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What should looking after your store actually cost?
Move the sliders. You will see what every option costs for the amount of work you actually need, including the ones cheaper than us and the cost of carrying on doing nothing. Nothing is collected and there is no result screen to unlock.
A store this size usually needs 4–8 hours a month once it is in order.
Used to price the do-it-yourself option honestly.
What each option costs you per month
6 hours of your time at $60. No cash cost, the question is whether it actually happens.
6 hours at the $25–120 market range. Good for defined jobs; continuity is the risk.
Pro-rated share of a $6,100/mo employee, including about 22% overhead. Plus roughly $9,000 to recruit, once.
Typical retainer floor. You are buying strategy and creative as well, which may or may not be what you need.
Matched to the hours you entered, not upsold. Month to month, nothing upfront.
And the cost of leaving it
$300 – $1,200 per month, roughly
A deliberately wide 2–8% of your $15,000 monthly revenue. That band is where neglected stores typically leak: stale prices, dead links, products missing the data Google needs, and carts that nobody follows up. It is an estimate to think with, not a measurement, the only way to know your actual number is to look at your store.
Figures are USD. For CAD, multiply by your bank's current rate.
How to read it
The number is not the decision.
Cost is the easy half. The harder question is whether the work will happen at all, and that is where most small stores actually go wrong. Doing it yourself is the cheapest row on this page and it is worthless if the list stays on your desk for a year.
So use the calculator to rule things out rather than to pick a winner. If hiring in-house comes out at several times what the work is worth, that decision is now made. If a freelancer at your hours is cheaper than a plan, and the job has a clear end, hire the freelancer.
The one row worth staring at is the last one. Most owners have never put a number on what neglect is costing, and seeing even a conservative estimate next to the monthly options usually reframes the whole question.
Then read the honest comparison of each option, which covers the parts a calculator cannot: continuity, supervision, and what happens when someone disappears.
Want your real number instead of an estimate? The free store check looks at your actual store and tells you what is costing you orders, ranked worst first.
All of our prices are public. No discovery call needed to find out what we charge. See the pricing page →
About the numbers
Where these figures come from.
Where do these figures come from?
They are conservative mid-range market estimates for Canada and the US, held in one file in our codebase so every page uses the same numbers. In-house cost applies roughly 22% employer overhead to a mid-range coordinator salary and pro-rates it to the hours you enter. Freelance and agency figures are the middle of the commonly advertised ranges. They are a way to think about the decision, not quotes, and you should check current local salary data before hiring anyone.
How many hours a month does a small store actually need?
Once a store is in good order, roughly two to four hours a month for under fifty products, four to eight for a few hundred, and eight to twenty for a large catalogue. Getting a neglected store back to that baseline takes considerably longer, which is why the first pass is usually the part people outsource even when they intend to keep the ongoing work themselves.
Why is there a cost for doing nothing?
Because leaving a store alone is not free, it is just uninvoiced. Stale prices, dead links, products missing the data Google needs and carts nobody follows up all cost orders. The 2 to 8% band is deliberately wide because a precise number would be invented, the only way to know your actual figure is to look at your store.
Is there an email gate on the result?
No. The numbers appear as you move the sliders and nothing is collected. If you want to know what is actually wrong with your specific store, the free store check is there, but the calculator itself asks for nothing.
Next step
Find out what is actually wrong with your store. Free.
Send us your store URL. You get a written check of the things costing you orders right now, in plain English, with the fixes ranked by what they are worth. No call required, no obligation, and you can take the list to anyone.
Access you can revoke · No contract · A real person replies within one business day