How much does it cost to set up an online store in Spain?

Why isn't there a single price for an online store?

Because \"online store\" covers very different things. A baker's shop with twelve products and in-store pickup doesn't cost the same as a catalogue of five hundred items with sizes, colours, real-time stock control and shipping across Spain. They are different projects, which is why a figure on its own —\"a store costs this much\"— means nothing until someone looks at what you sell and how.

Some people publish price ranges online. We ask you to read them sensibly: they are general industry guidance and vary enormously depending on the country, the platform and what they include (does it cover the design? the maintenance? the commissions?). We won't cite them as if they were a study we don't have. What we do is show you which factors move the price so you know exactly why you pay what you pay.

What makes an online store more expensive?

These are the elements that genuinely move the needle. Read them as a checklist: the more you need, the more work your store takes.

The hidden cost almost nobody shows you: per-sale commissions

Here comes the uncomfortable part. Many online store platforms hook you with a \"low\" monthly fee… and then take a percentage of every sale you make. It's a cost you don't see in the starting price but that stays with you forever: the more you sell, the more you pay.

Do the maths with your own business: if a store turns over a lot, that \"small\" percentage becomes a very real figure by the end of the month. We're not saying it's a rip-off —it's the model those platforms use—, but you have the right to know it before you decide. On top of this you always have to add the bank or gateway fee, which is charged separately in almost any system.

How does pricing work at Zenith?

We flip the usual model on its head. Instead of charging you a big quote upfront and leaving you on your own, we do this:

1. The build is 0 €. You pay nothing to create your store. We build it for you upfront, fast and on Cloudflare. We're betting on the work.
2. A tailored monthly fee. You pay for monthly support that depends on your business and your catalogue. That fee includes the domain, the SSL and everything technical: we don't charge those separately.
3. No Zenith commission per sale. We don't take a percentage of what you sell. (The fee from your bank or payment gateway does always exist, in any system, and we explain it to you.)
4. We stay by your side. We don't build the store and disappear: the monthly support includes maintaining it and working on your ranking.

The full breakdown of the price —what the fee includes, the honest minimum and how it's billed— lives on our pricing page. There we lay it out with no small print.

What we'll never tell you

Because honesty is part of the price too:

• We won't tell you your store \"sells itself\" or that you'll turn over a specific figure. Selling depends on your product, your price and your market, not just the website.
• We don't sell \"pay per result\" or \"you only pay if you sell\": that would be dishonest, because the result doesn't depend solely on us.
• We don't guarantee you a number of customers or sales. What we do guarantee is the work: a well-built store, fast, maintained and supported.

The costs your store will have every month (whoever builds it)

So far we've talked about what it costs to create the store. But there's another question almost nobody answers before you start: what will you pay each month to keep it running? An online store isn't a one-off expense, it's a living business, and it carries recurring costs no matter which platform you use. Knowing them upfront is the only way to tell whether it's worth it for you.

You have these costs with anyone, whether you build it yourself or an agency builds it for you. The difference is which ones get charged separately as \"surprise extras\" and which are already included. At Zenith, the domain, the SSL and the technical hosting are inside the monthly fee; what never goes away for anyone is the payment gateway commission, because that money goes to the bank, not the website.

\"Free online store\": why free is almost never free

Lots of people look to set up an online store for free, and it makes sense: nobody wants to overspend at the start. But it's worth knowing what usually hides behind that \"free\". The platforms that offer a store at no cost almost always make up for it somewhere else, and that's where the small print appears.

What's typical in free plans is one of these limits: a subdomain like yourbusiness.theplatform.com instead of your own domain, the platform's advertising shoved into your store, a product cap, restricted payment gateways or a higher per-sale commission in exchange for paying no fee. In other words: free usually costs you in brand image, in limits or in a percentage of your sales.

That's why, when we say at Zenith that building your store is 0 €, we say it carefully: you don't pay a quote upfront, but afterwards there's a monthly support fee, because maintaining and ranking a store takes real work. No subdomain, no third-party advertising, no commission of ours per sale: a different model, not a \"free forever\" that doesn't exist.

Is it better value to build it myself or have it built for me?

If you've thought about building the store yourself from scratch with WordPress and WooCommerce, with PrestaShop or with an AI builder, that's a completely legitimate option. The important thing is to decide it with the numbers in front of you, not on the appeal of \"free\". Doing it yourself doesn't mean zero cost: it means you pay the cost in your time and your learning curve, on top of the recurring costs you'd have anyway.

To build a store from scratch you need, at a minimum: a domain, hosting, a platform, a template or design, to set up the payment gateways and shipping, to load the catalogue with its photos and, afterwards, to keep it updated and secure. If you enjoy the technical side and have the time, go for it. If you'd rather spend that time selling and looking after your customers, delegating makes sense.

We won't tell you delegating is always better: it depends on you. What Zenith does do is take all that technical side off your hands and, on top of that, stay on afterwards to maintain it and work on its ranking. You decide where you want to put your hours.

• Do it yourself if: you like the technical side, you have time and you want to learn the system from the inside.
• Delegate it if: you'd rather invest your time in the product and the customers, and you want to forget about maintenance.
• In either case: the recurring costs (domain, hosting, gateway commission) exist all the same; what changes is who does the work.