Quick answer
A Singapore ecommerce website typically costs S$1,500–S$6,000 to build on Shopify or WooCommerce, S$8,000–S$20,000 with custom design and integrations, and S$25,000+ fully custom. A small store then pays about S$2,700–S$9,400 a year to run, plus payment fees of roughly 3–4% of card sales.
What it costs at a glance (SGD, 2026)
Build bands from Aspire’s August 2026 ecommerce cost guide; running costs are our totals of the published prices set out below, checked on 1 November 2026.
This guide is for Singapore business owners about to get quotes for an online store, or checking whether a quote is fair. Most price guides stop at the build. Here you will also see the monthly running costs, the payment fees, how GST and price display rules affect you, and a worked year-one total for a typical small store.
We write from the building side. Adssential Marketing, a Singapore digital growth agency, has designed and built close to 800 websites since 2018, mainly on WordPress and also on Shopify, Magento, Drupal and Webflow.
How much does it cost to build an ecommerce website in Singapore?
Expect S$1,500 to S$6,000 for a basic store on a platform, S$8,000 to S$20,000 for a mid-level store with custom design and integrations, and S$25,000 to S$50,000 or more for a custom or enterprise build. Those are the bands in Aspire’s guide to ecommerce website costs in Singapore (August 2026), and they match what we see in the market.
The same guide gives typical timelines of 2 to 4 weeks for a basic store and 6 to 12 weeks for a mid-level one. Our own standard builds take 1 to 2 weeks and larger or custom builds 6 to 8 weeks; our guide to how long a website takes to build in Singapore explains what speeds a project up or slows it down. For general website pricing outside ecommerce, see our full website cost guide for 2026.
What pushes a store into the next price band?
- Catalogue size and variants. Fifty products with one size each is a small job. Five hundred products with sizes, colours and bundles needs careful data work and filters.
- Integrations. Every system the store must talk to (accounting, stock, a courier, a marketplace) adds set-up and testing time.
- Custom design and selling rules. Designing every page from scratch, subscriptions, trade prices or made-to-order products all need extra work.
- Content. Ask whether the quote includes loading product photos and descriptions, or whether you are expected to do it.
What does each platform cost to run every month?
On Shopify, a Singapore store pays from S$29 a month on yearly billing; on WooCommerce the software is free but you pay for hosting. That headline difference is smaller than it looks, because both need apps or plugins, and payment fees usually cost more than either.
Sources: Shopify’s Singapore pricing page, WooCommerce pricing (extension prices carry no stated currency, so treat them as US dollars) and the Aspire guide for hosting and other builders. Prices change, so check them on the day you budget.
Most stores also add apps or plugins for reviews, email, shipping labels or product options; Aspire puts this at about S$50 to S$300 a month. Each one is small, so nobody adds them up until the card statement arrives. Ask for a list of every paid app the build relies on, with its renewal price.
How much will payment fees cost your store?
In our worked example below, payment fees are the largest running cost. At published Singapore rates, a local card payment costs between 2.8% and 3.9% of the order plus S$0.50, while PayNow costs between 0.65% plus S$0.30 and 1.3%, depending on the provider and order size.
The fixed S$0.50 matters more than people expect. On an S$80 order, Stripe’s local card fee is S$3.22, or 4% of the sale; on an S$300 order it is about 3.6%. Small baskets lose a bigger share.
One Shopify detail matters here. Its pricing page lists an extra fee when you use a third-party payment provider instead of Shopify Payments: 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow and 0.6% on Advanced. Shopify’s Singapore help page does not list PayNow among the Shopify Payments methods, so if you add PayNow through another provider on the Basic plan, check in your store admin whether that 2% applies to those orders before you assume PayNow is the cheap option.
For features and set-up, see our comparison of payment gateways for Singapore businesses.
📊 Field data and verified research
On S$10,000 of monthly card sales at an average order of S$80, Shopify Payments’ published Basic rate of 3.2% + S$0.50 comes to S$4,590 a year (Shopify Singapore pricing). That is more than thirteen times the S$348 a year the Basic plan itself costs on yearly billing. For a small Singapore store, the gateway and the payment mix you encourage at checkout move the yearly bill more than the choice of plan.
What running costs do store owners usually forget?
The costs that catch owners out are the recurring ones nobody put in the quote: the domain, app renewals, maintenance, shipping set-up and the marketing that brings the first customers. None is large on its own; together they often exceed the platform fee.
