Ask five Kenyan developers what a basic online shop costs and you'll get five answers between KES 10,000 and KES 500,000. They're not all lying — they're selling different things. This piece breaks down what each tier actually delivers, where the hidden fees live, and how to read a quote without getting burned.
Skip to: The five real tiers · Hidden costs · Total cost over 3 years · Questions to ask any developer
The short version
- KES 0 — WhatsApp Business. Free. Works up to ~20 orders/day. Invisible to Google.
- KES 0 to ~8% commission — marketplaces (Jumia, Sky.Garden, Kilimall). Free to list; you pay per sale and don't own the customer.
- KES 3,500-20,000/month — SaaS (Shopify, Wix, Ecwid). Monthly forever, billed in USD. M-Pesa via the same gateway you'd use anywhere, plus the platform's surcharge on top.
- KES 15,000-80,000 one-time — productized Kenyan developers. Fixed tiers, M-Pesa wired through your own gateway account, you own the site, no recurring platform fees.
- KES 150,000-500,000+ one-time — full agencies. Custom design, strategy workshops, long timelines. Right for enterprise, overkill for most SMBs.
For the average Nairobi merchant selling to Kenyan customers via M-Pesa, the KES 15,000-80,000 productized tier is the sweet spot — low risk, fast delivery, no recurring fees, and you own the asset.
The five real tiers, explained
Tier 1 — Free (WhatsApp Business, social commerce)
Real cost: KES 0. A phone. Your time.
What you get: A WhatsApp Business catalog with photos, prices, and descriptions. Customers DM you to order. You manually send an M-Pesa Till number; they pay; you screenshot the confirmation; you dispatch.
When it works: Under 20 orders/day. Warm audience (repeat customers, Instagram following, friend-of-friend referrals). Simple catalog, standardized products.
When it breaks: Past ~20 orders/day, reply time exceeds an hour. Messages get buried. Orders get lost. You're invisible to Google and everyone searching "[your product] Kenya."
Don't skip this tier. Every successful Kenyan ecommerce brand we know started on WhatsApp. If you haven't validated demand on WhatsApp, don't spend KES 50,000 on a website nobody will visit.
Tier 2 — Marketplace listings (Jumia, Sky.Garden, Kilimall)
Real cost: Free to sign up. 5-29% commission per sale, depending on platform and category.
- Jumia Seller Center: 6-29% commission (category-dependent) + 16% VAT on commission + shipping contribution. Payout 7-21 days after delivery.
- Sky.Garden: 8% on free tier, or KES 500-3,000/month SuperSeller tier for 5-8% rates.
- Kilimall: 5-15% commission. Lower than Jumia, lower traffic.
What you get: Built-in traffic. Logistics handled (mostly). Payment processing (M-Pesa native). Zero website-building effort.
The math: A merchant doing KES 200,000/month in sales pays Jumia ~KES 30,000/month in commission. Over a year, that's KES 360,000 — enough to build and maintain a premium NaiForge shop with KES 280,000 left over.
When it works: You're starting cold with no audience. You sell commodity products where brand doesn't matter. You want to test product-market fit before investing in your own site.
The trap: You don't own the customer. Jumia can delist you, change commission rates, or promote a cheaper competitor below your listing. Your brand is Jumia's brand.
Tier 3 — SaaS platforms (Shopify, Wix, Ecwid)
Real cost: KES 2,200-20,000/month — forever.
- Wix Core: ~USD 17/month (~KES 2,200). M-Pesa via plugin only.
- Shopify Basic: ~USD 29/month (~KES 3,800) + 2% Shopify alternative-payment surcharge when not using Shopify Payments (which isn't available in Kenya) + the gateway's own M-Pesa fee (~2.5-4%).
- Shopify Grow: ~USD 79/month (~KES 10,400).
- Shopify Advanced: ~USD 299/month (~KES 39,400).
- Ecwid: Free tier limited; paid from USD 19/month.
