What costs should I budget for beyond the license?

License fee is the headline. Real cost over a 3-year horizon:

• Implementation, 4-20 hours of dev work to install, configure, integrate even a “drop-in” extension. At $80-150/hr, that’s $320-$3,000.
• Theme overrides, Hyvä-partial extensions need 4-12 hours of theme-template work. $400-$1,800.
• Magento upgrade compat, budget $200-500 every 12-18 months for re-testing the extension on the latest Magento minor.
• Security patches, same cadence, same cost. Some vendors push these as part of support; some charge per patch.
• Support renewal, most vendors charge 30-50% of the original license fee yearly for support. Without it, you’re locked at the version you bought, no security updates, no compat fixes.
• Replacement cost, if the vendor goes out of business, ripping out and replacing is 2-5x the original implementation cost.

Rule of thumb: budget 1.5-2x the license fee in real cost over a 3-year horizon, and 2.5-3x for SaaS extensions where the per-month fee compounds.

The booking form below collects exactly this signal, the "main blocker" dropdown captures whether you’re stuck on shortlist-over-budget, vendor-concerns, or something else, and the follow-up shortlist accounts for hidden cost transparency.