Compare / Website Development / Ecommerce Ecommerce — small scale options. Tap any requirement to compare its recommended, free, cheaper and paid options with prices and honest notes on where each one differs. This is a read-only comparison — nothing is selected.
1. Web Hosting / App Runtime (Vercel, Netlify, ECS, Shopify hosting if headless) 2. Domain and DNS (Cloudflare Free, Route53 $0.50/zone + $0.40/M queries) 3. SSL/TLS (Let's Encrypt Free, Cloudflare Universal Free) 4. CDN (Cloudflare Free unlimited, BunnyCDN $1/mo + $0.01/GB, CloudFront $0.085/GB) 5. Database - Managed RDBMS for products/orders (Supabase Free 500MB $25/mo Pro 8GB $0.125/GB over, Neon Free 0.5GB $19/mo Pro, RDS db.t3.micro $0.017/hr ~$12.5/mo + $0.115/GB-mo) 6. File/Object Storage for product images (S3 $0.023/GB-mo + $0.09/GB egress, R2 Free 10GB $0.015/GB after zero egress, Cloudinary Free 25 credits $99/mo Pro) 7. Image Optimization (Cloudinary Free 25 credits, Imgix Free 1k images $10/mo Pro 10k images, Cloudflare Images Free 5k images $5/mo 100k images $1/1k after) 8. Auth - Customer accounts (Clerk Free 10k MAU $25/mo Pro + $0.02/MAU over, Auth0 Free 7.5k MAU $35/mo Essentials, Firebase Auth Free 50k MAU) 9. Payment Gateway API (Stripe 2.9% + 30c per txn + 0.5% Billing, PayPal 2.99%+49c, Braintree 2.59%+49c, Adyen interchange + 0.11 + 0.60c) 10. Cart/Checkout Service (Shopify Checkout $0 included with Shopify $39/mo Basic, Stripe Checkout Free 0% + Stripe fees, BigCommerce Checkout $0 included) 11. Inventory Management API (Shopify Inventory Free with Shopify, Fabric Inventory $500/mo, Cin7 $299/mo) 12. Search for products (Algolia Free 10k records 10k searches $1/1k records $0.50/1k searches over, Typesense Free self-hosted $30/mo Cloud 100k docs $0.50/1k docs over, Meilisearch Free self-hosted $30/mo Cloud) 13. Email - Transactional for order confirmations (Resend Free 3k/mo $20/mo 50k $0.0004/email over, SendGrid Free 100/day $19.95/mo 50k, SES $0.10/1k) 14. Email - Marketing for newsletters (Klaviyo Free 250 contacts $20/mo 500 contacts $0.02/contact over, Brevo Free 300 emails/day $25/mo 20k emails, Mailchimp Free 500 contacts $20/mo 1k contacts) 15. SMS Notifications for orders (Twilio $0.0075/SMS, Vonage $0.0055/SMS, OneSignal SMS $0.02/SMS) 16. Tax Calculation API (Stripe Tax 0.5% per txn, TaxJar Free 1000 calcs $19/mo Pro 10k calcs $0.10/calc over, Avalara $50/mo 1000 transactions $0.20/tx over) 17. Shipping & Fulfillment API (Shippo Free 30 labels $10/mo Pro 500 labels $0.05/label over, EasyPost Free 100 labels $0.05/label after, ShipStation $9/mo 50 shipments $0.50/shipment over) 18. Caching - Redis for cart/sessions (Upstash Free 10k cmds/day $0.20/100k cmds over, Redis Cloud Free 30MB $5/mo 250MB, Momento Free 50k req/day $0.20/1M req after) 19. Background Jobs for orders (Inngest Free 100k steps $20/mo 500k steps $0.00004/step over, Trigger.dev Free 10k runs $30/mo 50k runs, SQS Free 1M req $0.40/M after) Options and prices come straight from our research sheets for a small scale ecommerce project. Prices are estimates and change often — always confirm on the provider's page before committing. 