Starting an e-commerce business: costs, platforms and steps not to skip

A maker of natural cosmetics writes to us through the contact form: she has a workshop, a small shop in town and a good base of loyal customers. She wants to open an online shop “by Christmas” and asks how much the website costs. On the call we find out that she hasn’t yet worked out what she keeps on a 35-euro order shipped to Sicily, that she doesn’t know who will pack the parcels and that her product pages don’t show the warnings for use. In this picture, the website is the easiest part.

The short answer: starting an e-commerce business means starting a business, not just publishing a website. First come the numbers, that is the margin left on an order after shipping, fees and returns, and how much you can spend to win a customer. Then you choose the platform, payments and logistics, and you sort out the VAT number, consumer information, right of withdrawal, privacy, VAT on sales abroad, product safety and accessibility. Launch is only the start: in the first 90 days you bring in traffic, measure and fix.

I handle the first calls with companies that want to sell online and I prepare the quotes. Here I lay out the path we explain most often, in the order it’s best tackled. It isn’t a platform comparison: we’ll come back to that in a dedicated article.

Where do you start when opening an online shop?

You start from the business model, not the theme. There are four questions to settle before asking for a quote.

What you sell, and to whom. A catalogue of 30 own-brand products sold to consumers is a different project from 3,000 items by other brands or a price list for trade customers. If you sell to other businesses, with customer-specific prices and repeat orders, the rules change a lot.

Why anyone should buy from you. Price, a product you can’t find elsewhere, service, expertise. If the same item is on Amazon for less with next-day delivery, your shop needs another reason to exist.

Through which channels. Your own website, marketplaces or both. The website leaves you the margin, the customer data and the brand; the marketplace brings people who are already searching, in exchange for fees and its own rules. If you’re considering Amazon, the numbers and the choices are in the guide on how to sell on Amazon.

Who works on it every day. Uploading products, answering customers, packing parcels, handling returns, running campaigns. If the answer is “a bit of everyone, when there’s time”, the problem shows up at the first peak in orders.

How do you work out the margin before opening?

You start from the selling price and subtract, one by one, every cost an order brings with it. What’s left is the contribution margin per order: the amount that pays for advertising, people and the shop’s fixed costs.

An example made up for illustration, for an average order of 45 euros including Italian VAT:

Item	Amount per order	Notes
Price paid by the customer	€45.00	22% VAT included
VAT to pay over	−€8.11	€36.89 net remains
Product cost	−€12.00	Raw materials, packaging, production
Packing	−€1.20	Box, filler, tape
Shipping	−€6.50	If you offer it free, it’s all on you
Payment fee	−€0.93	Example with 1.5% + €0.25
Returns and refunds	−€1.10	Estimate on a small share of orders
Contribution margin	€15.16	Before advertising, people and subscriptions

Those 15 euros are the ceiling on what you can spend to bring in an order. If a campaign costs 20 euros per first purchase, you only make money if the customer comes back. That can be fine, but it has to be a choice with a written number: how many times they need to buy again for the sums to work.

Two practical consequences. With a low average order, every euro of shipping weighs heavily, which is why many shops offer multi-packs. And anyone selling products people buy again, such as cosmetics, coffee or food, can spend more to win a customer than someone selling an item bought once every five years. In food, repeat purchase is the heart of the project, as the article on the sales funnel for a food e-commerce business explains.

How much does it really cost to start an e-commerce business?

The cost of the website is only part, often not the biggest, of the first year. Costs fall into three groups: the ones you pay once, the ones that come back every month and the ones that grow with sales.

Group	Typical items	How they move
One-off	Shop design and development, product pages, photos, payment and shipping setup, connection to the management software, legal texts	They rise with the number of products and variants, languages and integrations
Recurring	Platform subscription or hosting, apps and extensions, domain, maintenance, cookie consent tool, email marketing	You pay them even in months when you sell little
Variable	Payment fees, shipping, packing, returns, marketplace fees	They grow with orders
Getting found	Campaigns, content, SEO, creators if any	You decide them, but without this item the shop stays empty

For the build itself the same logic applies as for a company website, plus catalogue, payments, shipping and the warehouse connection: I explained the price ranges and how to compare two quotes in the article on how much a website costs. Here I’ll add the item that’s almost always missing from the quotes we see: the budget to bring in the first visitors.

