How much money do you actually need to start an online store?
Search this question and you'll get two answers, both useless. One says "$0 — start today with no money down." The other says "$5,000 minimum if you're serious."
Here's a more useful way to think about it: there are costs you can't avoid, costs you control, and costs you can put off. Most people quit early because nobody separated those three for them.
The costs you can't avoid
To have a working store that takes money, you need a small stack of tools. These are subscriptions — monthly, in your name, cancellable by you.
A store platform. This is where your site actually lives. It handles your pages, your cart, and your checkout.
A domain. Your own web address. Usually billed annually and the cheapest line on the list.
A supplier connection. For dropshipping, the tool that links your store to a supplier and pushes orders through automatically.
A payment processor. Free to set up. It takes a percentage of each sale instead of a monthly fee — so it costs you nothing until you're actually selling, which is the right way round.
That's the floor. Everything else is a choice.
Exactly how much that stack runs per month depends on the platform and add-ons you pick, but it is a fixed, predictable number you can get in writing from any provider before you commit, not a mystery you discover later.
The costs you control
These are the ones that vary wildly, which is why nobody can give you a single honest number for "starting a store."
Advertising. The big one, and entirely up to you. You can start with a small daily test budget and increase it only if something is working. You can also start with none and rely on content or an audience you already have — slower, but real.
Product cost. In dropshipping you don't buy stock upfront. You pay the supplier for each item after the customer has paid you. That's the whole appeal: no inventory sitting in a spare room.
Transaction fees. A percentage of each sale plus a small fixed amount, taken by the payment processor. Scales with your sales, so it's never a bill you can't cover.
The costs you can skip at the start
This is where most beginner budgets get eaten.
A designer. Not at the start. A clean, working store converts fine.
A course. The information is free and the expensive ones mostly sell you the dream of selling courses.
Apps and plugins. Every store platform has a marketplace full of them. Almost all can wait until you have data telling you what's missing.
A logo package, business cards, branded packaging. None of this makes a stranger buy from you.
An LLC or company registration. Depends on where you are and worth checking, but in many places you can start as a sole trader and formalise later. Ask an accountant rather than a YouTube video.
What "free store build" changes — and what it doesn't
Ganbo builds your store for free. That covers the setup: the storefront, the branding, the supplier connection, payments, analytics, ad accounts. It's genuinely free because we're paid a referral fee by the tools your store runs on, not by you and not from your sales.
What it doesn't change is the running cost. The subscriptions above still apply, because they're your accounts, in your name. Free build, not free to run.
That distinction matters more than it sounds. A provider who lets you believe the whole thing is free is setting you up to feel cheated in month two.
A realistic starting position
If you're working with a small budget, the sensible shape is: cover the fixed subscriptions, keep a modest amount aside for a first ad test, and accept that your first attempt is a test rather than a launch.
What you should not do is spend everything you have on ads before you know whether people want the product. Start small, watch what happens at each step — do people click, do they add to cart, do they check out — and put more behind it only where something is clearly working.
We can't tell you what you'll make. Nobody honest can. What we can tell you is exactly what leaves your account before anything comes back in, which is the number you actually need to make a decision.
Before you commit to anything
Ask any provider these four questions, and be wary of vague answers:
- What are the fixed monthly costs, in numbers?
- Whose name are the accounts in?
- How do you make money?
- What happens if I stop working with you?
If the answers are clear, you can plan. If they aren't, you're not being sold a store — you're being sold a feeling.
See what a Ganbo build includes or ask us directly before you spend anything.