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Pick your legal status
Micro-entreprise, EI, SASU, EURL — understand the real differences in 5 minutes and pick the right one for your projected revenue, without paying EUR 400 to a lawyer.
You want to sell online but you don't know where to start. Legal status, platform, budget, tools, how to be found — here's the full roadmap I run with my clients, step by step, no jargon, no bullshit.
No business-school theory. Six practical skills you’ll apply to your project from week one.
Micro-entreprise, EI, SASU, EURL — understand the real differences in 5 minutes and pick the right one for your projected revenue, without paying EUR 400 to a lawyer.
WooCommerce, Shopify, PrestaShop, Wix, marketplaces — an honest comparison of the five real options in 2026, with my bias declared and the cases where each one wins.
Hosting, theme, essential plugins, page structure, Core Web Vitals performance. The vital minimum without a heavy page builder or a site that crashes.
Stripe, PayPal, 3x instalments, Colissimo, Mondial Relay, VAT exemption up to EUR 91,900, OSS for the EU. Every friction that kills conversion, dismantled.
Starter SEO, Google Ads PMax, Meta retargeting, complementary marketplaces. When to switch on each lever, with what budget, and in what order.
Emotional pricing, hidden shipping costs, copied T&Cs, no cart-abandonment flow, trying to scale before you've converted. The mistakes that sink 9 stores out of 10.
Four sequential phases. Not a parallel checklist where you try everything at once — each phase unlocks the next.
Market study, product choice, demand test via DM/local market. Target: 5 to 10 manual sales before any setup. If you can't get there, back to the drawing board.
Legal status, domain + hosting, WooCommerce install, theme, essential plugins, payment, shipping, legal notices. The skeleton has to stand up.
Clean product photos, every product page written, About page, FAQ, first SEO blog post, GA4 + Search Console tracking. Soft launch to your network.
First social channels running, Google Merchant Center, first Meta retargeting campaign (EUR 50/month), continuous optimisation. End-of-D90 target: 1-5 sales a week.
Selling online looks simple. Launching a store that's still standing 12 months later is much less so. Before you buy a domain, ask yourself these questions — they save months and thousands of euros.
Question number 1 for beginners. The right answer depends on your projected revenue, your need to protect personal assets, and your tolerance for admin. The wrong choice can be undone, but costs EUR 200-500 to correct.
Ideal to start: set up in 30 minutes online, free, flat-rate contributions (12.8 percent of revenue for sales). Revenue cap EUR 188,700. No VAT up to EUR 91,900. Limits: no expense deduction, so unsuitable if you have heavy costs (stock purchases, ads, employees).
Since 2022, the EI protects your personal assets by default. No revenue cap, real expense deduction, VAT from the first euro. Social contributions proportional to profit. A solid compromise if you exceed the micro but stay solo.
Simplified single-shareholder company: strong personal-asset protection, you're treated as a salaried employee (general scheme), ideal if you want to pay yourself a salary or bring in partners later. Setup ~ EUR 200-500 + mandatory accountant (~ EUR 1,200/year). Typically for revenue > EUR 80,000/year.
Single-shareholder limited company. You're TNS (non-salaried), social contributions lower than SASU but social protection weaker. A good option if you want to optimise contributions and salaried-style pensions aren't a priority.
Five real contenders in 2026. None is universally better — the right choice depends on your catalogue, your technical comfort and how much customisation you need.
Open-source, 100 percent yours, extremely customisable. Hosting cost EUR 10-30/month, no commission on sales. Medium learning curve. Ideal for catalogues of 10-2,000 products, content-heavy SEO and flexibility. This is what I recommend to 80 percent of my clients.
Turnkey SaaS. Up and running in 1 day, EUR 39-399/month + commission on sales if you don't use Shopify Payments. Excellent for very high volume, international brands, non-technical teams. Limits: you rent your store, customisation via paid apps that stack up.
French open-source, strong French community. More complex than WooCommerce, with a sizeable paid-module ecosystem. A good choice if you specifically want a French product and your supplier knows it well. Otherwise WooCommerce is more pragmatic in 2026.
For very small catalogues (< 30 products) and a "showcase + shop" need. Real e-commerce limits: multi-currency, product feeds, advanced integrations. Avoid as soon as you want to scale seriously.
Amazon, Etsy, Cdiscount, Vinted Pro. Fastest start, captive audience, zero acquisition headache. But: 8-20 percent commissions, you don't own the customer relationship, the platform can suspend you overnight. A solid complementary strategy, a terrible only strategy.
Two structural decisions, made in 30 minutes. Get them wrong and you'll redo them 6 months later.
The domain name: short, memorable, easy to say on the phone. Avoid dashes, numbers and exotic extensions (.shop, .store) — stick to .fr or .com. Check availability on social networks at the same time: a domain free on .com but already taken on Instagram is dead.
Hosting: performance matters enormously in e-commerce. A slow site loses 20-40 percent of conversions. Steer clear of low-end shared hosting (1&1, entry-level Hostinger) on a serious project.
Kinsta, WP Engine, o2switch (FR), WPX. EUR 25-100/month depending on volume. Excellent native performance, automatic backups, support that knows WordPress. The professional path.
DigitalOcean managed, OVH VPS. EUR 15-40/month. More technical but more flexible and cheaper long-term if you have a dev to hand.
o2switch (single EUR 7/month plan, unlimited, FR), Infomaniak. The best value for money in France to get started. You can stay there comfortably up to 50-100 orders/day.
