Magento Pricing 2023: Every Magento Cost Explained + How to Save $30,000

Updated 11/9/23: 

Magento pricing may seem like a fairly straightforward topic, but the true cost of a Magento store can vary a lot based on a number of different factors. Fortunately, we’ve helped all kinds of business owners make sense of the different options to choose from and the pricing for each over the past two decades.

So, before you choose an eCommerce platform for your online store, let’s break down every cost involved with choosing Magento Open Source, Magento Commerce, or Magento Commerce Cloud (now called Adobe Commerce and Adobe Commerce Cloud, respectively).  

The topic of Magento pricing can be a bit complicated, so while it’s worth reading this entire article, here are some shortcuts if you’re in a hurry:

• Magento Pricing: the License
• Magento Pricing: Implementation
• The Cost of Your Store’s Hosting
• The Cost of Magento Extensions and Apps
• The Cost of Optimizing and Maintaining Your Store
• How Much Is a Brand New Build?Is Magento Worth It?
• How to Save $30,000 on Your Magento eCommerce Store
• Magento Alternatives That Cost Less

You can also contact our Magento development agency with any questions you may have.

Since its inception in 2008, Magento has been synonymous with successful eCommerce companies that absolutely dominate their industries. Brands like Ford, Cabela’s, Coca-Cola, Jaguar, Procter & Gamble, Hewlett-Packard, Tommy Hilfiger, and many more trust Magento with the success of their online brands.

Needless to say, these companies have learned that Magento is worth every penny. And if it works for those household names, it could probably do wonders for your business, too. The real question is, “How much does Magento cost?”

As straightforward as that might seem, the answer can quickly get a bit messy. Unlike, say,the cost of Shopify, you’ll need to budget for more than just a simple license if you want a Magento website that is able to reach your most ambitious goals. So, with that in mind, let’s now dive into the many factors that decide the actual price of a Magento website in 2022.

The first question that will determine how much your Magento store will cost is, “Which Magento platform do you need?” So, in the next few sections, I’ll cover what each version of Magento costs and what you can expect to get in return for that fee.

Now, it’s impossible to say exactly what each version will cost because the price of a license depends on a number of different factors unique to your company (e.g., its monthly revenue). Even Magento Open Source, which is free, will come with added costs if you need help customizing it.

Alright, without further ado, here’s what each version of Magento costs and what you’ll get in return.

This one’s easy. As I already touched on, Magento Open Source is completely free. That makes it extremely tempting, but for a full breakdown of the two different versions of Magento, check out our post, “Magento Open Source vs. Magento Commerce.”

Formerly known as Magento Enterprise, Magento Commerce On-Premise comes with all of the features of Magento Open-Source, plus those included in this section.

The price of Magento Commerce has a base annual cost of $22,000/year, but the amount will go up based on your GSR (Gross Sales Revenue):

• $0 – $1,000,000.00 = $22,000/year
• $1,000,000 – $5,000,000 = $32,000/year
• $5,000,000 – $10,000,000 = $49,000/year
• $10,000,000 – $25,000,000 = $75,000/year
• $25,000,000+ = $125,000/year

Additionally, as “On-Premise” suggests, your company covers the cost of hosting, but we’ll get into that topic a bit more down below.

That said, the price of Magento Commerce is pretty comparable to what you’d pay for other platforms with a similar amount of functionality. And, of course, for countless companies across every industry, the extra costs associated with Magento Commerce On-Premise have proven to be well worth the investment.

Also, another really important factor to understand about the price of Magento is that Adobe is pretty generous when it comes to offering discounts to companies that sign longer contracts. As you’re probably not going to just dabble with Magento for a year before trying something completely different, signing up for a multiyear license in order to save thousands is a complete no-brainer.

Contact us if you want more information about this kind of deal or to learn about the $30,000 rebate I mentioned earlier.

This is another version of Magento 2 that has undergone a name change. Previously, it was known as Magento Enterprise – Cloud Edition. These days, it’s just calledMagento Commerce Cloud.

