Ask three agencies to quote a webshop and you can end up with three numbers a factor of ten apart: one comes back at three thousand euros, another at twelve thousand, a third at forty. All three quotes can be honest. A webshop is not one product with one price — it is a catalog, a checkout, a payment integration, a design, and usually a connection to whatever system already runs your invoicing or stock, and each of those pieces can be small or large independently of the others.
This guide walks through what actually drives the cost of a webshop for a Dutch SME in 2026, what a build project looks like once you commission one, what a compliant checkout has to get right, and what to prepare before you call a developer.
Platform, open-source, or fully custom
Most SME webshops fall into one of three categories, and the choice matters more for cost than almost anything else.
A hosted platform (the Shopify-style model: subscription software, hosting and updates included) gets you live fastest and needs the least in-house technical maintenance, at the cost of an ongoing subscription and less flexibility to do something the platform was not built for.
An open-source storefront (the WooCommerce-style model: a plugin on top of a content management system you host yourself) trades a lower recurring cost for more setup and maintenance work — someone has to keep the underlying software patched, and hosting is your own responsibility.
A fully custom build makes sense only when your catalog, pricing logic or checkout flow genuinely does not fit either model — configurable products with pricing rules no plugin supports, for example, or a webshop that needs to share a live product database with an existing warehouse system. For a standard catalog with standard payment and shipping needs, custom development is usually the expensive way to reach the same result a platform already gives you.
What actually determines the price
Within any of the three routes, the same variables move the price up or down:
- Catalog size and structure. Fifty simple products cost far less to set up than two thousand products with variants (size, colour, material), because every variant multiplies the data that has to be modelled, imported and kept in sync.
- Design. A configured template costs a fraction of a fully custom design built around your brand from scratch.
- Integrations. A payment provider is close to a given. Shipping carriers, an existing accounting package, a warehouse or stock system, and a CRM each add integration work, and the cost of an integration depends entirely on whether the other system offers a documented, supported connection or needs custom work to talk to your webshop at all.
- Multilingual and multi-currency support, if you sell beyond the Dutch market.
- Expected traffic and performance requirements — a shop expecting a flash-sale spike needs infrastructure a low-traffic catalog does not.
Byteet's own 2026 price bands
These are our own estimates for a Dutch SME project in 2026, based on the scope categories above, not a quote lifted from any single vendor or platform's pricing page — treat them as a planning range, not a fixed price, since your own catalog and integrations will move you up or down within a band.
| Project type | What it typically includes | Typical build cost |
|---|---|---|
| Starter shop | Template-based platform, under 100 products, standard payment provider, no custom integrations | EUR 2,500 - 6,000 |
| SME shop | Custom design on a platform or open-source base, a few hundred products, one or two integrations (accounting export, one shipping carrier) | EUR 7,000 - 15,000 |
| Extended shop | 1,000+ products, multiple integrations (ERP or stock system, multiple carriers), multilingual | EUR 15,000 - 35,000 |
| Complex or custom platform | Fully custom logic, high traffic requirements, multiple sales channels or a live link to warehouse systems | EUR 35,000 - 80,000+ |
On top of the build price, budget separately for hosting, payment transaction fees and ongoing maintenance — typically a few hundred euros a month for a starter or SME shop, more once the catalog, traffic or integrations grow. A quote that only covers launch day and says nothing about what happens afterward is not a complete quote.
What a build project actually looks like
- Discovery. Your product catalog, target customers, and required integrations get mapped before any design work starts — skipping this is the most common reason a "fixed price" quote balloons later.
- Design. Category and product pages, the cart and the checkout flow are reviewed as clickable mockups before development starts, since a checkout redesigned after launch costs far more than one caught on a mockup.
- Build and integration. The storefront, payment provider, shipping and back-office integrations get built and connected, usually in stages so working pieces can be reviewed as they land rather than all at once at the end.
- Testing. Orders, payment failures, stock running out mid-checkout, and edge cases like partial refunds get tested with real scenarios, not just the happy path.
- Launch and handover. You receive access to every account and system involved — hosting, payment provider, the platform itself — plus documentation, so switching developers later never means starting from nothing.
What to prepare before you call a developer
A quote is only as good as what you can tell the developer up front:
- Your product data, even in a rough spreadsheet — names, prices, variants, images. Whoever quotes without seeing this is guessing at the catalog-size variable above.
