Ecommerce platform for an online store in Bulgaria: what to check

In short: an ecommerce platform for an online store in Bulgaria has to handle cash on delivery that the courier reconciles, Econt and Speedy offices and parcel lockers at checkout, the monthly Ordinance N-18 file for the NRA, prices in euro and a storefront in Bulgarian. CloudCart has all five built in, with a 0% transaction fee, a 30-day trial and €1/month for the first 3 months.

This guide is for anyone who sells, or plans to sell, to customers in Bulgaria: foreign founders with a Bulgarian company, expats, local brands that prefer to work in English and EU sellers who ship from Bulgaria. It lists what a Bulgarian store needs from day one and compares a hosted platform with WooCommerce, OpenCart, Magento and Shopify on the facts each one publishes. CloudCart, the Bulgarian ecommerce platform, is one of the options.

What does an online store in Bulgaria need from its platform?

A store in Bulgaria needs six things that international platform reviews rarely cover. Each one is either built into the platform or added with a plugin, an app or a developer, and that difference decides your real yearly cost.

Requirement	Why it matters in Bulgaria	What to check in a platform
Cash on delivery (COD) reconciled by the courier	Many Bulgarian shoppers pay the courier in cash when the parcel arrives	Does the order turn "Paid" by itself when the courier reports the payout?
Econt, Speedy and BOX NOW at checkout	Customers often pick up from a courier office or a parcel locker instead of a home address	Can the customer choose an office or locker on a map, with the live rate?
Ordinance N-18 file for the NRA	Card sales online follow Bulgaria's sales reporting rules	Does the platform issue the sales document and the monthly XML file?
Prices in euro	Bulgaria has used the euro since Jan 1, 2026	Are prices, invoices, feeds and reports in euro by default?
A storefront in Bulgarian	Checkout, emails and legal pages are read by Bulgarian customers	Are the checkout, system emails and documents translated, and can you add English?
EU withdrawal button	Required for online sales to EU consumers from Jun 19, 2026	Is there a "withdraw from contract here" function in the storefront?

How does cash on delivery work, and why does reconciliation matter?

With cash on delivery, the customer pays the courier when the parcel is handed over, and the courier transfers the collected amounts to your bank account. Econt and Speedy (DPD Bulgaria), the two main Bulgarian courier networks, handle most of these parcels. The hard part for a store is the reconciliation: matching every payout to every order, so you know which orders are paid and which parcels came back.

On many platforms, COD is a manual method. Shopify's help center lists cash on delivery among its manual payment methods: the order stays pending until you mark it as paid on the order page (Shopify Help Center).

In CloudCart, Econt and DPD report back when the customer has paid, and the order is marked as paid automatically. The number of COD payouts synced each month depends on the plan:

Plan	COD payouts synced automatically per month
Baby Pack	25
Starter Pack	50
CC Pro	500
CC Master	1,000

Every sync is recorded in a log under Orders, COD sync, so you can see when each order was checked and what the courier reported. For the trade-offs between COD and card payments, see cash on delivery or card payments.

Which couriers and pickup options should checkout offer?

Checkout in a Bulgarian store should offer at least three delivery options: to an address, to a courier office and to a parcel locker. Customers compare the shipping price before they choose, so the rate has to be live, calculated from the cart's weight and the destination.

• Econt delivers to addresses, Econt offices and its Econtomat parcel lockers.
• Speedy (DPD Bulgaria) delivers to addresses, offices and parcel lockers, and ships directly to Romania.
• BOX NOW is a locker-only network: the customer picks a locker at checkout and gets a pickup code by SMS.

In CloudCart, these couriers are direct integrations alongside Sameday, ACS, GLS and DHL. The customer picks an office or locker from a map or a list in checkout and sees the rate instantly. You create the shipping label from the order in one click, print labels for many orders at once, and the customer gets an email with the tracking number at every status change. Each courier needs your own active contract with that courier.

For sales to other EU countries, GLS covers Europe, DHL and DHL Express cover the rest of the world, and EuShipment and Sendcloud bring many couriers into one integration. See the full list on the shipping and couriers page. Rates, free shipping thresholds and returns are covered in couriers and shipping for an online store.

What is Ordinance N-18, and how does a platform handle it?

Ordinance N-18 is the Bulgarian regulation on registering and reporting sales, and it applies to online stores as well as physical shops. An online store that accepts card payments without the customer being present can use the alternative regime: instead of a fiscal receipt from a cash register, it issues a sales document from its own software and reports the sales to the NRA (the National Revenue Agency, Bulgaria's tax authority).

1. Register the store with the NRA. You file the store's details, payment methods and payment providers through the NRA e-service, signed with a qualified electronic signature. The NRA assigns the store a unique number.
2. Issue a sales document for every card order. It replaces the fiscal receipt under the alternative regime.
3. Submit the monthly audit file. A standardized file under Annex 38, with the store's unique number, goes to the NRA by the 15th of the following month (NRA, in Bulgarian).

In CloudCart, the sales document, the invoice and the credit note are issued from the order. The N18 Audit app generates the monthly XML file from the store's sales and reversals; you download it and upload it to the NRA portal between the 1st and the 15th. For cash on delivery, the courier issues the receipt under your agreement with them. Details are on the invoices and Ordinance N-18 page. The full registration process is in the guide to Ordinance N-18 and NRA registration.

Important: whether you use a cash register or the alternative regime depends on your payment methods and business. Confirm the setup with your accountant before your first sale.