You don't need to be a developer. But a few fundamental technical choices from day one save you painful rebuilds 12 months later.
Product photos are THE variable that separates an amateur shop from a serious one. More than site design, more than copy. And you don't need a EUR 10,000 budget to do it right.
Two terminal frictions. 70 percent of cart abandonments come from a bad choice here, not from price.
Payment side: Stripe is the 2026 standard. Set up in 1 day, 1.4 percent + EUR 0.25 per European card transaction, native WooCommerce integration via the official plugin. Add PayPal alongside — some customers only pay that way. Optionally Apple Pay / Google Pay (free via Stripe), and for carts > EUR 100, a 3x instalment option via Klarna, Alma or Oney lifts conversion by 8-15 percent.
Shipping side: never underestimate the impact. Free shipping is still conversion lever #1. If your margin doesn't allow free shipping, set a threshold ("free shipping over EUR 39") and display it everywhere — it's also an AOV lever.
La Poste Lettre Suivie or letter-box Colissimo: EUR 3.90 to 6 depending on weight. 48-72h delivery. Works for almost anything (cosmetics, jewellery, small accessories).
Mondial Relay (pickup point) is still the cheapest: EUR 4.50 to 6 up to 5 kg, very popular with urban customers. Home Colissimo EUR 6-9. Chronopost for urgent delivery.
GLS, Colis Privé, DPD with insurance. EUR 12-30 depending on zone and weight. Always take out insurance above EUR 80 of value.
Colissimo International, Mondial Relay Europe, or a forwarder like Shippo / Sendcloud for real-time comparison. For Switzerland, watch the 5 CHF VAT threshold — any order > 65 CHF goes through customs clearance.
The subject everyone avoids. Five points so you don't slip up.
Three legal obligations in France for any online shop. Non-compliance can cost 4 percent of revenue in GDPR fines — rare in practice for small players, but not to be ignored.
The cheapest and most durable growth channel. But it takes 6 to 18 months to bear fruit. Start early — it's the best "positive" debt you can accumulate.
Paid is fast to switch on but expensive to learn. Only start when your store is already converting on organic traffic — otherwise you're paying to confirm it's broken.
Prerequisites before any paid campaign: GA4 + Google Ads + Meta Pixel correctly installed (check with the Meta Pixel Helper and Tag Assistant extensions), conversions defined (purchase, add-to-cart, lead), at least 30 organic orders for a baseline. Without that, you're spending blind.
Ideal for catalogues of 50+ products. You only feed your Google Merchant Center stream, Google does the rest (Shopping, Search, Display, YouTube, Maps, Gmail). Floor budget EUR 500/month to clear the learning phase. Target ROAS 3-5x depending on sector.
For precise intent ("buy X brand Y"). Budget EUR 10-50/day depending on competition on the keyword. Excellent for capturing brand + competitor queries. Often profitable in week one.
Retargeting your site visitors on Facebook + Instagram with the product they saw. The most profitable channel of all, by a wide margin. EUR 5-30/day is plenty to start.
Lookalike audiences (1-3 percent of your best buyers). Reels and Stories with native creative (not your print visuals). Budget EUR 30-100/day, ROAS 1.5-3x is realistic. This is the scale lever once retargeting is saturated.
Amazon, Etsy, Cdiscount, Vinted Pro, ManoMano. Massive audience, instant launch, but strict conditions. Worth considering depending on your product.
#1 audience in France. 8-15 percent commission + EUR 39/month (Pro plan). FBA (Fulfillment by Amazon) adds EUR 3-5 per parcel but unlocks Prime — almost mandatory to sell. Fierce price competition. Ideal for standardised products, bad for differentiated ones.
Niche: craft, vintage, personalised, creations. EUR 0.20 listing fee + 6.5 percent commission. Qualified audience ready to pay for unique items. Excellent complementary channel if your product fits.
Solid general French audience. 6-15 percent commissions. Looser categorisation than Amazon. Worth testing if Amazon caps you on certain categories.
Specialised marketplaces (DIY, footwear, etc.). Smaller but ultra-qualified audiences. Often the best ROAS if your catalogue maps tightly to the vertical.
You can't optimise what you don't measure. Install the right stack in week one — reinstalling 6 months later on top of 200 orders of history is painful.
With identical catalogues, the customer picks the best-rated merchant. And they come back to the one who replies fastest. It's as simple as that.
All the theory is worth nothing without execution. Here's a realistic roadmap, week by week, to go from an idea to a store that sells in 3 months.
Market study (competitors, prices, demand). Define product, price, positioning. First sales prototype: Instagram pre-order, local market, DMs. Target: 5-10 manual sales to validate demand. If you can't reach 5, back to the drawing board.
Legal status. Domain + hosting. WooCommerce + theme + essential plugins install. Payment (Stripe), shipping, VAT setup. First product pages (5-10 max — don't wait for perfection). Legal notices / T&Cs / GDPR.
Clean product photos. Every product page written (descriptions >= 300 original words). About page, FAQ, shipping & returns. GA4 + Search Console tracking. First blog article. "Soft" launch: send the link to your network, gather first UX feedback.
First social accounts running (Instagram + one other depending on audience). Google Merchant Center registration, first validated feed. First Meta retargeting campaign (EUR 50/month). Continuous optimisation against the data (conversion rate, sources). End-of-D90 target: 1-5 sales a week.
Ten mistakes I see on 9 stores out of 10 during audits. Save yourself 6 months by ducking them from the start.
My recommended stack to launch in 2026. Total monthly budget: €20–50 depending on options.
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