- A payment provider decision, or at least the shortlist — this affects both cost and which platforms are realistic options.
- Your shipping and fulfilment process as it runs today, since "how orders actually leave the building" often turns out to be more complex than founders describe it from memory.
- Any existing system the shop must talk to — accounting software, a stock system, a CRM — and whether that system has a documented way for other software to connect to it.
Checkout design and the AVG
A webshop checkout collects personal data by definition — name, address, email, payment details — which puts it squarely under the Algemene verordening gegevensbescherming (AVG), the Dutch implementation of the EU's data protection regulation. Two points from the rules as they actually stand are worth building into the checkout from day one, not retrofitting later.
First, the legal basis for collecting that data during checkout is normally straightforward: the AVG recognises processing data as necessary "for the performance of a contract" as one of six lawful grounds, and completing an order is exactly that case. The limit that comes with it is equally direct — only data actually needed to fulfil and deliver the order falls under that basis. A field asking for a customer's date of birth, added because it might be useful for marketing later, needs its own legal basis (typically consent), not the order itself.
Second, don't design the checkout to require account creation as a default. In December 2025, the Autoriteit Persoonsgegevens published European Data Protection Board guidance stating that requiring an account before a one-off purchase is, in most cases, not necessary and sits awkwardly with the AVG's principle of collecting no more data than a purpose requires — the guidance recommends offering guest checkout as the privacy-friendly default, reserving mandatory accounts for cases like a subscription or a members-only area. That guidance was still open for public consultation when published, with a deadline of 12 February 2026, so treat it as the direction regulators are heading rather than a settled rule. Either way, building guest checkout as the default costs nothing extra in a new build and tends to reduce cart abandonment too.
Beyond the checkout itself, the general AVG obligations that already apply to any business handling customer data apply here too: collect no more than necessary, restrict who inside your business can see it, don't keep it longer than the purpose requires, and have a plan for reporting a data breach if one happens. None of this is webshop-specific — it is the baseline every Dutch business handling personal data already operates under.
What to settle in the contract
- Ownership of the store and its data. Confirm in writing that you own the product catalog, design and customer data the moment the project is paid for — not a licence to use a platform someone else controls.
- Who holds the accounts. Hosting, the payment provider account, the domain and the platform login should be registered in your company's name, not the developer's personal account, so you are never locked out of your own store.
- A maintenance arrangement, not just a handover. Decide before launch who patches a security update, who fixes a bug found in week three, and what a support response time looks like.
- A data processing agreement, if the developer or their hosting partner will process customer personal data on your behalf after launch — which is the normal case for a hosted webshop. This sits under the same AVG that governs your checkout, and it belongs in the contract before development starts, not after the shop is live.
FAQ
How much does it cost to build a webshop? For a Dutch SME in 2026, a straightforward template shop typically runs EUR 2,500 to 6,000, a custom-designed shop with a few integrations EUR 7,000 to 15,000, and a large or highly integrated shop upward of EUR 15,000. Hosting, transaction fees and maintenance are separate, recurring costs.
What's the difference between having a webshop built and building it yourself? A do-it-yourself platform costs less upfront and gets you live faster, but you configure and maintain it yourself. Having a developer build or configure it costs more but gets you a design and integrations matched to your actual catalog, plus someone accountable when something breaks.
Do I have to make customers create an account? Current guidance from data protection regulators points the other way: for a one-off purchase, requiring an account is generally unnecessary, and offering guest checkout as the default is recommended.
How long does it take to build a webshop? A starter shop on a template platform can go live in a few weeks. An SME shop with custom design and a couple of integrations typically takes six to ten weeks. A large or highly integrated shop can take three months or more, depending on how many external systems it connects to.
Do I need a data processing agreement for a webshop? If your developer or their hosting partner processes customer personal data on your behalf — the case for almost any hosted webshop — yes, and it should be in place before the shop takes its first order.
Get a scope, not just a price
A quote is only worth comparing once the scope behind it is clear — catalog size, which integrations, and who owns what after launch. Our Web & Software Development team scopes webshop projects against your actual catalog and systems, and tells you honestly when a template platform is the better answer. Once customer and payment data start flowing through checkout, our Cybersecurity & Identity team can review the data processing agreement and access setup before you sign anything. If you're also weighing a custom build over a platform, our guide on custom software development cost covers that broader decision.