Ask HN: 9M in Dev Work for Salesforce E-Comm Software?

The CFO of an e-commerce software startup recently directed the total cost of ownership (TCO) of running Salesforce Commerce Cloud (SFCC) alongside Manhattan order management software.

He compares the TCO against his company's commerce platform (fabric) for a hypothetical business that generates $500 million of gross merchandise value (GMV) annually.

Can anyone confirm or deny these development costs? Columns 2-3 are for SFCC and 4-5 for the other platform.

Fee Type | % of GMV | Annual Costs | % of GMV | Annual Costs

Software ¹ | 2.95% | $14,755,000 | 0.72% | $3,616,000 Software Hosting & Maintenance ² | 0.62% | $3,100,000 | 0.00% | $0 Payment Processing ³ | 2.50% | $12,500,000 | 2.50% | $12,500,000 Software Development (People) ⁴ | 1.80% | $8,990,000 | 0.28% | $1,400,000 Site Operations (People) 5 | 0.68% | $3,420,000 | 0.22% | $1,090,000 Professional Services (implementation fee) ⁶ | 0.80% | $4,000,000 | 0.10% | $500,000 Total Costs | 9.35% | $46,765,000 | 3.82% | $19,106,000

1 Assumes salesforce Commerce Cloud & manhattan OMS 2 Hosting costs are included in fabric platform license 3 Assume 2.3% credit card transaction fees + sales tax software 4 Can reduce 50+ person IT team due to Fabric-enabled developer productivity 5 Can reduce 30+ person operations team due to Fabric-enabled merchant and marketer productivity 6 One time Implementation fee by Salesforce SI such as Lyons

Note: A clearer table is 3/4 way down this post: https://resources.fabric.inc/blog/ecommerce-tax