What does an e-commerce website cost in Pakistan?

Ask what an online store costs in Pakistan and you get a range so wide it is useless. That is not evasion — the honest answer genuinely depends on which of three very different things you are buying, and most people asking have not yet been told there are three.

This guide will not quote you a figure, because anyone quoting one without knowing your catalogue, your payment methods and your delivery setup is guessing. What it will do is more useful: lay out every line item you can be billed for, including the ones that never appear in the quote, so you can read a proposal properly and work out your own number.

The three routes, and how their costs are shaped

The shape of the cost matters more than the size of it.

A custom build. You hire an agency or a freelancer to build the site. Large one-time cost, then a smaller but permanent stream of costs to keep it running. You own the result — sometimes.

A hosted platform. You subscribe to software that already exists. No build cost, a predictable monthly fee, and the maintenance is somebody else's problem. You own your data and your customers but not the software.

A marketplace. No build cost at all. You pay a commission on every sale instead, forever, and the customer relationship belongs to the marketplace rather than to you.

The trap is comparing them on the upfront number alone. A custom build looks like one payment and a subscription looks like forever — but the custom build has a forever component too. It is just not in the quote.

What is in a custom-build quote

A reasonable proposal covers roughly this:

• Design — how it looks, usually a few page templates.
• Front-end build — turning that design into working pages.
• Back-end and admin — products, orders, customers, and a dashboard for you to manage them.
• Payment integration — connecting your gateway.
• Delivery and shipping rules — zones, rates, courier handling.
• Testing and launch.

That is the visible half. It is the half everyone compares between quotes.

What is usually not in the quote

This is the half that decides whether the project is a good deal, and it is almost never itemised.

The last row is the expensive one. A store that goes down during a sale, or a checkout that stops accepting payments the week of Eid, costs you orders for every hour it is broken. What you are really buying with a maintenance arrangement is somebody's availability, and availability is the thing freelancers price highest and promise most casually.

The questions to ask before you sign

Take these to any proposal. The answers are worth more than a lower price.

Who owns what? Get it in writing: who owns the code, whose name the domain is registered in, and whose account the hosting sits in. Sellers get stuck every day because the domain is in a developer's personal account and that developer has stopped replying. Register the domain yourself, in your own name, before anything else happens.

What happens after launch? Ask specifically: how long are bugs fixed for free, what is the hourly rate afterwards, and what is the expected response time. "We'll look after you" is not an answer. A month of free bug fixes and a stated rate after that is.

Which payment methods, and are they live? An integration that is written but never tested against a real gateway account is not finished. Ask to see a real payment go through end to end before you accept handover.

How do I add a product? Watch them do it. If adding a product needs a developer, you have not bought a store, you have bought a brochure — and every product launch becomes a support ticket with an invoice attached.

What happens if you disappear? Blunt, but the most useful question on the list. If the answer does not include you having the code, the domain and the hosting credentials, the risk is entirely yours.

The costs that continue whichever route you take

Some things are yours regardless, and they belong in any honest comparison:

• Payment gateway charges. Every gateway takes a cut of each transaction. This is the gateway's

fee, not your platform's, and you pay it on a custom build and a hosted platform alike. Get the current rate from the gateway directly.

• Delivery. Courier charges per parcel, plus the cost of returns. If you sell Cash on Delivery,

budget for both legs of the freight on every parcel that comes back — see how to reduce COD returns.

• Your domain, yearly, forever.
• Marketing. Usually larger than every technical cost combined, and the one people forget.

What a hosted platform costs instead

The trade is simple: you stop paying for construction and maintenance, and start paying a flat monthly fee.

What that fee replaces is the whole invisible half of the table above — hosting, SSL, security patching, backups, updates, and someone whose job it is to keep it running. You are not buying software so much as buying the ongoing operation of it.

What it does not replace: gateway fees, delivery, your domain if you want a custom one, and marketing. Those are yours on any route.

Our own pricing is on the pricing page rather than in this guide, deliberately — a number typed into an article goes stale and then misleads people. The live page is the only place it is guaranteed correct.

When a custom build is genuinely the right answer

It would be dishonest to pretend the answer is always a platform. Pay for a custom build when:

• Your business has unusual logic a standard store cannot express — complex configurators,

quote-based pricing, B2B account terms, rental or subscription mechanics.

• You need deep integration with systems you already run, like a specific ERP or accounting

package with no standard connector.

• You have a very large catalogue with merchandising rules that go beyond what a platform

offers.

• The site is the product, and a distinctive experience is your actual differentiator.

If you are selling a few dozen products with photos, variants, prices and delivery, none of that applies. You would be paying to rebuild something that already exists, and then paying again to maintain it.

How to work out your own number

1. Write down every line item in the table above, including the ones the quote omits.
2. Mark each one-time or recurring.
3. Total the recurring column for a year. That is the number people miss.
4. Do the same for a hosted platform: the subscription, plus gateway fees, delivery, domain.
5. Compare the two-year totals, not the upfront ones.

Two years is the right window because it is roughly when a custom build's maintenance catches up with its build cost, and because it is long enough to include the first time something breaks.

The short version

• The quote is not the cost. Hosting, SSL, patching, backups and post-launch fixes usually sit

outside it.

• Register your domain yourself, in your own name, before anything else.
• Get ownership of the code, domain and hosting in writing, plus a stated post-launch rate.
• If adding a product needs a developer, it is not a store.
• Gateway fees, delivery and marketing are yours on every route — compare like for like.
• Compare two-year totals, not upfront prices.
• Custom is right for unusual logic or deep integration. For a normal catalogue it is paying to

rebuild what already exists.

Still deciding between platforms rather than between routes? Start here for the full picture, or see how payments work if the gateway question is what is holding you up.