How much does an online store cost in Ghana? (2026)

The build is the biggest single cost, and prices vary more than most owners expect. Several Ghanaian agencies publish their prices, which lets you compare like with like. At the time of writing (September 2026), these are the e-commerce build prices on their own websites. All are one-off fees for design, setup and launch:

Why such a gap? The price follows the work: how many products someone loads, a template or a custom design, how many payment and delivery options you need, and how long support lasts after launch. Most quotes also leave out running costs. Ask every builder for two written totals, the launch price and the yearly cost to keep the store open, and ask whether VAT is included.

At the time of writing, Shopify's pricing page shows Ghana visitors Basic at $19 a month billed yearly or $27 billed monthly, Grow at $54 or $72, and Advanced at $299 or $399. At the Bank of Ghana interbank mid-rate of GHS 11.6157 per dollar on 24 September 2026, a year of Basic paid yearly is about GHS 2,650, and Grow about GHS 7,530. Shopify bills in dollars, so your card rate will differ.

Shopify currently opens with a free 3-day trial and says most plans then cost $1 a month for the first 3 months. Shopify Payments is not offered in Ghana, so Shopify charges a third-party transaction fee on orders paid through Paystack: 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow and 0.6% on Advanced. Manual methods such as cash on delivery carry no Shopify transaction fee.

WooCommerce is free, but you pay for hosting, usually in cedis. Ovation Hall's Basic WordPress hosting is GHS 480 a year, with the domain bought separately. HostAfrica Ghana's WordPress plans are prepaid for a year: WP Starter is GHS 52.50 a month in the first year and GHS 70 on renewal, and WP Shop is GHS 247.50, then GHS 330. Budget for the renewal price, not the offer.

A .com is the cheaper and quicker choice. At the time of writing, Ovation Hall charges GHS 190 for the first year of a .com and GHS 220 to renew it, and HostAfrica Ghana charges GHS 260, then GHS 370. Renewal is the number that repeats every year, so compare that line, not only the first-year price.

A .com.gh tells buyers you are a Ghanaian business, but it costs more and needs paperwork. Ghana Dot Com, an accredited .gh registrar, lists GHS 590.65 a year for registration and renewal. Registrars ask for business registration documents before they issue a .com.gh, and prices differ between registrars, so get two or three quotes before you pay.

Whichever you pick, register the domain in your business's name, log in with your own email address, and put the renewal date in your calendar. A lapsed domain takes the whole store offline, and a domain that sits in a developer's account is hard to get back if you part ways.

Every online sale carries a percentage. At the time of writing, Paystack charges 1.95% per local transaction in Ghana, whether the buyer pays with MoMo or a card, with no setup or monthly fee. Hubtel charges 1.95% on MTN MoMo, Telecel Cash and online cards when you absorb the fee, and 2.5% on AT Money. On Shopify, add its 2% or 1% on top.

To see what that means in cedis: on GHS 10,000 of online sales in a month, Paystack keeps GHS 195. On Shopify Basic, Shopify adds another GHS 200, so GHS 395 in total. On WooCommerce with Paystack, the total stays at GHS 195. Billed yearly, Grow costs about GHS 407 a month more than Basic and saves 1% of online sales, so it pays for itself once sales pass about GHS 40,700 a month.

Apps and themes are where small bills pile up. Shopify has free themes, and paid themes in its Theme Store cost $100 to $420, about GHS 1,160 to 4,880. WooCommerce lists its extensions at $29 to $299 a year each. The Paystack app and plugin are free, and so are the common WhatsApp chat buttons. Add a paid app only when it fixes a problem you can name.

Photos cost either time or money. A phone, daylight and a plain wall cost nothing. Anibel, an Accra web studio, advises budgeting GHS 20 to 80 per product for professional shots, so 30 products come to GHS 600 to 2,400, and 100 products GHS 2,000 to 8,000. Plan photos before the build; weak pictures make any store expensive.

Delivery is a cost per order, and most Ghanaian stores pass it to the buyer. Zippy, an Accra courier, publishes flat rates anywhere in Accra of GHS 25 for delivery within 24 hours and GHS 30 for same-day, plus GHS 60 for next-day delivery to Tema, Kasoa, Amasaman and Dodowa. Nationwide couriers such as ShaQ Express cover all 16 regions and quote by destination.

Set delivery zones and fees in the store before launch: Accra, then Tema and Kasoa, Kumasi, and the rest of the country. Ghana's Electronic Transactions Act, 2008 (Act 772) requires online sellers to show the full price, including transport costs, and the delivery time. Buyers should see the fee before they pay, not in a WhatsApp message afterwards.

A store nobody visits is a cost with no return, so put launch ads in the budget from day one. Ad budgets are paid to Meta or Google directly, and you choose the amount; GHS 100 a day for two weeks, for example, is GHS 1,400. Meta adds Ghana VAT and levies, 20% at current rates, so budget about GHS 1,680. A manager's fee is extra. Our guide "How to pay for Facebook and Instagram ads from Ghana" covers the cards that work.

Here is the first year for three sizes of store, built only from the prices in this guide. The ranges are wide because published build prices are wide. Treat them as estimates from the listed sources at the time of writing (September 2026), not quotes, and add delivery, ad budget and any paid support on top.

From year two the build, theme and photos fall away and the running costs stay: roughly GHS 700 to 3,020 a year for a starter store (hosting or Shopify Basic plus a .com renewal), GHS 2,620 to 7,900 for a growing store, and GHS 4,770 to 8,490 for an established one, before payment fees and paid apps. WebSys lists monthly maintenance at GHS 200 to 1,500 if you pay someone to look after it.

It depends on who you hire and where they are. Upwork, the freelance marketplace, puts the median hourly rate for Shopify developers at $15 to $29, and lists typical rates of $15 an hour for beginners, $33 for intermediate developers and $95 for experts. At the September 2026 exchange rate, $15 to $29 is about GHS 174 to 337 an hour.

Accra firms listed on Clutch, a business review site, mostly show average rates of $25 to $49 an hour and minimum projects of $1,000 or more, about GHS 11,600. A fixed-price package from a local agency is usually easier to budget than hourly work, because you know the total before anyone starts.

Whoever you hire, get a written scope: how many products they will load, which payment methods they will connect and test, the delivery zones, and what support costs after launch. The store, the domain and the Paystack account should all be in your business's name, never the developer's, so you can change builders without starting again.

Spend on what buyers touch and save on the rest. Buyers notice clear photos, visible prices, the delivery fee and a checkout that takes MoMo; few will notice whether the theme was free. If money is tight, you do not need a full store on day one. These steps cut the first-year bill without cutting sales:

What you should never cut is testing. When we audit Ghanaian stores, the costly problems are rarely the plan price. They are a checkout that fails on one payment method, MoMo hidden under card options, and tracking that misses sales. In one Ghana fashion store, fixing exactly those took checkout conversion from 5.88% to 20.35% across two 30-day windows. For a second opinion before you spend, Maxme's free Ads & Store Audit sends a short video review on WhatsApp with the three fixes that matter most.