RFQ for Ecommerce Platforms: The Questions That Reveal Hidden Costs

An RFQ for ecommerce platform vendors is one of the most effective tools in a procurement – if the questions are asked correctly. Two quotes for the same project can differ by millions of kronor over three years without any vendor having lied. The difference sits in what the quote does not cover: transaction fees, integration maintenance, version upgrades, support add-ons. If you are procuring an ecommerce platform, the job is therefore to write questions that make it impossible to hide costs between the lines.

Here are the questions, sorted by area, and what to watch out for in the answers.

Licensing and operations: demand the price as a monthly total

The ground rule: never ask for “the price” – ask for the total cost per month at your volumes, with everything included. Phrase the questions like this:

• What is included in the monthly cost – exactly – and what is billed separately?
• Are there transaction-based or revenue-based fees? At which thresholds?
• What do operations, hosting, security updates and version upgrades cost? Are they included or are they projects?
• What do test/staging environments cost?
• What does the price adjustment clause look like over the contract term?

Version upgrades are a classic hidden cost: platforms that require recurring upgrade projects can cost more in maintenance than in licences. That is a large part of why HDL Commerce delivers up to 45% lower total cost of ownership than Magento: the upgrade projects simply do not exist in the calculation. Also demand that the vendor reports openly: our plans start at SEK 10,000/month plus SEK 50,000 one-time setup for Light and from SEK 65,000/month for Enterprise, published on the pricing page. A vendor that cannot show its pricing until “after a workshop” often has a reason for that.

Integrations: the difference between “supported” and “exists”

Integrations are the single biggest source of hidden costs in ecommerce projects. The word “supported” can mean anything from a ready-made, maintained connector to “it is possible to build against our API”. The difference can be hundreds of thousands of kronor per system. Ask like this:

1. Which of our systems do you have a ready-made, live connector for today? List them – ERP, payments, shipping, marketing.
2. What does the connector include – which data flows, in which directions?
3. Who maintains the integration when the source system updates its API, and what does that cost?
4. What does an integration that has to be custom-built cost – estimated at our volumes?
5. How are integrations monitored in production, and who is alerted when a flow stops?

Demand named systems in the answer. HDL Commerce reports its ready-made connectors openly on the integrations page – from Business Central and Fortnox to Klarna, Swish, nShift, Skrym and Voyado. Ask every vendor for an equivalent list and strike out any answer along the lines of “that usually works fine”.

Development and APIs: what does change cost?

The most expensive platform in the long run is the one where every change requires the vendor’s consultants. Your RFQ should therefore test how open the platform is:

• Which APIs exist, and is the documentation open so we can review it before signing? HDL Commerce exposes REST & GraphQL APIs with documentation on the developer pages – demand the same transparency from everyone.
• Can our own staff or any agency of our choice build against the platform, or are we locked into the vendor’s hours?
• Can we export all our data – customers, orders, products – ourselves, in open formats?
• What happens in practice at exit: notice period, data export, deletion?

The exit question belongs in the RFQ even if it feels distant. It is before signing that you have the negotiating position – not the day you want to leave.

Support, SLA and operations: demand numbers, not adjectives

“Market-leading support” is not a measurable commitment. Ask for:

• Response times per ticket type – and whether they are targets or contracted commitments with consequences. HDL Commerce replies within 4 hours (weekdays).
• Historical uptime, not just promised. Our platform delivers 99.3% uptime – ask every vendor to show where their equivalent lives, and how it is reported.
• Where the hosting is done – country, sub-processors and what that means for your GDPR work. HDL Commerce is hosted and operated in Sweden.
• What support is included in the price and where the line to billable consulting sits. This is where many of the unpleasant invoices hide: a question answered by support at one vendor can become an hourly-billed consulting engagement at another.

The format matters

Send the questions as a structured appendix where every question must be answered in its designated place – not as running text that can be answered with a sales presentation. Require that pricing and SLA questions are answered with numbers in table form and that the integration question is answered with a list of named systems. Also state your volumes in the brief: number of SKUs, orders per month, number of customers and markets. Without them, no vendor can give comparable answers, and with them it becomes harder to answer evasively.

How to evaluate the answers

When the answers come in: build a three-year calculation per vendor with the same lines for everyone – licence, setup, integrations, maintenance, upgrades, support beyond what is included, and one line for what the vendor could not answer clearly. Vague answers are not neutral; price them as risk. A vendor that answers all of the above concretely is not necessarily the cheapest in year one – but it is the quote you can actually trust in years two and three.

Finally, weigh in what the platform does not have to cost. A platform with B2B and B2C in one core and a built-in PIM means that two of the most common add-on projects – a separate B2B solution and a separate product information system – never enter the calculation at all. That kind of structural difference does not show up in a feature comparison, but it shows up clearly in the three-year calculation. So always calculate the whole per vendor, not the price per feature.

Test the questions on us first

Send your RFQ to us, or book a walkthrough and we will answer every question above for your specific environment – with prices, the connector list and the SLA on the table. If you are switching platforms, a free migration analysis is included. Get started here, and we will reply within 4 hours (weekdays).