An example made up for illustration, for 60 products, one language and the management software connected:

First-year item	Indicative amount
Shop build, product pages and photos	€9,000
Platform subscription, apps and domain	€1,000
Maintenance and small jobs	€1,200
Legal texts, cookie consent, initial tax advice	€1,000
Campaigns and content in the first 6 months	€9,000
Total before sales	€21,200

Fees, shipping and packing aren’t there because they’re already in the margin calculation. The point is the proportion: putting the whole budget into the website and nothing into campaigns means opening a nice shop on a street nobody walks down.

Which platform should you choose for an online shop?

For an SME the choice almost always comes down to a subscription platform, such as Shopify, or a solution installed on your own hosting, such as WooCommerce on WordPress. Then there are the rarer cases where custom development makes sense. We’ll look at the detailed differences in the dedicated comparison; here the criteria we use to decide on the first call are enough.

• Who will run the shop. If a non-technical person will upload products and handle orders, an easy back office matters more than freedom over the code.
• What it needs to talk to. Management software, warehouse, marketplaces, CRM. Before choosing, check that there’s a reliable connection with the tools you already use.
• How the cost grows. A subscription platform has a monthly fee and sometimes fees on sales. Shopify, for example, adds a fee if you use an external payment provider instead of Shopify Payments: it’s 2% on the Basic plan and lower on the higher plans. In October 2026 Shopify Italy’s pricing page lists €27 a month for Basic, €74 for Grow and €384 for Advanced, dropping to €19, €56 and €289 a month with annual billing. A solution on your own hosting has no platform fees, but it costs in maintenance, updates and security.

A piece of advice we often give: start with the simplest version that will carry your first 12-18 months, with exportable data. Choosing today for the shop you might have in five years costs time and money and gives nothing back.

Which payment methods do you need and what do they cost?

You need the methods your customers expect to find, and nothing more. For a shop selling to consumers in Italy the basics are credit and debit cards, wallets such as Apple Pay and Google Pay, and PayPal. Bank transfer and cash on delivery can be added if your audience asks for them, bearing in mind that cash on delivery brings costs and refused parcels.

Fees vary by provider and card type. Two public references, always to be checked on the date you sign:

• Stripe lists on its pricing page for Italy 1.5% + €0.25 for standard European Economic Area cards, with higher rates for premium cards and cards issued outside the EEA.
• PayPal lists in its merchant fees 3.40% plus a fixed fee of €0.35 for domestic commercial transactions in euros, with a surcharge for payments from outside the EEA.

On the 45-euro order in the example, the difference between the two is about one euro, which over a thousand orders a year becomes a visible line.

Always ask the provider about payout times and the cost of disputes and refunds as well. Buy now, pay later has higher fees than cards: it’s worth testing once you have the data to tell whether it brings extra orders.

How do you organise shipping, warehousing and returns?

Logistics is what the customer sees most after the website. There are three basic choices: who packs the parcels, with which carrier and with what rules on costs and returns.

Model	How it works	When it makes sense
In-house	You pack the parcels at your premises and the carrier collects them	Few orders a day, delicate or personalised products
Third-party logistics	An external warehouse receives the goods, packs and ships	Growing orders, seasonal peaks, little space at your premises
Marketplace with its own logistics	The marketplace stores and ships, for example Amazon with FBA	Marketplace sales, with the platform’s costs and rules

Whatever the model, decide four numbers and write them on the website: preparation time, delivery time by area, shipping cost and the free-shipping threshold, calculated on the margin. Choose the carrier on failed deliveries, damage and fragile items too, not just on price.

Returns should be designed before launch: who pays for the return, how a return is requested, who checks the product and when the refund goes out. A clear rule, written in the terms and repeated on the product page, cuts requests to customer service and reassures first-time buyers.

What are the legal obligations for opening an online shop in Italy?

The main obligations cover seven areas: business and tax, consumer information, withdrawal and guarantee, privacy and cookies, VAT on sales within the EU, product safety and accessibility. We’re talking here about the Italian framework. We’re neither a law firm nor accountants: this is a map so you know what to ask them, not advice.

