Software is rarely the biggest line. In a grocery webshop, most of the first-year cost goes into product data, photography and the labour hours spent picking orders. Comparing licence fees or build quotes alone means comparing the smaller part of the bill.
The four models compared
The figures below are orders of magnitude for orientation, not quotes. They vary widely with range breadth, ambition and region.
| Model | One-off | Recurring | Fits when |
|---|---|---|---|
| Marketplace | low to none | 10–20% commission per order | specialty goods, testing reach |
| General shop platform | ~€2,000–15,000 setup | base fee plus plugins, often three figures monthly | narrow range, little special logic |
| Custom build | high five to six figures | 15–20% of build cost per year in maintenance | your processes are the competitive advantage |
| Specialist platform | setup and data migration | monthly fee, often with a volume component | full range, grocery logic needed from day one |
Our own terms are on the Pricing page.
What appears in no quote
This is where the surprises live. These items almost never show up in a software quote, yet in year one they often outweigh it:
- Product data. Ingredients, allergens, nutritional values, unit price and origin per item. Across 3,000 items done by hand, that's months of work. The single biggest cost lever is therefore whether data arrives automatically from your ERP or wholesaler.
- Photography. Manufacturer images cover branded goods, not your counter. Fresh produce, own production and local lines you photograph yourself.
- Picking labour. The largest recurring item, and the only one that grows with every single order.
- Packaging and chilling. Crates, ice packs, insulation — small per order, not small in aggregate.
- Payment fees. Roughly 1–3% of revenue depending on method.
- Maintenance, not a project. New items, changed recipes, seasonal ranges. A shop is never finished.
Rule of thumb: in year one, software is the small part and data plus labour is the big part. A quote that prices only the software hasn't answered the question you asked.
The calculation that actually matters
For the decision, the annual price is the wrong number. The right one is cost per order, made up of:
- Platform cost share (fixed costs divided by order count)
- Picking time × hourly rate
- Packaging
- Payment fees
- Delivery, if you deliver
The second item dominates almost always — and this is exactly where good software earns its price back. An order taking 30 minutes to pick by hand costs you around €12.50 in labour at a fully loaded hourly rate of €25. On a platform that optimises the route, batches several orders into one pass and works through a scanner rather than a printed sheet, that drops to a few minutes or less.
Be deliberately conservative and assume you save only ten minutes per order: at 200 orders a month that is over 33 hours of labour, roughly €830 — every month. In most cases a specialist platform pays for itself out of saved picking time alone, before it has brought in a single euro of additional revenue.
Which is why "how fast can we pick on this" matters more commercially than "what does the licence cost". A platform costing €30 a month more that saves two minutes per order is the cheaper of the two at any realistic volume.
It's also why cost per order falls twice over as volume grows: fixed costs spread, and simultaneously several orders can be picked in a single pass.
When each model pays
Marketplace pays while order counts are low. With no fixed cost you only pay when you sell — but you pay on every sale. Past a certain volume the commission costs more than any platform fee.
General platform pays with a narrow, stable range, no variable weights and no delivery windows. The moment you bolt those on via plugins, both cost and maintenance burden climb sharply.
Custom build pays when your processes are specific enough that no standard product fits — and when you can carry the maintenance indefinitely.
Specialist platform pays with a full range and steady order volume, because the grocery logic is already there and picking is built for speed from the start.
What that looks like day to day is in Selling groceries online. The cheapest way to start is almost always click & collect, because it removes delivery cost entirely.