E-Commerce Setup Costs based on Magento

Money Suckers ! Thats the idea most clients seem to get when proposing a rough cost estimate range (±25%) for an e-commerce website based on Magento Commerce.
If you are dead serious about selling online, you should also be ready to invest a fair amount on a system that is run by an organization which is dedicated in making the best possible open-source e-commerce platform available. Open-Source does not necessarily mean free, though most are.

Magento comes in two flavours : Community and Enterprise.
The Enterprise has some additional features which are lacking in the Community edition, but because both are open-source, ideally you could make an Enterprise edition from the Community edition if you got that much time and energy.

Here is a rough annual cost for just setting up an online store based out of Magento Commerce. (raw material)

Note : Magento has the ability to run multiple websites (e-shops) running on a single Magento installation. An SSL Certificate and a unique IP address are required for each domain separately.

	Magento Community Edition	Magento Enterprise Edition
Magento Cost	$0	$11,125	See whats the difference between the two
Web Hosting	$102	$4,200	Guys at WebFaction are really helpful in maintaining a robust platform - they really go out of their way answering issues posted on forums too
SSL Certificate Per Domain	$29	$84	You get Thawte's SSL Certificates from DirectI
Dedicated IP Address per Domain	$60	$60	Multiply this with the number of magento websites you want
Email Newsletter Campaign	$96 - $8,388	$96 - $8,388	With MadMimi's you can get achieve almost 100% branding
OneStepCheckOut Magento Module	€190	€590	The CheckOut experience is the most important part in a sale. Magento's default one-page checkout is 6 steps - which is 6 clicks
Amazon S3 for Static File Storage	~$50	~$100	This is really varies based on your bandwidth usage. It can be from $1 a month for a low-traffic site to $100 a month for a high-traffic site
Amazon CloudFront for CDN	~$50	~$100	This is really varies based on the geographic location
Google Apps	$0	$50 per user id (email id)	I prefer insist on using ASchroder's SMTP module to native mail so that all sent mails are reflected in Google Apps Email, so that you or the client can actually validate what mail contents are going through. (Many Email providers don't store sent mails sent via SMTP remotely, on their servers)
	~ $700	~ $17,000

The most popular free & open-source e-commerce system is OsCommerce which has dominated the e-commerce industry in the last decade. If selling products is not your primary business, Magento Community Edition or OsCommerce will just suffice. After all, even Google uses OsCommerce at google-store.com

Related Links :

• Giving cost estimates on custom Magento development
• Is Magento right for me?