Your own online store or a ready-made shopfront: the real cost for a craft studio

Your own online store costs a subscription every month, a domain every year and a few hours of upkeep every week. A ready-made shopfront on Handsome costs nothing: up to five published items you pay zero, and the platform takes no commission on sales. But the real question isn't what the shop costs to open. It's who walks people through the door. Either way, that's you.

You have a studio, you want to sell your pieces online, and sooner or later someone tells you to build a proper website. Then come the theme, the apps, the shipping page. Three months later the shop is live with a handful of visits a month, most of them yours. Here is the real arithmetic, line by line.

What a DIY online store really costs

Shopify is the quickest route: you pay a monthly plan and in one afternoon you have a working shop. Plans change over time, so read the numbers on the official Shopify site the day you do the maths, not in an article. The subscription, though, is only the first line.

• The monthly plan, which you pay in the months you sell nothing too.
• The domain, renewed every year.
• The theme: the free one looks free, the good one costs money.
• Apps for shipping, reviews, email and invoicing, almost all with their own subscription.
• Payment processing fees on every order, which no platform makes disappear.

WooCommerce is the other route: the plugin is free and the site is yours, as the official WooCommerce site explains. The cost doesn't vanish, it moves: hosting, certificate, updates, backups. And the day one update argues with another plugin, the shop goes down and you put it back up yourself, at night. Excellent if you already run WordPress and someone looks after it. A time trap if you start from scratch, and we have written down what building your own site actually takes.

The cost nobody puts in the quote: your time

The site isn't finished the day it goes live. From then on there is steady maintenance, and it lands on you. It never appears in a quote because it never comes with an invoice.

• Listing every piece: photos, measurements, description, weight for shipping.
• Keeping stock in line with what is actually on the bench.
• Updating platform and plugins, and fixing things when they break.
• Keeping the legal pages current: returns, right of withdrawal, privacy, terms of sale.
• Bringing traffic every week, not once.

Even a small shop can eat half a day a week. Half a day away from the wheel or the bench. Price that half day at the cost of one of your workshops and you have the number you need. If you would rather start without giving up studio hours, open your free profile on Handsome: the only time it takes is the photography.

A shop in the middle of the desert: who brings the customers

This is the part that changes everything, and it always lands too late. Your own store is a shop in the middle of the desert. There is no footfall, no street outside the window. Everyone who comes in, you brought: from your Instagram, from your own customers, from a market stall. That is not a flaw in Shopify or WooCommerce. They give you the shop, not the street.

Google works the same way, and this is my impression rather than a figure: a brand-new domain starts with no pages that answer a search, and it usually takes a while before it brings anyone. Meanwhile the subscription is due. What you can do before the site even exists is in getting found on Google without a website.

What a ready-made shopfront on Handsome costs

Since 18 September 2026, selling products is open to every eligible Maker. Handsome takes no commission on product sales: the payment starts life in your own Stripe account, and the only cost is the standard Stripe processing fee, the one on the Stripe pricing page.

• Free plan: 5 published items with unlimited drafts, so you can prepare calmly and publish your best five.
• Handsome Pro: 9.90 euros a month or 95 euros a year, and the five-item cap disappears. 30-day trial, no card required.
• If Pro lapses you lose nothing: the 5 most recent items stay public, the rest go back to draft and republish when you renew.
• To sell you need a verified Italian VAT number, a connected Stripe account and acceptance of the terms of sale.
• Without a VAT number, on the Apprentice profile, you can run workshops but not sell products.
• Shipping is yours to set: the cost and the threshold for free delivery. Handsome collects the buyer's address.
• Your items live on your public profile, at /artigiani/your-name/prodotti: a link of your own, to send in a chat or print on a card.

The honest comparison is this: with your own store you pay every month and control everything; with the shopfront you pay nothing while you stay within five published items. And you don't start from an empty address: your profile and your workshop pages are already public, and the shopfront lives inside them. The item-by-item maths is in what it really costs to sell a 40-euro piece, and how selling works day to day is in selling your handmade products online with no commission.

There is one thing a store on its own cannot give you: people who have already watched you work. Here workshops and products sit on the same profile, which is why the person who takes the class is often the person who buys the piece. Workshops carry no commission either: for a group workshop the guest pays a 10-euro deposit per seat, which starts life in your own Stripe account, and you take the balance in the studio.

How to choose, in practice

There is no right answer for everyone. There is a right answer for now. If you are also looking at a marketplace, the comparison is in products or experiences: Etsy and Handsome.

1. You have never sold a piece online: start with the ready-made shopfront and find out whether people buy before you invest.
2. You already sell well and have customers who message you: your own store makes sense, because the traffic exists.
3. You already run a WordPress site someone maintains: WooCommerce is the shortest path.
4. Direct messages are your only channel: fix how chats turn into paid orders first, then think about the site.
5. Either way they are not alternatives: the site serves your name, the shopfront serves people who don't know you yet.