Ecommerce website pricing for agencies: a set-up fee plus a monthly plan

How much should an agency charge for an ecommerce website? Split it in two: a one-off set-up fee for the work of launching the shop, and a monthly plan for running it. Here is how to price each part.

“How much do you charge for an online store?” is the question every agency gets, and a single number is the wrong answer. A shop has a beginning, when someone has to design it, fill it and connect it, and a long middle, when it has to keep working. Pricing both with one project fee leaves you paid once for a job that never ends.

This guide shows how to split ecommerce website pricing into a set-up fee and a monthly plan, and how to price each part. It belongs to our series on earning monthly from client stores; the overview is how to charge clients monthly for an online store, and what to include. All amounts below are examples without a currency, not DripFunnel prices.

Why split the price in two?

The two parts pay for different things. The set-up fee pays for work that happens once: design, product import, training. The monthly plan pays for the shop staying online, up to date and looked after. Separating them helps you and the client:

• The client sees a smaller first number, which makes the decision easier.
• You are paid for the long middle, not just the launch.
• Each part can change on its own. A client who adds 500 products later pays for that import, without reopening the monthly price.

What goes into the set-up fee?

List the steps of launching a shop and estimate each one. A typical list:

1. A short discovery call: what the client sells, to whom, and how they take orders today.
2. The storefront: pages, menus, colours and product pages.
3. Products: importing an existing catalogue, or entering a new one, with photos and versions such as sizes and colours.
4. Payments and delivery: connecting the ways shoppers pay and how orders are shipped.
5. The domain: connecting the client’s own address to the shop.
6. Training: a call that shows the client how to add products and handle an order.

Then price it from your hours. An example: discovery 1 hour, storefront 3 hours, product import 4 hours, payments and domain 1 hour, training 1 hour: 10 hours. At an example rate of 60 an hour that is 600. Add anything you pay for, such as photography, and round to a package price.

Packages by catalogue size are easier to sell than hourly quotes. The client compares three clear options instead of guessing how long you’ll take.

How do you price the monthly plan?

The monthly plan has a floor and a ceiling. The floor is what each store costs you: the platform’s fee for the store, plus the support and change time you include. The ceiling is what the client already spends every month on their shop, apps, hosting and the odd developer invoice.

As an example of that ceiling, WooCommerce’s own pricing page says the plugin is free, but estimates hosting at $25 to $350 a month for most stores and extensions at $29 to $299 a year each. A client on a self-hosted shop also pays someone to keep it updated. We look at that bill in detail in the real cost of running WooCommerce sites for clients.

Price close to the ceiling when your plan includes real time and knowledge, and nearer the floor for a plain shop with email support. What a good plan contains is covered in how agencies can sell online stores as a monthly service. How the floor works on a white-label platform, store by store, is in agency margin maths: the wholesale fee, your price and what you keep.

A worked example: the client’s first three years

Judge a price by the client’s value over time, not by the first invoice. Take one example client on the “Move” package and an example plan of 59 a month:

Over three years the monthly plan brings in more than three times the set-up fee. That changes how you negotiate. Cutting the set-up fee to win the client can make sense; cutting the monthly price rarely does, because you give that discount every month for as long as the client stays.

Should you waive the set-up fee?

Sometimes. A common trade is a lower or no set-up fee in return for a 12-month commitment, or for paying the plan yearly in advance. That works when the monthly plan covers your costs from the first month and the client is likely to stay. It doesn’t work for clients who are still testing an idea: for them, a free trial on a small plan is safer than a free set-up.

How to present the price to the client

• Show both parts on one page: the set-up package and the monthly plan, with what each includes.
• Show what the client stops paying for, such as separate hosting, apps or maintenance invoices.
• Offer a yearly price next to the monthly one, with the saving written out.
• Keep extras separate: ads, photography and campaigns on their own line.

If you are writing the whole proposal, see how to write an ecommerce website proposal that wins the client. For clients who already paid you for a website and now need a reason to pay monthly, read moving existing clients from one-off projects to monthly plans.

How DripFunnel makes both parts easier to price

With DripFunnel’s white-label partner programme, used by more than 75 partners across the globe, the shop runs under your brand and at your prices, and several set-up steps take less of your time:

• The storefront: DripFunnel’s AI builds the homepage, pages, menus and product pages from a plain-words description of the shop, which you can write together with the client in the discovery call (Set up your brand and pick a template, Describe a change to your storefront). It can be previewed on desktop, tablet and phone, and nothing goes live until it’s published.
• Products: a Shopify import brings products, versions and photos (not collections, tags, vendor or type), and a spreadsheet import works from a template (Import from Shopify, Import from a spreadsheet).
• The monthly plan: you set monthly and yearly prices in each currency your contract allows. The console shows DripFunnel’s wholesale fee and what you keep on each price, and when you create a store for a client the form shows the price they will pay (Create your plans).
• No fee on orders: DripFunnel takes no fee on your clients’ sales. Shoppers pay the client through the client’s own payment account, so the client’s plan price doesn’t grow with their orders.

New to white-label? Start with what white-label ecommerce is and how agencies use it. Ready to work out your own prices with us? Become a partner.

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