What does an online store cost in Egypt?
A breakdown of online store costs, and the difference between a hosted platform and a custom build.
A store costs more than a website because it is not pages — it is a system with products, cart, payment, shipping and stock.
The ranges
- Simple store — a limited catalogue, cart and checkout; the smallest workable scope.
- Mid-size — stock, reports, product variants and promotions.
- Multi-branch or multi-market — stock per branch, more than one currency or language, and wider integrations.
Line items people forget
- Payment gateway setup and per-transaction fees
- Courier integration
- Product photography — 50 products means 50 shoots
- Entering the products is real work
Always ask whether product data entry is included. It is the most commonly forgotten item and the most common dispute.
Ongoing cost
Hosting and domain yearly, gateway commission, and maintenance. Budget for them from day one.
Build a budget that survives the real project
A useful budget separates the build from the operating cost. The build covers discovery, design, development, testing and launch. Operating cost covers hosting, paid services, maintenance, content and advertising. Mixing them into one number makes a cheap first quote look better than it really is.
Compare quotations using the same scope and insist that every price is written in Egyptian pounds. Ask whether VAT, third-party subscriptions, support, content entry and post-launch changes are included. For services invoiced from abroad, record the actual Egyptian-pound charge shown by the bank on the payment date instead of promising a fixed conversion.
- Write the exact pages, screens, integrations and revision rounds.
- Separate one-time delivery from monthly and annual costs.
- Keep a 10–15% contingency for approved scope changes, not unclear requirements.
- Tie payments to visible milestones and a written acceptance checklist.
A topic-specific field checklist
- A basic Egyptian store covers product catalogue, cart and checkout; inventory rules, courier APIs, payment reconciliation and complex promotions all raise the scope beyond that.
- Budget separately for product entry, photography, gateway setup, shipping integration and monthly operations.
- Test full orders with successful, failed, refunded and cash-on-delivery paths.
- Include return-policy presentation and invoice or receipt requirements in acceptance.
Details most proposals miss
A price becomes meaningful only when it is connected to deliverables and operating assumptions. The useful comparison is not “how much?” but “what business capability exists on launch day, what evidence proves it works, and what will it cost to keep reliable?”
- A scope matrix that ties every screen and integration to an owner and acceptance test.
- Three cost columns: build, recurring operation and optional growth work.
- A dependency list for content, licences, payment providers, hosting and client approvals.
- A change-control rule that prices only genuinely new scope.
- A handover pack covering accounts, source files, backups and support contacts.
The TechMate implementation layer
In a TechMate scope, the useful difference is the operational layer around the deliverable. The client sees where the money goes and receives a product that can be measured, maintained and handed to another qualified team if needed.
- Arabic and English scope reviewed separately, including RTL behaviour.
- Mobile acceptance on real screen sizes, not a desktop preview resized by eye.
- Analytics events agreed before development instead of added after launch.
- Egyptian integrations and invoice requirements treated as core scope.
- A launch checklist with evidence for forms, payments, speed, access and recovery.
Delivery phases that reduce risk
A sensible commercial plan releases money when uncertainty falls. This protects both sides and keeps early discovery from being confused with finished production.
- Discovery: confirm users, goals, constraints and existing assets.
- Specification: approve scope, exclusions, dependencies and acceptance evidence.
- Prototype: validate risky journeys before full production.
- Delivery: test complete scenarios with real content and accounts.
- Operation: monitor, support and price later improvements from actual usage.
Questions that reveal implementation quality
- Which line items disappear if the scope is reduced?
- Which recurring costs are controlled by third parties?
- What evidence releases each payment milestone?
- Who owns every account and editable source file?
- How are defects separated from new change requests?
A realistic scenario
Example: “shipping integration” can mean printing a label, or it can include automatic booking, tracking sync, failed-attempt updates, returns and cash settlement. Those are different scopes even when both proposals use the same phrase.
Important: The figures shown are starting estimates in Egyptian pounds, not a fixed quotation. Scope, taxes and third-party services determine the final price.
Sources directly related to this guide
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