As with Magento Commerce On-Premise, the cost of Magento Commerce Cloud is tiered and depends on your store’s annual sales. Magento pricing for this version starts at around $40,000 a year but doesinclude the cost of hosting.

• $0 – $1,000,000.00 = $40,000/year

• $1,000,000 – $5,000,000 = $55,000/year

• $5,000,000 – $10,000,000 = $80,000/year

• $10,000,000 – $25,000,000 = $120,000/year

• $25,000,000+ = $190,000/year

Another similarity between these two versions of Magento: thousands of companies across practically every industry are happy to pay these fees. So, while some of those annual costs for Commerce Cloud might hit you with sticker shock, keep in mind Magento’s incredible potential and – in the case of this version – the cost of hosting that’s factored into the final price.

The price of your Magento license is just the first cost, though. The next that you’ll need to cover is the price of your Magento store implementation.

This will cover 8 specific Magento services, all of which are designed to ensure that your company’s Magento eCommerce store goes live without a hitch and works the way it’s supposed to when customers arrive to make purchases.

So, part of paying for a Magento website will include paying for some combination of the following implementation services.

The first step to implementing your Magento store effectively is when your developers need to gather all of the unique requirements for your company’s eCommerce store.

This should entail the developers sitting down with you to understand what it is you want your Magento store to do above-and-beyond just listing all of your products and making them available to purchase.

For example, will your store require a specific type of search feature? Would you like cross-sell or upsell features on your product pages? Do you need a custom Magento POS for your new store?

Whatever the case, your developers should be able to help you understand what kind of results you want from your store, so they can recommend various features for achieving them. In this way, the first step is basically creating a roadmap for your Magento store.

Once that’s established, your designers can start working on what the user interface will look like for your customers. UX/UI (user experience/user interface) services are among the most popular eCommerce services agencies offer because making your store user-friendly is essential for maximizing conversions.

Optimizing the user experience needs to be done for the design of both the desktop and mobile versions of your Magento store, too.

During the third step, front-end developers will create mockups for everything you want for your Magento store, including versions for every type of device customers can use to visit your store and make purchases.

Doing so will show you what your store will look like once it’s live, so you can provide feedback if you think anything is missing or should look different.

This step ensures that there are no misunderstandings between you and the Magento development team. Better to identify and work them out now than wait until your Magento store is live and realize you were hoping for something different.

This step in the Magento implementation process can actually be done at the exact same time as your developers are handling front-end development for your Magento site.

In any case, this is when they’ll start carrying out integrations for your ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems and any others (e.g., CSS, JavaScript, etc.) that your Magento store will need to talk to in order to operate the way you want.

At this time, your developers will set up essential components for your Magento store. This includes things like:

• Payment Processors
• Shipping
• TaxesTransactional Emails

Basically, everything you need to ensure that your Magento site is able to behave like a functioning store that can support your customers’ purchases.

When they stage your site, developers will conduct heavy testing to ensure that your Magento store will act the way it’s supposed to once it finally goes live.

This is done in a secure environment before the site goes into production and hits the Internet.

In many ways, the point of this step is to see if the developers can “break” your Magento site. They should conduct a number of stress tests that will reproduce the kinds of demands your Magento site will be under once it’s live and attracting shoppers.

Similar to that last step, your Magento developers also need to check that your site will perform the intended way regardless of which browsers customers use to find it. While Google remains the most popular search engine, others like Bing and Yahoo shouldn’t be ignored as they’ll also contribute traffic to your Magento site.

Boom. Done. After those seven steps, your Magento site is ready to go live. That being said, once it’s live on the Internet, you still want your developers to stick around to ensure that nothing goes wrong. Even after staging and browser testing, it’s a good idea to keep your Magento developers vigilant in case an influx of customers triggers some unexpected issue.

As you can imagine, the exact worked involved with launching your Magento store can vary different from one company to the next, which is why the price for these services covers such a wide range. Fortunately, this work for your Magento store only has to be done once.

If you go with Magento Commerce, hosting isn’t as much of an issue. As we covered above, hosting this version of Magento is baked into the pricing of your license. But if you go with Magento Open Source, that cost isn’t in the pricing, so you’ll need to budget for that expense.

