Compare · Hiring in-house
Hiring someone versus paying us
Hiring an ecommerce coordinator costs roughly $58,000 to $88,000 a year all-in once employer overhead is counted, plus recruiting. We cost $249 to $1,499 a month. Hiring wins when ecommerce is a big enough share of revenue to fill a full-time role; we win when it needs a few hours a week done properly.
Choose hiring in-house when
Hire when the online channel is large enough to genuinely occupy someone for forty hours a week, when the work needs somebody physically present with stock or photography, or when the knowledge is strategic enough that you want it living inside the business permanently rather than rented.
Choose E-Store Manager when
Use us when the honest amount of work is a few hours a week, when you cannot supervise a junior hire because nobody in the building knows Shopify either, or when you need the work done now rather than after a two-month hiring process and a three-month ramp.
Side by side
The differences that actually matter.
| E-Store Manager | Hiring in-house | |
|---|---|---|
| Cash cost | $249 to $1,499 a month, stop anytime | $58,000 to $88,000 a year all-in, plus recruiting |
| Time to productive | About two weeks | Two months to hire, three to ramp up |
| If it does not work out | Cancel, no notice period | A difficult conversation and possible severance |
| Depth of Shopify knowledge | Specialists who see many stores | Whatever one person happens to know |
| Coverage when away | A team, so holidays are invisible | Nothing happens for two weeks |
| Understanding your business | Good on the store, limited beyond it | Full context, in the room, learns everything |
| Growing beyond the basics | We are not strategists | Can own the channel and build it |
The longer answer
The default assumption is that hiring is the serious option and outsourcing is the cheap compromise. For a store doing significant volume, that is broadly right. For a small one it inverts, and the reason is not the salary, it is the supervision.
A junior ecommerce hire needs someone to tell them what good looks like. In a business where nobody knows Shopify well, that person does not exist. So the hire arrives, does their best, and produces work nobody can evaluate. Two things follow: mistakes go undetected for months, and the employee has no way to get better. That is not a bad hire, it is a bad setup, and it is common in small businesses precisely because the alternative looked expensive.
The cash comparison is also usually understated. A $60,000 salary is roughly $73,000 once payroll taxes, benefits, equipment and software are counted, before recruiting costs. Against a $249 to $1,499 monthly fee, the gap is large enough that the interesting question is not cost but capacity, whether there is genuinely forty hours a week of work.
Be honest about that. Most small stores have four to eight hours a week of real maintenance. Hiring a full-time person to do eight hours of work produces an underused employee who becomes a general assistant, which is a legitimate thing to want and a bad way to buy ecommerce expertise.
Where hiring clearly wins, and we will say so: when you want the knowledge to stay. We are rented. The day you stop paying, the understanding of your store leaves with us. An employee builds context that compounds and that you own. If ecommerce is becoming central to your business, that matters more than the monthly number, and hiring is the right call.
Questions
What people ask when deciding.
Is it cheaper to hire someone part-time instead?
Often yes on paper, and it is a genuinely reasonable option, expect $1,000 to $2,500 a month for a capable part-timer. The catch is the same one: they need direction from someone who knows Shopify. If you can supply that, a part-timer is good value. If you cannot, you are paying for hours rather than outcomes.
Could we use you and then hire later?
That is the sensible sequence and it is what we would suggest. Use us while the channel is small, and when it is big enough to fill a role, hire. We will hand over documentation of how the store is set up rather than making the transition awkward. There is no notice period to work around.
What happens to our knowledge if we stop working with you?
You keep the store, the access and the documentation. What you lose is the accumulated familiarity, which is a real cost of renting rather than employing, and we would rather name it than pretend it does not exist.
Other options
Compare the rest.
Next step
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