hi i’m planning to launch my business online and i have no idea how much i should be paying for a basic e-commerce website. pls help
hmm… around $200 - $400…
I don’t think this is the thread to handle that question.
I agree, your asking to broad a question, there’s a lot of variables in what you constitute an e-commerce system and you would need to be much more explicit about your requirements, what your planning to sell, what your website needs (etc), give us some details so we can help you. 
You can get free shopping carts, which will reduce your costs to a minimum. They tend to have installation instructions such that most designers would have it up and running within a sort time - an hour or so. then you’d only expect to pay for customising the design. But even then, there are free skins available which can also keep your costs down. (Hence the low estimate given in the first reply)
There are con-men out there who will give you a “custom build shopping cart” by using a free one! A friend has her site done for free so that a couple of conmen could pretend they had customers paying them a rather large fee for their “work”. (it was cubecart v3 with a skin, totally free, but they were charging about $2500 for their “work”). So. Ask anyone doing the work for you which shopping cart they are using. Almost no-one builds a shopping cart from scratch, so it will not be a custom built cart, but a custom skin on an existing cart that you are most likely to get.
You can get quotations from website design company depending on the functionality you need to add on your website.
I don’t agree with claiming a custom built shopping cart when your using an existing one with an existing skin (and then charging a large fee) however I do agree with claiming it’s a custom built shopping cart if their using a free or paid shopping cart system with a theme or customized UI built from scratch. It’s still a custom system if the front-end code is heavily and contextually tweaked to meet the needs of a visitor, even if the backend system is an existing product (no-one reinvents the e-commerce wheel for a single site). Customizing an e-commerce system (or any CMS) can be a complex task if your client has explicit needs and custom coding needs to occur, so I don’t agree with your wording even though the general theme behind your post is valid.
use zen-cart and buy a cheap templates.
Use prestashop, OSC and many other free open source softwares
oh dear thank you for your replies ! 
I think he meant that some people will take a free theme and just add their logo and name…
no problem, feel free to ask away…someone is always bound to know the answer. So shoot away, if you have any other questions that is
Use Zen Cart and use one of the themes posted at Zen cart.
Or MAKE your own.
Liz
Hi,
try Magento Ecommerce. This is an open source e commerce platform, so its free. You can just learn to use it or hire someone to develop it and just pay the services.
For more information please visit Magento Technologies website.
It depends on three factors. QUALITY, TIME TO COMPLETION and PRICE
If you want a low price then you will get a long time to completion or poor quality. Think about it. If you pay a lot, you’ll either get amazing quality or a fast completion time.
If you find some dooche kid that thinks he can develop this for under 500 then you’re going to have a poor website that barely meets the requirements of your users.
Sure he may install something for you, but big deal, the real factors are based on customization:
templates
error handling
htaccess
security
content
photography
SEO
advertising
THERE WILL BE BUGS In the INSTALL
Store configurations
3rd party software costs
customization
page layouts
product layouts
There’s so much to think about. You get what you pay for.