Last year we worked on two projects from the same street in Prague 7. A jewelry maker needed a custom e-shop. A renovation company needed a corporate website with a quote form. The renovation company saved tens of thousands of crowns by not building an e-shop it did not need, and the jewelry maker would have lost sales every week without one. Same street, opposite answers, both correct. This article is the conversation we have with every client who asks us which one they need.
Decision framework: product vs. service
You need an e-shop when: you sell products with fixed prices, customers can decide and pay without talking to you, the goods can be shipped or collected, and you expect enough orders that handling them by email or phone would become a bottleneck.
A presentation website is enough when: every job is priced individually, customers need a consultation before they buy, your service cannot be reduced to a catalogue entry, or you sell a handful of high-value items a month where a personal conversation is part of the sale.
The first question we ask is not about technology at all: what does the customer need to know before they are ready to pay? If the answer fits on a product page (price, variants, delivery time, returns), you are an e-shop. If the answer is a site visit, a drawing or a quote, you are a presentation site with a strong enquiry flow, and a cart would only get in the way.
Four scenarios we see most often
- The craft producer with 40 items and stable prices. E-shop. Even at ten orders a week, manual invoicing eats an afternoon, and customers increasingly expect to pay by card at 11 pm without emailing anyone.
- The renovation or installation company. Presentation site. The sale happens after a site visit. What the website must do is make the enquiry easy: a short form, a phone number that works on mobile, references with photos, and clear service areas.
- The B2B supplier with a 2,000-item catalogue and negotiated prices. Catalogue without a public cart. Customers need to find the product and its specification; the price depends on who is asking. A quote request or a login-only price list serves them better than a consumer checkout.
- The consultant, clinic or studio selling time. Presentation site with a booking or enquiry step. Online payment can come later as a deposit feature, once you know that people actually book online.
Four options and what they cost
Indicative Czech market ranges for 2026, not our price list. Our own prices start at 15,000 CZK for a small WordPress site, 35,000 CZK for a corporate website and 60,000 CZK for an e-shop; the pricing page has the current figures.
| Option | Market price (CZK) | Online payments | Cart | Timeline |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Presentation site + enquiry form | 15,000 - 120,000 | No | No | 3-8 weeks |
| Site + catalogue, no checkout | 35,000 - 150,000 | No | No | 5-10 weeks |
| E-shop (Shopify / WooCommerce) | 60,000 - 300,000 | Yes | Yes | 6-12 weeks |
| Custom e-commerce | 150,000 - 600,000+ | Yes | Yes | 10-20 weeks |
The build price is only half the story. An e-shop carries running costs a presentation site does not: payment gateway fees (typically 1-2% on cards; Stripe's payment-methods overview is a good primer on how the methods differ), shipping integrations, invoicing, stock updates, and the legal pages an online store must publish. Details in our cost breakdown and in the comparison of Czech payment gateways.
The hybrid approach
A website with a product catalogue but no cart. Customers see products with prices, photos and specifications. Instead of a Buy button there is a quote request or an Ask about this product form. It works for custom manufacturing, B2B sales, premium products and small catalogues where every order needs a conversation anyway.
Two things make a hybrid site worth the money. First, structure the products properly from day one: real product pages, not a PDF, with Product structured data so search engines can treat them as products (Google's product structured data documentation lists what is required). Second, build it on a platform where switching on a cart later is a configuration change, not a rebuild. WooCommerce with checkout disabled, or a headless setup with a commerce backend, both allow that. A page builder with products pasted into text blocks does not.
Platform comparison
If you have decided you need a real e-shop, the next question is the platform. The detailed analysis is in Shopify vs. WooCommerce; the short version is below, again as market ranges.
| Criterion | Shopify | WooCommerce | Custom |
|---|---|---|---|
| Initial cost (market) | 50,000 - 150,000 CZK | 60,000 - 150,000 CZK | 150,000 - 600,000+ CZK |
| Monthly costs | 700 - 3,000 CZK plus fees | 300 - 2,000 CZK hosting | 200 - 1,000 CZK hosting |
| Maintenance | Minimal | Moderate (updates, plugins) | Minimal, but needs a developer |
| Flexibility | Moderate | High | Full |
| Data and code ownership | Rented | Yours | Yours |
Pitfalls we see when people choose wrong
- Building a cart for a service. A plumber with a checkout page gets no orders and a confused bounce rate. The visitor wanted a phone number and an idea of the price. Put the enquiry form where the cart would have been.
- Launching an e-shop without logistics. Who packs, which carrier, what happens with returns, who answers the where-is-my-order email. The software is the easy part; we ask these questions in the first meeting because the answers change the scope.
- Underestimating the legal side. An online store in the Czech Republic needs terms and conditions, a withdrawal notice, a complaints procedure and correct price display. We cover the full list in mandatory website information under Czech law.
- Choosing a platform that cannot grow. A builder template is fine for 20 products and one currency. It is painful at 500 products, two languages and an accounting integration. If growth is the plan, choose the platform for year three, not month one.
- Treating the e-shop as the marketing. A shop with no traffic sells nothing. Budget for search visibility and product content from the start, or the build cost is wasted.
A short checklist before you decide
- Can a customer decide and pay without talking to you? If not, you do not need a cart yet.
- How many orders a month would make manual handling painful? Below roughly twenty, a form and an invoice still work.
- Are your prices fixed and public? Negotiated prices point to a catalogue with quote requests.
- Do you have packing, shipping and returns figured out? If not, solve that before paying for checkout.
- Will you need a second language, an accounting link or more than a few hundred products within two years? Choose the platform accordingly.
- Who will update the site after launch, and how many hours a month do they have?
Frequently asked questions
Do I need an e-shop if I only have 20 products?
Standard products with several orders a week: yes, the time you save on invoicing and the payment options you gain pay for the checkout quickly. Custom products that need a consultation: a catalogue with a quote form, typically at roughly half the price of a full e-shop.
Can I start with a website and add e-commerce later?
Yes, and for many clients we recommend exactly that. Start with a presentation site, verify demand through enquiries, then add cart and payments. The one condition is to build on a platform that allows the expansion without a rebuild. More in our small business guide.
The right decision saves money and time
An e-shop is not automatically better than a presentation website. It is a different tool for a different business, with its own running costs and its own set of things that can go wrong. Pick the one that matches how your customers actually buy.
If you are not sure, get in touch. We will tell you honestly which one you need, and sometimes the answer is the cheaper option. The first consultation is free.