What you get: Drag-and-drop or template-based builders. App ecosystems. Polished checkout flows for USD/EUR markets.
The Kenya gotcha: Shopify Payments isn't available in Kenya, so every Kenyan Shopify shop pays the platform's 2% alternative-payment surcharge on every M-Pesa sale, on top of the gateway's own ~2.5-4% rate, on top of the monthly subscription billed in USD. The gateway fee itself is the same one you'd pay on a standalone site — what stacks on top is the platform.
Year-one cost at Shopify Basic: KES 45,600 (subscription, USD-billed) + the 2% alternative-payment surcharge on every Kenyan sale + the gateway's own M-Pesa fee. A merchant doing KES 100,000/month pays roughly KES 60,000-85,000 in platform + transaction fees in year one alone.
When it works: You sell internationally in USD/EUR. You need Shopify-specific integrations (Klaviyo, specific fulfillment apps). Your team already runs on Shopify.
When it doesn't: You're selling to Kenyan customers paying via M-Pesa. Which is most Kenyan merchants.
Tier 4 — Productized Kenyan developers (KES 15,000-80,000 one-time)
Real cost: KES 15,000-80,000 one-time. No recurring fees.
What you get: A done-for-you Kenyan ecommerce site with M-Pesa checkout via your own gateway account (Paystack, IntaSend, Pesapal, or Flutterwave — your money, your KYC), unlimited products, mobile optimization, fast global hosting, SSL, and ownership of the code. Delivery in 5 days to 4 weeks depending on tier. One-time payment, no recurring platform fees.
Who offers this: NaiForge, Sketch Studios, Webmasters Kenya, Kenyaweb Experts, and a handful of others. Look for disclosed pricing, fixed delivery timelines, and code ownership with your own gateway merchant account — these three together indicate productized (predictable) vs ad-hoc (variable).
Sweet spot: Under KES 200,000/month in sales and growing. You want to stop paying platform taxes and start compounding margin.
What to watch for: "Productized" done right means fixed scope per tier, fixed price, fixed delivery window. Done wrong means a template swap with your logo pasted on. Ask to see three real launches — different clients, different categories — and look for distinct design treatment, not reskins.
Tier 5 — Full-service agencies (KES 150,000-500,000+)
Real cost: KES 150,000 to 500,000+ for a website project. Monthly retainers often follow (KES 30,000-150,000/month).
What you get: Strategy workshops, brand positioning, custom photography direction, multi-stakeholder approval cycles, dedicated account manager, 6-16 week timelines, ongoing maintenance retainers.
When it's worth it: You're an enterprise brand. You have complex stakeholder dynamics. You need strategic positioning, not just a website. Your competitors are spending similar money and you need to match them.
When it's overkill: You're an SMB doing under KES 5M/year in sales. You don't need 12 stakeholder meetings to decide on a hero image. The agency's overhead is being billed to you whether you use it or not.
The hidden costs nobody shows you in the quote
Domain name
Real cost: ~KES 1,500/year for .com. ~KES 2,500/year for .co.ke. You buy it yourself (Namecheap, KenyaWebHost, Truehost) — no developer needs to "register" it for you.
Red flag: Any developer quoting "domain included — KES 10,000/year" is marking up a commodity 7x. Buy it yourself, point it at their server, move on.
SSL certificate
Real cost: Free. Let's Encrypt and every modern host or CDN issue free SSL automatically. If anyone quotes you KES 5,000-15,000/year for SSL, they're reselling something that's free. Walk away.
Hosting
Real cost: For a shop under 100 orders/day: KES 0-500/month on modern edge hosting free tiers or basic shared hosting. Above that: KES 1,500-5,000/month.
Red flag: "Premium Kenya hosting" at KES 5,000-15,000/month for a shop doing 10 orders/day. You're subsidizing their retainer.
Maintenance
Legitimate range: KES 3,000-5,000/month for ongoing bug fixes, security patches, small copy changes, M-Pesa gateway troubleshooting. Or pay-per-task at KES 2,000-3,000/change.
