We are often asked “How much would Magento site cost?” and every time we answer: “It depends”. It all depends on the scope of work, on complexity of work, amount of products in database, number of people involved in project, security, SEO and performance requirements, integrations with other solutions etc. Most companies calculate the Magento solution price by estimating the amount of time the solution will take multiplied by an hourly rate. Of course, the rates can vary based on company location, market position, ambitions, interest in project or greed:) Estimated time for the same project can also greatly vary in different companies depending on experience, quality standards and developers qualification. Let’s review the major factors affecting Magento projects pricing:
Initial setup and configuration
It includes setting up Magento on development and production servers, sometimes server configuration, sometimes very advanced ones (setting up AWS environment, Varnish caching etc). Depending on requirements it may take from several hours to several days or even weeks.
Design
You can buy a ready design theme for $100 and go with it, or you can order a custom unique design created for your market niche and branding, with custom graphics and detailed UX roadmap — and it can also take anywhere from weeks to months.
Functionality
While Magento provides rich functionality that can cover 99% of clients webstore needs straight out of the box, there are always client requirements that require additional programming — it can be custom reports, product configurators, visual effects — anything. Potentially may take from days to many man-months.
Data import
Very often there is an existing site, that is 10 years old, and the client wants to transfer all the products, customers, orders, product reviews, old URLs accessible by Google etc. and even though there are automated tools that can handle some of these data transfers, usually they can’t do everything, so again some coding/data engineering is required — sometimes several hours, sometimes several weeks.
Integrations
Rarely your site is the single business standalone unit. More often it is part of a complex system, that includes ERP or POS software, warehouse/logistic software, supplier data feeds, Google Shopping or other price aggregators, Amazon, eBay or other trading platforms, and many more. All this needs to be set up correctly which can take anywhere from hours to months of work.
Store settings
Shipping and payment methods, tax and price settings are often standard, but sometimes can be quite advanced and may take several days to set up.