Fortunately, hosting your Magento site should be relatively affordable. Site hosting largely depends on the size of your site and the amount of traffic it receives. The cost of hosting your Magento site will reflect this, too.

That doesn’t mean you should choose just any hosting provider, though. In the years since we first published this blog post on Magento pricing, there are even more hosting companies than before. Many of these offer rock-bottom prices for their services, but we really can’t stress this point enough: only use a hosting company that has experience with Magneto sites. Hosting is just too important.

Most companies choose Magento because they want big, complex websites with lots of customized features. If that’s the case, you can’t just opt for some bargain-bin hosting provider. You get what you pay for, and hosting isn’t a good time to learn that lesson the hard way. Eventually – if not immediately – your Magento site will stall, slow, or even crash completely if you try building a Magento site on top of a lackluster hosting solution.

If you want help choosing the right hosting provider, you can alwayscontact us to speak with one of our Magento experts.

That being said, for both Magento Open Source and Magento Commerce platforms, we have been working withNexcess for many years and recommend this hosting provider to all of our Magento clients.

Nexcess is very experienced with optimizing server configurations, specifically for Magento websites. Pricing starts at $19.95/month for shared hosting and $539.95/month for dedicated servers.

There are a lot of other good hosting providers out there for companies using Magento, but Nexcess is the primary company we rely on and feel the most confident recommending for your hosting needs. Shop around and you’ll find that the pricing for their hosting solutions is quite reasonable, too, even for big Magento stores.

In today’s modern digital landscape, you can’t hope to run a successful eCommerce website without investing in a number of extensions and apps.

And despite how powerful Magento is, this applies just as much to companies that rely on this popular platform. That’s because businesses that build on Magento take eCommerce VERYseriously. These are businesses that will look for any advantage to outdo their competitors, which is where extensions and apps often come into play.

It's impossible to say just how much Magento apps and extensions will cost you your company, though. The final amount will depend entirely on what you want from your Magento site.

However, I will say this: don’t fall into the trap of adding as many of them as possible to your Magento site, especially when you go live for the first time. The more you add, the more they’ll slow down your website – a mistake that can hurt your business in a number of different ways.

Even if your Magento site isn’t slowed, too many apps and extensions can make for a site that’s unnecessarily complicated, which is almost just as bad. Magento is known for letting companies build sites that are incredibly user-friendly and easy to navigate, so the last thing you want to do is ruin this advantage with too many extensions and plugins.

Let’s fast forward to the not-so-distant future when your eCommerce business is now up-and-running on Magento. While that’s very exciting, your site will still need ongoing maintenance to continue operating at its best. This is where you’ll probably need to budget for anexperienced Magento agency that can carry out these essential tasks in a timely manner.

At the very least, you’ll want to work with a professional Magento developer who can handle the ongoing updates for your Magento site. Adobe releases updates for their platform fairly regularly. When this happens, you definitely want to be quick about implementing them.

For one thing, any upgrade means you can leverage new features and capabilities to power your Magento site and improve its ability to serve and convert customers. However, maybe even MOREimportant, is that these upgrades come with security updates that can protect your Magento store.

If you want to learn more, check out our Magento update services.

There are actually a couple of ways you can go about paying for these kinds of important Magento services. If you’re starting out with a smaller budget or your Magento site is on the smaller side, you may be able to get by just hiring a freelancer.

You’ll still want to vet your candidates to make sure that they’ve had plenty of experience working on Magento websites, but you can still probably secure a decent freelancer for between $50-$100/hour.

For medium-sized businesses up to enterprises, Magento freelancers probably won’t do the trick. If you operate one of these bigger companies, you’ll want to hire an actual Magento agency to support your needs.

For the help of a Magento agency, expect to pay between $100 and $200/hour. You can also assume that these types of agencies will require you to sign up for a minimum of monthly hours. Usually, this is at least 40 hours a month.

Of course, some Magento agencies may charge more. You’ll have to review what that higher price tag gets you before deciding if it’s worth the extra room in your budget. In some cases, it absolutely will be if your business has especially unique needs or if the price comes with important support services that will save you money down the line.