VAT number, ATECO code and tax regime

If you sell online on a regular basis you need a business, with a VAT number (partita IVA), registration in the Business Register and, for retail, a SCIA (certified notice of start of business) to the municipality, sent to the one-stop shop for business activities (SUAP) together with the Chamber of Commerce start-up filing. The exception is a craft business (impresa artigiana) selling its own products online, which doesn’t need to file it. On the ATECO code, the Italian classification of economic activities, there’s a change worth knowing: with the ATECO 2025 classification, adopted operationally from 1 April 2025, the retail code is chosen based on what you sell and no longer on the channel. Many guides online still quote the old “47.91.10, retail via the internet”, but under ATECO 2025 that code means a different activity: intermediation in the retail sale of second-hand goods, without taking ownership of them. Someone reselling cosmetics online, for example, uses the same code as a cosmetics shop, 47.75.00. Check with your accountant which code matches your products, because the tax regime and contributions depend on it too.

Consumer information, withdrawal and guarantee

The Italian Consumer Code requires that before purchase the customer can find who you are, how to contact you, the total price with delivery costs, payment methods, delivery times and the withdrawal terms. A consumer buying online has 14 days to withdraw without giving a reason, starting from delivery for goods (article 52), and the seller must refund within 14 days of the withdrawal (article 56). If the information on withdrawal is missing, the period is extended by 12 months. On top of that there’s the legal guarantee of conformity: the seller is liable for defects that appear within two years of delivery.

A useful note for anyone reusing an old template of terms of sale: since 20 July 2025 the European online dispute resolution platform has been closed by Regulation (EU) 2024/3228, and with it the obligation to link to it from the website.

Privacy and cookies

You need a privacy notice that is clear about what data you collect and why and, if you use profiling cookies or the advertising platforms’ tools, consent before switching them on. The Italian Data Protection Authority’s cookie guidelines require a banner that lets people continue without tracking, for example by closing it with the X, and forbid justifying tracking cookies on legitimate interest. The banner must be connected to the tags from day one: adding it later means months of incomplete data.

VAT on sales to other EU countries

If you ship to consumers in other EU countries, there’s an annual threshold of 10,000 euros, calculated net of VAT on total distance sales to other EU countries, in the previous year and the current one: below it, the seller’s country’s VAT applies; above it, the customer’s country’s. To avoid registering for VAT in every country there’s the OSS scheme (One Stop Shop), which lets you declare and pay everything in your own country with a quarterly return: it’s explained in the Agenzia delle Entrate answers on the OSS scheme. Before opening shipping abroad, you also need to set up VAT calculation by country in the platform.

Product safety

Since 13 December 2024 Regulation (EU) 2023/988 on general product safety, known as GPSR, has applied. For online sales, article 19 requires the offer to show clearly the manufacturer’s details, that is name and postal and electronic address, those of the responsible person in the EU if the manufacturer is outside the Union, information to identify the product including a picture, and the safety warnings in an easily understood language. In practice these are extra fields on the product page, to be planned in the catalogue before uploading products. Cosmetics, food, toys and electronics also have their own sector rules.

Accessibility

European Directive 2019/882, transposed in Italy by Legislative Decree 82/2022, has made accessibility mandatory since 28 June 2025 for e-commerce services aimed at consumers. Microenterprises providing services, with fewer than 10 people and annual turnover or balance sheet up to 2 million euros, are exempt. Even where it isn’t required, a shop that can be used with a keyboard and a screen reader sells to more people.

What do you need before going live?

Before launch it’s worth having the shop tested by someone who didn’t build it. The list we use:

Catalogue

• Every product has a title, description, price, photos, variants, stock and, where needed, warnings and the manufacturer’s details.

Purchase

• A test order for every payment method, with a test refund.
• Confirmation, shipping and refund emails written and checked.
• Correct shipping costs for every area, islands included.

Pages and rules

• Terms of sale, withdrawal, shipping and returns, privacy and cookies published and linked in the footer and the cart.
• Company details, VAT number and contacts visible.