Domain, app and maintenance ranges are from the Aspire guide. Maintenance matters more on WooCommerce, where plugin and WordPress updates are your responsibility, but Shopify stores also need someone to manage apps, theme changes and fixes. Our website maintenance service covers both one-off fixes and ongoing care.
Marketing is the cost most often left at zero, yet a new store has no visitors on launch day. Product pages written to rank, through search engine optimisation, build traffic slowly but keep paying back, while Google Ads can bring buyers in the first week if tracking shows which products sell. Put a number against marketing before you approve the build budget.
What does year one cost for a typical small Singapore store?
For a small store selling about S$10,000 a month, year one comes to roughly S$8,000 to S$19,500 including the build, and about S$6,500 to S$13,500 a year after that. Payment fees and maintenance make up most of the running cost.
The worked example below uses only the published prices above. These are our assumptions, so change them to match your own store:
- 50 products, sold only in Singapore, in Singapore dollars.
- S$10,000 of sales a month (S$120,000 a year), at an average order of S$80: about 125 orders a month, or 1,500 a year.
- A basic platform build at Aspire’s S$1,500 to S$6,000 band, a .com.sg domain, and apps, plugins and basic maintenance at Aspire’s ranges.
- Store A takes every payment by local card through Shopify Payments on the Basic plan, billed yearly. Store B runs WooCommerce with Stripe, with 70% of orders paid by card and 30% by PayNow.
- The business is not GST-registered, because S$120,000 is well below the S$1 million threshold (more on GST below). Marketing is left out of the total because it depends on your goals.
Three things stand out.
- The platform fee is the smallest line. Arguing over S$29 or S$80 a month matters far less than the payment mix and the maintenance level.
- PayNow lowers the bill. If Store B took every order by card through Stripe, its payment fees would be S$4,830 instead of S$3,849. Making PayNow easy at checkout saved about S$980 a year in this example. With HitPay’s published rates, the same 70/30 mix comes to about S$3,440, including its 0.2% WooCommerce plugin fee.
- The two routes cost about the same in year one. The real difference is who looks after the store. Shopify includes hosting and the SSL certificate; WooCommerce gives you more control and leaves updates to you or your maintenance provider.
How do GST and price display rules affect your online store?
You must register for GST once your taxable turnover goes above S$1 million, and once registered, every price on your website must include GST. Both rules change how the store is set up, so plan for them before launch rather than after.
According to IRAS, registration is compulsory if taxable turnover was more than S$1 million at the end of a calendar year, or is expected to be more than S$1 million in the next 12 months (IRAS, Do I need to register for GST). The current rate is 9% (IRAS, Current GST rates). Most small stores start below the threshold, but a store growing quickly should forecast ahead, because the forward-looking test applies too.
📊 Field data and verified research
IRAS states that GST-registered businesses must display and quote prices inclusive of GST to the public, that this applies to price displays including websites, and that non-compliance may result in a fine of up to S$5,000 (IRAS, Displaying and quoting prices). Separately, the CCCS Guidelines on Price Transparency under the Consumer Protection (Fair Trading) Act say unavoidable or mandatory charges, such as taxes and service fees, should be included in the headline price (CCCS, Guidelines on Price Transparency).
In practice: once registered, enter product prices with GST included so the store shows the final price everywhere; build any compulsory fee, such as a handling charge, into the price rather than adding it at checkout; and show delivery charges clearly before the payment step.
What does the PDPA mean for an online store?
Every order collects personal data (names, addresses, phone numbers, emails), so your store falls under the Personal Data Protection Act. The cost shows up in the build and maintenance budget: secure set-up, updated software, sensible access rights and a clear privacy notice.
If a data breach happens and it is notifiable, the PDPC expects you to notify it as soon as practicable and no later than 3 calendar days after you assess it as notifiable (PDPC, Before you report a data breach). On any platform, your own logins, staff accounts, apps and exported customer lists remain your responsibility.
Compliance note: this section is general guidance, not legal or tax advice. Confirm your GST position with IRAS or your accountant, and your PDPA duties with the PDPC’s guidance or a lawyer.
Should you use a platform like Shopify or build a custom store?
Start on a platform unless you have a clear requirement it cannot meet. Aspire’s guide makes the same point: starting on a platform and migrating later if growth demands it is usually more cost-effective. A custom build earns its price when the business already has volume, complex rules or systems the store must connect to.
Between Shopify and WooCommerce, the choice is mostly about control. Shopify suits owners who want hosting and security handled and are happy to pay monthly plus app fees. WooCommerce suits owners who want their store inside a WordPress site they already run for content and search, and who have maintenance in place. Whichever you pick, the design of the product page and checkout does more for sales than the platform itself; our web design team starts there.