On the other hand, there are plenty of Magento agencies that will charge less. Just remember that you always get what you pay for. Skimp on your Magento site and there’s a good chance your results will come up short, too.

If your company’s website is already built on Magento, but it isn’t performing to your standards, then you may be in the market for a new build. Instead of looking for a team that can help you transition to Magento, you need one that can take your current Magento site, keep what’s working, and completely overhaul the rest. In that case, you’ll need to budget for the initial new build before you start paying for Magento optimization and maintenance.

As I said earlier, the exact cost will depend on the agency you pick for your new build but expect to pay around $135 for this preliminary Magento work. Once it’s complete, you’ll then return to paying for ongoing Magento maintenance and optimization.

Depending on the unique requirements you have for your Magento site, plan to budget for 200 hours.

We’ve worked with Magento for almost 20 years now, so we may be a bit biased, but yes. Magento is definitely worth it for your company’s online store. Among other things, here are sixreasons to love this popular eCommerce platform:

• Endless Potential:Magento is all about customization, which means you can build a store that’s as unique as your market. From countless themes to endless features, Magento rivals other great eCommerce platforms like BigCommerce and Shopify in terms of versatility by a landslide.
• High Performance: Magento is meant for eCommerce stores that sell in high volumes. Again, Shopify, BigCommerce, and other competitors can suit stores of all sizes, but the speed, features, and functionality of Magento Commerce and Magento Open Source are definitely designed for businesses that are aiming high.
• Category and Inventory Management:Magento might be worth the price alone for just how simple it makes adding and organizing all of your products, which makes it even easier for customers to find them. Don’t be surprised if switching to Magento leads to a much higher conversion rate, too.
• Seamless UX: Along the same lines, Magento supports a seamless experience for your users, from easy navigation to all kinds of features that help to boost engagement and increase conversions. Don’t expect this to change now that the platform is Adobe Commerce. Adobe has made a name for itself by prioritizing UX, so expect to see Magento become even more user-friendly for your visitors.
• SEO Functionality: Magento may be the most SEO-friendly eCommerce platform out there (here are our favoriteMagento SEO tips, if you’re curious), plus there are all kinds of third-party SEO tools to help improve your rankings even further. So, the platform isn’t just great for engaging visitors and converting them, it’s fantastic for attracting them in the first place. And if you ever need any help, we offer Magento SEO services.
• Magento Open-Source Community: Business owners who choose Magento benefit from a large community of dedicated enthusiasts who contribute to its ongoing development and provide support. This also means freelancers who love Magento are also easy to come by if you need any extra help. So, while you can expect all kinds of great things from Adobe, plenty of Magento users are also busy creating new extensions and plugins every year.

So, yes, all those features are definitely worth the cost of Magento. But there’s good news: we can actually cut the cost of Magento down considerably. While we think the pricing is fair, here’s how you can pay a lot less…

You now have a better idea of what it will cost you to have a Magento store, but there’s one important piece we left out: we might be able to save you as much as $30,000 on your Magento license by securing you a rebate through Adobe.

Contact us to speak with our team of experts about how we can help you save money and get the Magento eCommerce store your brand deserves, help with implementation, and provide ongoing support services.

If, after reading all of that, Magento doesn’t seem like a good fit for your budget – or you’re just not sure – we’ve done some comparison posts in the past that might help with your decision:

• Magento Commerce vs. Shopify Plus – A big step up from the basic version, Shopify Plus is comparable to Magento Commerce in many ways but doesn’t carry the same price tag.
• Magento vs. BigCommerce – BigCommerce has a lot to offer midsized businesses who may feel like Shopify is lacking but aren’t ready to invest in Magento Commerce and don’t need everything Magento Open Source brings to the table.
• Magento vs. WooCommerce – WooCommerce is technically free and yet still has a ton of potential. While not completely comparable to Magento Open Source, WooCommerce is another fantastic choice for midsized businesses with ambitious eCommerce goals.

Want help choosing a different platform other than Magento? Contact us for help making this important decision.