just an invoice you regret.
If you want WooCommerce specifically
Plenty of people arrive knowing the platform already, usually because they run WordPress elsewhere or are inheriting a store someone else built. We build WooCommerce stores from scratch, and as a WordPress developer in Sydney we also repair, speed up and extend existing ones: broken checkouts, plugin conflicts, shipping rules that were never finished, GST that was never configured. If your store mostly works and mostly needs rescuing, that is a smaller job than a rebuild, and we will say so.
What we charge, published
Our online store build is $3,490 plus GST. It includes the design and build, payment gateway setup, GST configuration, shipping zones, and analytics that show you what sells, with twelve months of hosting, SSL and monitoring. Smaller builds start at $690 plus GST for a one-page site, $1,490 for a business site of up to five pages and $2,490 for a larger custom build; the full tiers are on the packages page and the rebuild packages page if you are replacing an existing site. Before any work starts you get a fixed written quote for your actual store, and that number does not move afterwards. You own the code, the domain and the hosting at the end, and our work page shows what the builds look like. If you are still weighing up a builder subscription instead, we compared the four big ones side by side.
Questions people actually ask
How much does an ecommerce website cost in Australia?
Most Australian studios that publish a number start online store builds at about $3,500. Ours is $3,490 plus GST, published, with a fixed written quote before work starts. On top of the build, budget for product photography, your payment gateway's per-sale fees and ongoing maintenance. The rented alternative is Shopify, which starts at $42 a month on an annual plan in Australia plus transaction fees on every sale, checked 2 September 2026.
Is WooCommerce or Shopify better for a small business?
Neither wins outright. Shopify has the best checkout in the business and suits real inventory with variants and stock levels, but you pay monthly forever and never own it. WooCommerce runs on your own WordPress site, costs once to build and belongs to you, but it is software you must keep updated. Under about ten products both are usually overkill, and a designed page with a payment link costs less and converts fine.
Do I have to charge GST on my online store?
Once your turnover reaches $75,000 a year you must register for GST, and prices shown to Australian consumers must be GST-inclusive. The store has to be configured for this: inclusive display, a 10 per cent tax rate, GST applied to shipping, and GST-free treatment for exempt goods such as basic food. Sales to overseas customers are generally GST-free exports. We set all of this up as part of every store build.
What does Shopify cost in Australia?
At Australian list prices checked 2 September 2026: Shopify Basic is $42 a month on an annual plan or $56 a month paying monthly, plus a card rate of 1.75 per cent and 30 cents, and a further 2 per cent fee on every sale if you use a payment gateway other than Shopify Payments. Grow is $114 a month annual and Advanced is $431 a month annual. Apps usually add their own monthly fees.
Do I actually need an online store?
Often not. If you sell services, a booking or quote flow converts better than a cart. If you sell a handful of products, a designed page with a payment link does the job for a fraction of the cost. Build a store when you have real inventory, repeat orders, and someone with the time to keep product data, stock and shipping rules current. If demand is unproven, test it cheaply first.
Ready to find out which of the three you actually need? Get a fixed quote or call 02 9161 8000. Sydney based, 18+ years, and if the honest answer is that you do not need a store yet, that is the answer you will get.