Web Development
If you searched for "WordPress store", you're one of two people.
Either you want to build the store yourself and want to understand what you're getting into, or you want to pay someone to build it and are trying to figure out what it should cost. Both questions are valid. The problem is that most articles on this topic answer only one of them and leave you thinking an online store is either free or 30,000 euros. The truth, as usual, is somewhere in between.
Let's clear it up, with real numbers in RON, not estimates copied from an American blog where the average salary is ten times higher.
What a "WordPress store" actually is
Here's the first confusion worth clearing up. WordPress alone isn't a store. WordPress is the platform the site runs on. To sell products, you need a plugin called WooCommerce, which turns a regular WordPress site into a complete online store: cart, checkout, payments, invoicing, stock.
WooCommerce is free. That's the part that trips everyone up. Yes, you can install WordPress for free and WooCommerce for free and technically have a store. The same way you can buy flour and eggs and technically have a cake. The distance between "I have the ingredients" and "I have something that sells" is exactly what this article is about.
Option 1: you build it yourself
Let's be fair: it's doable. Millions of WooCommerce stores worldwide were started by people with no technical background. If you have time, patience, and a small catalog, it's a legitimate option.
Here's what you actually pay, even on the "free" route:
- Decent hosting: 300 - 900 RON per year. The 10-lei-a-month hosting will load your store in 6 seconds, and the customer leaves in 3.
- Domain: 50 - 120 RON per year.
- Premium theme: 200 - 400 RON, one time. Free themes look exactly like free themes.
- Premium plugins (invoicing, courier shipping, payments, product filters): 400 - 1,500 RON per year. Every feature that feels "normal" is often a paid plugin.
- Your time: 40 - 100 hours if it's your first store. At any reasonable hourly rate, that's the most expensive ingredient on the list - you just never see it on an invoice.
So the "free store" costs you, right out of the gate, somewhere around 1,000 - 3,000 RON a year in services, plus your most valuable resource. And that's before the first plugin conflicts with another and leaves you with a blank homepage on a Friday night.
I'm not saying this to discourage you. I'm saying it so you don't go into the project thinking it's free, because that's exactly where the problems start.
Option 2: an agency or freelancer builds it
Here you're buying two things: your time back and the absence of surprises. A professionally built store already comes with hosting configured, speed optimized, payments and couriers integrated, automatic invoicing, and ideally a bit of SEO baked into the structure, so people can actually find you on Google.
Real prices in Romania, in 2026, look roughly like this:
- Basic store (small catalog, well-configured premium theme, standard payments and shipping): 4,000 - 8,000 RON. Suited for a business just starting out, with 20 - 100 products.
- Mid-range store (custom design, courier and invoicing integrations, advanced filters, SEO-ready structure): 8,000 - 18,000 RON. This is where most serious businesses land.
- Complex store (custom functionality, large catalog, ERP or marketplace integrations, performance for high traffic): 18,000+ RON.
A good freelancer generally costs less than an agency, but you're buying a single person. If that person disappears, gets sick, or loses interest, your store disappears with them. An agency costs more because you're also paying for continuity, not just code.
You'll find our exact package prices on the pricing page, and if you want a number for your specific case, a short conversation is faster than any table.
How long it takes
A basic store, done well: 2 - 4 weeks. A mid-range one: 4 - 8 weeks. Complex: two months or more.
The counterintuitive part: the biggest delay is almost never the code. It's the content. Product photos, descriptions, prices, return policies. The developer can build the store in two weeks and then wait three months for your photos. If you want to launch fast, prepare the content before, not after.
The hidden costs no one tells you about upfront
An online store isn't a one-time expense. It's a living thing that needs maintenance, or it breaks down. These are the costs you discover around month three:
- Maintenance and updates: WordPress and WooCommerce ship updates constantly. Ignore them, and eventually a plugin becomes incompatible and something breaks. Usually checkout. Usually on a weekend with sales. That's exactly why maintenance service exists, and it's not a luxury.
- Security: WooCommerce stores are targets because they process payments. An unpatched store is an unlocked door.
- Backups: Without automatic backups, the first serious problem can wipe out months of work. The cost of a backup is tiny. The cost of not having one is your store.
- Annual renewals: Hosting, domain, plugin licenses. It adds up to a few hundred RON a year, guaranteed.
None of this is catastrophic. But if you budget assuming you pay once and you're done, reality hits exactly when you start selling.
Is WordPress the right choice for you?
Depends. WordPress with WooCommerce is unbeatable on flexibility and control: it's yours, you take it wherever you want, do whatever you want with it, and pay no commission on sales. In exchange, it demands more maintenance than a closed platform.
I won't rewrite the full comparison here, since we've already covered it in detail in two articles worth reading before you decide:
- WordPress vs Shopify vs Custom Site: What Should You Choose in 2026 - if you're torn between platforms.
- Wix vs WordPress: Which One Should You Choose for Your Business in 2026 - if an all-in-one solution is tempting you.
In short: if you want full control and scalability, WordPress. If you want maximum simplicity and can live with commissions and limits, Shopify. If your needs are very specific, custom. There's no universal answer, only the right answer for your business.
What a store that actually sells needs to have
A store that just "exists" and a store that brings in money are two different things. These aren't optional:
- Speed. Under 3 seconds to load, or you lose customers before they even see the product.
- Flawless mobile. Over 70% of purchases in Romania happen on a phone. If checkout is clunky on mobile, you have a beautiful catalog that doesn't sell.
- Short checkout. Every extra field at checkout means more abandoned carts.
- Payment methods people actually use: card, cash on delivery, maybe a payment link.
- Courier integration with automatic shipping cost calculation.
- SEO built into the structure, so your products show up in Google, not just in your head.
- Automatic invoicing, so you're not issuing every invoice by hand at 2am.
Common mistakes we see constantly
- The beautiful store that doesn't sell. Award-worthy design, zero conversions, because no one thought through the path from product to payment.
- Too many plugins. Every plugin is a security risk and a speed penalty. Twenty plugins installed "just in case" means a slow, fragile store.
- Zero maintenance. Works today, breaks in four months. It's not bad luck, it's math.
- Bad photos. The best store in the world with photos snapped in a rush on a phone sells like a dusty shelf.
Bottom line
A WordPress store can start from almost nothing or cost as much as a car. The difference isn't the platform, it's how seriously you approach it. The "free" route is real, but it costs you time and surprises. The professional route costs money upfront and saves you exactly the things that matter: time, sanity, and the customers you would have lost along the way.
If you want a store built to sell, not just to exist, take a look at what we offer on the WordPress online store page or tell us what you sell and we'll give you a real number, here.
Worth doing once, properly. Redoing it always costs more than doing it right the first time.