Red flag: KES 15,000+/month mandatory retainers bundled with your website quote. If you're not actively changing things, you shouldn't be paying a monthly fee.
Transaction fees
M-Pesa via a Kenyan gateway (Paystack, IntaSend, Pesapal, Flutterwave): ~2.5-4% to the gateway, who handles settlement to your bank or M-Pesa. Roughly comparable across providers.
M-Pesa on Shopify: Same gateway fee as above plus Shopify's 2% alternative-payment surcharge stacked on top, since Shopify Payments isn't available in Kenya.
Card payments (Visa/Mastercard): ~3-3.8% via any Kenyan gateway. Standard, not negotiable, paid by you to the gateway per sale.
Revisions
Reasonable: 1-3 revision rounds included; extra rounds at KES 2,000-3,000 each.
Red flag: "Unlimited revisions" on a sub-KES 30,000 project is either a lie (they'll push back hard on the fourth round) or a warning sign the developer is desperate for the deal.
Total cost over 3 years — the real comparison
Sticker price misleads. Here's what each option costs a Kenyan merchant doing KES 150,000/month in sales over 3 years:
| Option | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | 3-Year Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| WhatsApp only | KES 0 | KES 0 | KES 0 | KES 0 |
| Jumia (15% avg commission) | KES 270,000 | KES 324,000 | KES 388,800 | KES 982,800 |
| Shopify Basic + plugin | KES 100,000 | KES 108,000 | KES 116,000 | KES 324,000 |
| NaiForge Standard (one-time) | KES 45,000 | KES 0 | KES 0 | KES 45,000 |
| Full agency (KES 250k + retainer) | KES 850,000 | KES 600,000 | KES 600,000 | KES 2,050,000 |
Numbers assume KES 150,000/month sales, 15% average Jumia commission, 10%/year Shopify price increases, KES 50k/month agency retainer. Excludes domain (KES 1,500/year for all options) and M-Pesa transaction fees (paid to Safaricom regardless of platform).
The gap is real. NaiForge Standard pays for itself in month 2 vs Jumia, month 5 vs Shopify, and month 1 vs a full agency.
Questions to ask any Kenyan web developer before paying
- Which M-Pesa gateway will be wired in, and whose merchant account will it run through? Paystack, IntaSend, Pesapal, and Flutterwave are all reasonable choices at roughly comparable fees (~2.5-4%). The merchant account must be in your business's name, not the developer's.
- What's included in the quote — and what's extra? Domain? SSL? Hosting for year 1? Revisions? Logo design? Get the list in writing.
- What's the total first-year cost, not sticker price? Quote + hosting + plugins + revisions. If they can't tell you, they haven't built one before.
- Do I own the code? Can I take it to another developer or host it myself? Productized developers say yes. SaaS says no. Some freelancers say "technically yes" but deliver code you can't actually deploy.
- Show me three real launches from the last 6 months. Live URLs. Different clients, different industries. If they can't, you're the test case.
- Who fixes it when M-Pesa breaks? Safaricom has outages. Gateways have outages. Who's on WhatsApp at 9pm on a Saturday when your checkout breaks?
- What's the revision policy? How many rounds included? What triggers an extra-charge revision? What happens if I want to change the design after launch?
The verdict for most Kenyan merchants
If you're selling to Kenyan customers paying via M-Pesa, doing somewhere between KES 50,000 and KES 2,000,000 per month in online sales, the productized KES 25,000-80,000 tier is the right answer 90% of the time. One-time payment, no recurring fees, M-Pesa wired through your own gateway account, you own the site, predictable delivery.
Marketplaces make sense as a traffic channel, not a primary storefront. SaaS makes sense for international-facing businesses. Full agencies make sense at enterprise scale. For the Nairobi SMB building a direct-to-consumer brand, productized is the sweet spot.
See NaiForge's transparent pricing for exact numbers (KES 25,000, 45,000, 80,000+), or compare us head-to-head with Shopify, Jumia, or WhatsApp Business.