How much does it cost to implement B2B ecommerce on Magento?

In this post, I’ll focus on a question that often arises in the context of digital sales transformation.

How much does it cost to implement B2B ecommerce on Magento 2?
What affects the implementation budget?
Scope of B2B ecommerce implementation (what do you get for 1600-2000 hours?)
Comparing B2B ecommerce implementation and online shop implementation
Cost of implementing B2B ecommerce on Magento – summary

How much does it cost to implement B2B ecommerce on Magento 2?

If you assume that such B2B ecommerce will cost from 100.000 EUR to 130.000 EUR, this is a realistic estimate of which a good B2B ecommerce, integrated with ERP, PIM and with a custom graphic design, will be created.

For those who want to learn more, I encourage you to expand the article.

What affects the implementation budget?

There are two essential elements.

The final implementation budget for Magento 2 is simply the product of the number of hours needed to develop a project (I am talking about the work of the project coordinator, programmers, testers, graphic designers, or UX designers) and the hourly rate.

Hourly rate

Let’s start by discussing the hourly rate. It’s February 2024, and I believe that a safe assumption is an hourly rate for Magento projects ranging from 60 EUR to about 80 EUR (An agency that is certified Adobe Partner, with a proven track record, certified Magento developers, located in the European Union). In the calculations I presented initially, I used this average net value of 65 EUR.

This is a safe assumption, and this is roughly what the market looks like right now.
Of course, you will find a company wanting to carry out the project with an hourly rate of 45 EUR. There will also be a company that will propose a rate of 100 EUR. However, our goal is to estimate and understand the scale of the project.

Let’s, therefore, use 65 EUR net for our calculations.

Number of hours

The next factor we should consider is the time needed to complete the B2B ecommerce implementation project on Magento. It is safe to estimate that this can be roughly 1600 to 2000 hours.

Scope of B2B ecommerce implementation (what do you get for 1600-2000 hours?)

What do I include in the scope of implementation?

• We’re talking here about implementation starting from business analysis. At this stage, workshops are conducted to understand the business better.
• Then, you need to prepare sketches and graphic designs for your B2B ecommerce (individual project).
• Then, user stories and acceptance criteria are prepared based on which development tasks can be done.
• The next step is backend and frontend coding.
• Integration takes place in the meantime.
• All elements are, of course, tested.
• In the end, we have training and launch the production environment.
• The entire scope described above has been included in the estimate I wrote about earlier. To avoid any doubt, I will write that I have also included work related to project coordination in the forecast and quality assurance (code review and manual test).

The given estimate includes integration with ERP and PIM. I did not include the cost of PIM implementation.

Regarding the front end, within this evaluation, I assumed that the B2B ecommerce would be based on the very fast Hyva, which provides results on Google PageSpeed at around over 80 points.

Comparing B2B ecommerce implementation and online shop implementation

Typically, B2B ecommerce is more expensive. The costs of implementing such a reasonable scope, that is, ecommerce with a custom graphic design that meets all business assumptions, does not have an amazing number of additional features, is fast, and is a solid base for further expansion, are higher than the costs of implementing an online shop.

This is mainly because B2B ecommerce usually requires more working hours, especially with integrations. We often deal with very unusual discount policies, often with individual prices for specific products assigned to particular customers.

Another aspect is the need to implement elements related to trade conditions – for example, merchant credits and unusual forms of transport. Usually, the access level is an element that requires individual adjustment (different users on the side of your recipient may have different levels of access to the functions of ecommerce).

For instance, some users may create lists or shopping carts without authorization to approve them. The proper department, for example, the purchasing department, must approve the inquiry. These additional features often occur in B2B ecommerce, which are not present in an online shop that sells in the B2C model (because why would they be?).

These additional features contribute to the higher cost of B2B ecommerce compared to a B2C online shop based on Magento.

Cost of implementing B2B ecommerce on Magento – summary

In summary, regarding the cost of implementing B2B ecommerce on Magento, it is safe to assume that in February 2024, it will be between 100.000 EUR and 130.000 EUR.

At this price, we will receive a custom graphic design with some additional functionalities of B2B ecommerce and all the necessary basic integrations.

Such B2B ecommerce will:

1. provide customers with the same conditions as the sales representative
2. be a lead-generating machine for new business
3. give recipients access to real-time updated documents and financial accounting data.

If you are currently considering B2B ecommerce over Magento, be sure to check out the post about the biggest downsides of Magento you need to know.

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