01You need a store when
A store is not a website with a buy button. It is inventory, tax, shipping, returns and support, permanently.
- You sell a physical product that ships.
- The customer decides and pays without speaking to you.
- You have more than a handful of products, with variants or stock levels.
- You sell into more than one country, which means more than one tax rule.
02A website is enough when
Most local businesses are here and buy a store anyway, because someone sold them one.
- You sell a service: a salon, a clinic, a trade, a law firm, a hotel.
- The customer books or enquires, then pays you at the appointment.
- Your prices depend on the job, so a fixed cart price would be wrong anyway.
- You take payment in person, by transfer, or through a booking platform you already use.
03The middle ground almost nobody offers
There is a lot of room between a brochure and a full store, and it is usually where the answer is.
- A website with one paid product, like a deposit or a gift voucher, instead of a full catalogue.
- A website with real ordering for a short fixed menu, which is what a restaurant needs and a store would overshoot.
- A website now, a store later, on the same code, once the demand is proven.
- A pre-order page that takes interest without taking money, which is how a launch should start.
A case where a store would have been the wrong answer
Rotiseria sells a short, fixed menu to people who collect it. A full store, with a product catalogue, stock levels, shipping rules and returns, would have been more machinery than the business needed and more to maintain forever. What they actually needed was ordering: menu, cart, card payment, a pickup slot and a confirmation email. That is a smaller build than a store and it does the whole job. Naming the difference saved them money that a catalogue would have quietly consumed.
See the build: Rotiseria Baba NovacQuestions, answered
What is the real cost difference?
A website is 500 to 2,500 EUR with us. A store is 2,500 to 4,500 EUR. The build gap is the smaller half: a store also needs someone maintaining products, stock and orders forever.
Can I start with a website and add a store later?
Yes, and it is usually the right order. Building on real code rather than a locked platform is what makes that upgrade possible instead of a rebuild.
Does a store fit the 48 hour build?
No. Stores get their own timeline and we say so before starting rather than after you have paid.
Where PROOF48 fits
Rotiseria needed ordering, not a catalogue, so we built ordering. Noryse needed a real store and got one. Korean Cosmetics needed a store that could wait for launch, so it takes preorders without charging. Tell us what the money does and we will tell you which one you need, including when it is the cheaper one.
Cosmin Tiu · Founder, PROOF48
Building software since 2018. PROOF48 ships business websites in 48 hours and invoices afterwards, which means every opinion here was paid for in builds rather than in theory.