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Dr. E-Commerce,

Would appreciate your advising on how much it costs to set up a site that allows on-line shopping, development hosting and payment processing with the main credit card companies; on a secured server.

I read some time ago that the cost is approx USD 1 million ???

thank you

Ziad

Dear Mr. Ziad:

Thank you for your email. There is a huge range of electronic commerce solutions and costs can range from perhaps a couple thousand US dollars to millions of US dollars.

For a comparatively small venture on a web site hosted by an ISP which offers security options and a basic off-the-shelf electronic shop software package, the cost would be minimal (particularly if it was managed by an owner operator who didn't include his/her time in the costs calculations). In addition, a number of on-line shopping centres such as Yahoo Shopping (http://shopping.yahoo.com/) and Econgo (www.econgo.com) are offering serviced shopfronts for around Euro 100 per month and/or a cut of the income. (Note, I have no personal experience with either service and cannot make any recommendations).

At the other end of the size scale, a large operation with hundreds, if not thousands of items for sale, incorporating an in-house server with customised software system for shopping carts, order taking, fulfilment and other services and which requires a team of people to keep running, could easily cost US$1 million or more per year.

How much an electronic shop costs depends very much on the ambitions of the owners. Do they want the equivalent of a small corner shop or a major shopping centre.

All the best,

Dr. Ecommerce