Measurement

• Purchases tracked in Google Analytics 4 and in the ad platforms, in line with consent.
• The catalogue is ready for Google: how to prepare the feed and fix the most common errors is explained in our guide to Google Merchant Center.

Phone

• Product pages and cart open quickly and checkout can be completed smoothly on a phone.

What should you do in the first 90 days after launch?

On launch day the shop has zero reviews, zero history and zero visits from Google. The first three months are for bringing people in, understanding where they stop and fixing it. A typical plan:

Period	Goal	What you do
Days 1-30	First orders and first data	Tell the customers you already have (shop, newsletter, social), search and Google Shopping campaigns for people already looking for your products, daily checks on orders, payments and shipping
Days 31-60	Understand where people drop off	Review product pages, cart and checkout, first automated emails (welcome, abandoned cart), review requests after delivery, a test Meta campaign to get known
Days 61-90	Decide where to invest	Cost per order by channel compared with the margin, first repeat purchases, fixes to the pages that lose the most, plan for the coming peaks

Three numbers to check every week, the same ones we use for established shops: how many people arrive, how many buy and how many come back. When one of the three is weak, that’s where the work goes. If visits come in but nobody buys, before raising the budget it’s worth working on the pages: the levers are in the article on e-commerce conversion rate.

On timing: SEO for a new shop takes months. In the first 90 days traffic comes mainly from existing customers, campaigns and word of mouth, which is why the campaign budget has to be planned before launch.

If you sell to consumers, also take a look at the typical challenges of the sector, from Christmas to marketplaces to the second purchase, which we gather on the page for businesses in B2C e-commerce.

Mistakes to avoid

Starting from the website instead of the numbers. Without the margin per order you don’t know how much you can spend to win a customer, and every decision after that becomes a guess.

Putting the whole budget into the build. A shop with no budget to get known stays empty. Set aside a share for the first months of campaigns and content.

Copying terms of sale from another website. Withdrawal, returns, shipping and guarantee must describe what you actually do. An old template may contain obligations that no longer exist and miss new ones.

Leaving product pages without the required information. Warnings, manufacturer details and safety information should be planned in the catalogue from the start. Adding them to hundreds of products after launch is double the work.

Putting off measurement. If purchases and consent aren’t tracked from day one, the first three months, the most instructive ones, are left without data.

Want to open an online shop starting from the right numbers?

On the first call we start from what you sell, to whom and with what margins, then we send you a quote broken down item by item, with recurring costs in writing and an estimate of how much to set aside to bring in the first customers. We build shops on Shopify and WooCommerce connected to management software, marketplaces, campaigns and automated emails, and we also handle what comes after launch: you’ll find it on the page on e-commerce development in Turin and on the Websites and e-commerce service page.

You can book a call with Federico or write to us through the contact form.

Frequently asked questions

How much does it cost to start an e-commerce business from scratch?

It depends on the number of products, languages, integrations and how much you invest to get known. On top of the build you need to budget for the platform subscription, apps, maintenance, tax and legal advice and a campaign budget for the first months. Fees, shipping and packing grow with orders and belong in the margin calculation.

Do you need a VAT number to sell online?

Yes, if selling is regular and organised. In Italy you need a VAT number, registration in the Business Register and, for retail, a SCIA to the municipality, which craft businesses selling their own products are exempt from. Under the ATECO 2025 classification, the ATECO code is chosen based on the products sold: it’s best defined with your accountant.

Is it better to open your own website or sell on marketplaces?

It isn’t an either-or choice. A marketplace brings people who are already searching, but it takes fees and sets the rules. Your own website leaves you the margin, customer data and brand, but traffic has to be built. Many companies use both, with prices and ranges designed so they don’t compete with themselves.

How long does it take to see the first results?

The first orders can come in the first few weeks, mainly from existing customers and search campaigns. To understand which channels pay off you usually need at least two or three months of data. SEO for a new shop takes longer.

Can I sell online abroad from day one?

Yes, but each country adds shipping, language, customer service and VAT. Above 10,000 euros a year of distance sales to consumers in the EU, the customer’s country’s VAT applies, which can be handled with the OSS scheme. Many shops start in their home country and open one country at a time when the numbers work.