How to start an ecommerce agency: a step-by-step plan

Starting an ecommerce agency comes down to a handful of decisions: who you serve, what you sell, which platform you build on and how you get paid. This plan takes them in order, with a deeper guide for each step.

What does an ecommerce agency do?

An ecommerce agency helps businesses sell online. Depending on the agency, that means setting up the store, designing it, adding products, connecting payments and delivery, bringing in shoppers through ads, search or email, and looking after the store once it’s live. Some agencies do all of it; many start with one part and add the rest.

There is plenty of demand. The US Census Bureau’s estimate for the second quarter of 2026, released on 18 August 2026, put e-commerce at 17.1 percent of all US retail sales, after seasonal adjustment. Behind that figure are many small businesses that want a shop and don’t want to build or run one themselves.

The steps below are the order we’d take them in. Each links to a longer guide in this series.

Step 1: Choose who you serve

A new agency wins faster with a clear answer to “who is this for?”. Pick one kind of client you understand, at least to start:

• A trade or product type, such as fashion, food, beauty or home goods. You learn what their shoppers ask and reuse that knowledge for every client.
• A business stage, such as sellers who take orders through social media or messaging and need their first proper shop.
• A place, such as retailers in your city or region, where meeting people face to face is your advantage.

A niche isn’t a cage. It makes your website, your examples and your first conversations sharper, and you can widen it later.

Step 2: Decide what you sell

Write down the services you’ll offer and keep the list short. A typical starting set:

• Store set-up: the shop itself, its design, pages and menus.
• Catalogue work: adding products, photos, sizes and colours, or moving them from an old shop.
• Payments and delivery: connecting the client’s payment account and delivery options.
• Running the store: a monthly plan that covers the shop and your support.
• Growth work: ads, search, email and content, priced separately.

Keep the shop plan and your own work apart. The shop is a monthly plan; design, content and marketing are services on top. A client can then move up a plan without renegotiating everything.

Step 3: Pick your business model

Most ecommerce agencies are paid in one of three ways: a fee per project, a monthly retainer for ongoing work, or a monthly plan per store. Each suits a different kind of agency, and many combine them. We compare them side by side in Ecommerce agency business models: project fees, retainers or monthly plans?.

Whatever you choose, plan for some income that repeats. An agency that only sells projects has to win new work every month just to stand still.

Step 4: Choose one platform to build on

Your platform decides how much of your time goes into building, maintaining and supporting stores. There are three broad options:

Pick one and build every client store on it. Working across several platforms means several sets of skills, logins and problems. Our checklist for comparing them is The best ecommerce platform for agencies, and if white label is new to you, start with White-label ecommerce: what it is and how agencies use it.

Step 5: Set your prices

A common pattern is a one-off set-up fee for the build, then a monthly plan for the shop and your support. The set-up fee pays for the work at the start; the monthly plan pays you for as long as the client stays. Our guides on charging clients monthly for an online store and ecommerce website pricing for agencies go into what to include and how to set the numbers.

Step 6: Sort out the business basics

Before your first invoice, set up the essentials: a registered business, a bank account, a simple client contract and your tax registration where it’s needed. Rules differ by country, so check them with an accountant or adviser. This article is an overview, not legal or tax advice.

Decide early, and write into your contract, who owns the client’s domain, store data and content, and what happens if they leave. Our guides for India, the United States and the UAE cover local points.

Step 7: Find your first clients

Your first clients usually come from people who already know you: past website clients, local businesses, people selling through social media. A sample store you can show in the first meeting does more than any brochure. See How to find your first ecommerce clients as a new agency.

Step 8: Win the work with a clear proposal

A good proposal restates the client’s goal in their words, shows exactly what they get, separates the set-up fee from the monthly plan and says who owns what. We’ve written a section-by-section guide: How to write an ecommerce website proposal that wins the client.

Step 9: Deliver every store the same way

A repeatable process keeps quality up and time down. A simple version:

1. Agree the plan and any services on top.
2. Create the store and invite the client as its owner.
3. Build the storefront and add the first products.
4. Connect payments, delivery and the client’s own domain.
5. Check the shop on a phone, place a test order, then publish.
6. Walk the client through their portal and send them your help links.

Step 10: Grow without growing your developer team

Once a few stores are running, growth comes from packaging, process and support staff rather than more code. How to scale an ecommerce agency without hiring more developers covers it in detail. If you’re a freelancer today, read From freelancer to agency: when to offer your own store platform first.

How DripFunnel fits into the plan

DripFunnel’s partner programme is a white-label ecommerce platform for agencies, and more than 75 partners across the globe run client stores on it. It covers steps 4, 5 and 9 of this plan:

• Your brand: your clients sign in to a merchant portal with your product name, logo, colours and support details, on your own address. See Put your brand on the merchant portal.
• Your prices: you build your own plans, with trials and monthly or yearly prices, and the console shows DripFunnel’s fee and what you keep on every price. See Create your plans and prices.
• Your stores: you create stores for clients and see each one’s plan, status and last month’s sales, but never their orders, customers or products. See Look after your stores.
• Your clients’ shops: DripFunnel’s AI builds the storefront from a plain description, and DripFunnel takes no fee on your clients’ orders. Card and online payments are available today to shops in India and the United States.

To join, you talk to us and we agree your contract, including the wholesale fee per store. You then complete a short setup checklist, which our team can do with you in a guided session, and we usually approve it within 2 business days. The steps are in Join the partner programme and go live. When you’re ready, tell us about the stores you plan to run.

Read next: the full series on starting an agency

• Ecommerce agency business models: project fees, retainers or monthly plans?: how each way of being paid works, and how to combine them.
• How to find your first ecommerce clients as a new agency: where to look, what to show and what to ask.
• How to write an ecommerce website proposal that wins the client: the sections to include and the mistakes to avoid.
• How to scale an ecommerce agency without hiring more developers: packages, processes and one platform for every client.
• From freelancer to agency: when to offer your own store platform: the signs you’re ready, and a plan for the first 90 days.

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