💡 From our experience at Adssential
For most ecommerce builds we choose WooCommerce. It is easy for owners to manage and open to configuration and customisation, with both free and paid options, so the shop can scale and connect to separate third-party tools instead of being limited to what one platform offers. That usually keeps the cost lower than a closed ecosystem such as Shopify, where some custom code can be harder to add. Both platforms have their pros and cons, so we recommend whichever suits the client’s situation at the time. For Fireline, a fire extinguisher servicing company whose website we built and maintain, Shopify would not have made sense: they wanted easy management, room to connect other third-party systems later, custom service reports, and the ability to design their own reports with drag and drop.
Can a grant still pay for part of your ecommerce website?
Possibly, but not through PSG. Enterprise Singapore’s EDGE Grant page states that EDG, MRA and PSG ceased on 29 September 2026, and that businesses apply under the EDGE Grant from 30 September (Enterprise Singapore, EDGE Grant).
EDGE offers up to 70% support for SMEs and up to 50% for non-SMEs, varying by activity, up to S$100,000 a year across all activities. Its page does not name websites or ecommerce stores, so check the specific Automation & Digitalisation activity before you count on funding. Some ecommerce cost guides written before the change, including Aspire’s, still describe PSG support of up to 50%; that no longer applies to new applications. Adssential does not claim pre-approved vendor status for any grant.
How do you compare ecommerce website quotes fairly?
Compare what each quote includes and what it costs to run, not the build price alone. Put every quote into the same year-one table as the example above, and the cheap one often stops looking cheap.
- Platform and plan. Which platform, which plan, and whose name the account is in. It should be yours.
- Products loaded. How many products the quote includes setting up, and who writes and photographs them.
- Payments and shipping. Which gateways (including PayNow) and courier options are set up and tested.
- Paid apps. Every paid app or plugin, with renewal prices.
- After launch and in writing. Maintenance terms, response times, and how scope changes and extra work are priced.
💡 From our experience at Adssential
What a cheaper quote most often leaves out is whatever is not written down. There are few or no terms and conditions, so nobody can say what happens when an issue comes up later. We see this most with providers that are local on paper but run by a team overseas. Our own approach, once a quotation is agreed, is to avoid adding fees: if something extra is needed, we first look for an alternative that still works for the client, and we only charge when there is genuinely no other option. In Singapore, a website or any digital service succeeds through the people behind it and how they look after you, not only through the build.
Our guide on how to read a website quote in Singapore goes through the line items one by one.
Frequently asked questions
Is Shopify cheaper than WooCommerce for a small Singapore store?
Not by much once everything is counted. Shopify Basic costs S$29 a month on yearly billing with hosting included, while WooCommerce is free but needs hosting of about S$20 to S$80 a month. Apps, payment fees and maintenance cost about the same on both, so choose on control and who will look after the store.
How much do payment fees cost a small online store?
At published Singapore rates, local card payments cost about 2.8% to 3.9% plus S$0.50 per order, and PayNow between 0.65% plus S$0.30 and 1.3%. On S$10,000 of card sales a month at an average order of S$80, Shopify Payments on the Basic plan comes to about S$4,590 a year.
Do I need to register for GST to sell online in Singapore?
Only when your taxable turnover goes above S$1 million, either at the end of a calendar year or as expected over the next 12 months, according to IRAS. Once registered, you charge GST at 9% and must show GST-inclusive prices on your website.
Do I need a .sg domain for an online store?
No, but a .sg or .com.sg address signals a Singapore business. It costs about S$55 to S$80 a year, compared with about S$14 to S$25 for a .com. Whichever you choose, register it in your company’s name and keep auto-renew switched on.
Can I use PSG to pay for an ecommerce website in 2026?
No. Enterprise Singapore states that PSG ceased on 29 September 2026 and that support now comes under the EDGE Grant from 30 September. EDGE does not list websites by name, so check the relevant activity on Enterprise Singapore’s site before you sign a contract on the assumption of funding.
What is the next step?
Budget for the whole first year, not just the launch. Take the year-one table, swap in your own sales, average order and payment mix, and you will know what the store really costs before you compare quotes. For most small Singapore stores, a platform build with PayNow at checkout and a basic maintenance plan is the sensible starting point.
If you would like a second opinion, our web development team can look at your plans or quotes, tell you honestly whether a platform store is enough, and show you what it will cost to run. We build on WordPress with WooCommerce, Shopify, Magento and other platforms.