Euro prices and a Bulgarian-language storefront

Bulgaria adopted the euro on Jan 1, 2026, at the fixed rate of 1 EUR = 1.95583 BGN. Mandatory dual display of prices in euro and leva ended on Aug 8, 2026; from Aug 9, 2026, the euro price is the only selling price, and the lev amount may stay for information only (evroto.bg, the official euro portal, in Bulgarian). A platform for Bulgaria should therefore show euro prices across the storefront, invoices, product feeds and reports, with no conversion layer to maintain.

Language matters as much as currency: Bulgarian customers read checkout, order emails, the sales document and the terms in Bulgarian. Check that the platform translates all of them and lets you edit the wording.

• Storefront texts. In CloudCart, Settings, Translations lets you change any system label the customer sees, per language and theme.
• A second language. The Multilang app runs a separate storefront for each language, such as Bulgarian and English, from one admin. Each has its own domain or subdomain, and the catalog syncs from the main store.

Rounding, invoices and feeds after the switch are covered in euro prices in an online store. Selling in several languages is explained in multilingual and multi-store selling.

Hosted platform, WooCommerce, OpenCart, Magento or Shopify: how they compare

The main choice is between a hosted platform (SaaS), where the provider runs hosting, security and updates, and open-source software that you install and maintain on your own server. The table compares the standard setup of each option for a store selling in Bulgaria.

Criterion	CloudCart	Shopify	WooCommerce	OpenCart	Magento Open Source
Model	Hosted (SaaS)	Hosted (SaaS)	Open-source plugin for WordPress	Open source	Open source
Entry price	€14/month billed annually (Baby Pack); €1/month for the first 3 months	€19/month billed annually (Basic), €27 billed monthly	No license fee; you pay hosting, a theme and extensions	No license fee; you pay hosting and modules	No license fee; you pay hosting and development
Fee on sales	0% on every plan	2% on Basic with a third-party payment provider; none with Shopify Payments	None from the software	None from the software	None from the software
Hosting and updates	Included	Included	You or your developer
Econt, Speedy, BOX NOW	Built-in integrations	Check the app store	Plugins from third parties	Modules from third parties	Extensions or custom development
COD reconciliation	Automatic from Econt and DPD	Manual: you mark the order as paid	Depends on the courier plugin	Depends on the module	Depends on the extension
Ordinance N-18 file	Built-in N18 Audit app	Check the app store	Plugin or development	Module or development	Extension or development
Trial	30 days	3 days, then €1/month for 3 months	Not applicable	Not applicable	Not applicable

Important: Shopify prices are taken from shopify.com/pricing in euro and may differ by country. Card processing fees are separate on every platform and are not part of the fee on sales.

Shopify in Bulgaria: what to know

Shopify works in Bulgaria, and Shopify Payments is available for Bulgarian businesses according to Shopify's list of supported countries. Three points decide whether it fits a store whose customers are in Bulgaria:

• The fee on sales. If you take payments through a provider other than Shopify Payments, such as a Bulgarian bank's virtual POS, Shopify charges 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow and 0.6% on Advanced. On €5,000 a month in sales, 2% is €1,200 a year.
• Cash on delivery. COD is a manual payment method, so every COD order is marked as paid by hand.
• Local features. Econt, Speedy, BOX NOW and the N-18 file are not part of the Shopify plans; compare the third-party apps in the Shopify App Store and add their monthly fees to your yearly cost.

WooCommerce, OpenCart and Magento: when open source makes sense

Open-source software makes sense when you have a developer and want full control of the server and the code. WooCommerce is an open-source commerce platform for WordPress that you run on any host. OpenCart is a standalone open-source platform, and its marketplace lists 13,000+ modules and themes (OpenCart). Magento Open Source, now part of Adobe Commerce, runs on your own server stack with PHP, a database and a search engine, and suits large catalogs with a development team.

The cost of that control is maintenance. For a store in Bulgaria, you assemble the local pieces yourself:

1. Hosting, SSL and backups, with enough capacity for sales peaks.
2. A courier plugin for each courier, from different authors, kept compatible with every core update.
3. COD reconciliation, if the courier plugin offers it.
4. The N-18 sales document and monthly file, through a plugin or custom code that follows the NRA schema.
5. Security updates for the core, the theme and every plugin.

If you already run WooCommerce and want to stop maintaining it, see moving from WooCommerce to CloudCart.

CloudCart: a hosted platform built for the Bulgarian market

CloudCart is a hosted ecommerce platform made in Bulgaria. You register, pick a theme and the store is live with hosting, an SSL certificate and the local integrations available in the admin:

• Shipping: Econt, Speedy (DPD Bulgaria), BOX NOW, Sameday, GLS and DHL, with offices and lockers in checkout and shipping labels from the order.
• Payments: cash on delivery, CloudCart Pay for Visa, Mastercard, Apple Pay and Google Pay without a separate bank contract, virtual POS terminals through Borica, ePay, PayPal, Stripe and installments from Bulgarian banks and lenders such as DSK Bank, Fibank and TBI Bank.
• Documents: the sales document, the invoice and the credit note from the order, the N-18 file in the admin, a GDPR cookie banner and the EU withdrawal button in the storefront.
• Sales channels: product feeds for Pazaruvaj and Glami (price comparison sites) and sales on eMAG and OLX (marketplaces) from the same catalog.

Plans are priced by revenue over six months. Prices exclude VAT, and the transaction fee is 0% on every plan:

Plan	Billed annually	Billed monthly	Products	Revenue over 6 months
Baby Pack	€14/month	€19/month	up to 100	up to €9,999
Starter Pack	€33/month	€39/month	up to 2,000	up to €24,999
CC Pro	€83/month	€99/month	up to 7,500	up to €249,999
CC Master	€249/month	€299/month	unlimited	up to €499,999

The trial period is 30 days, the plans have no contract, and you can upgrade or downgrade from the admin. All features by plan are on the CloudCart pricing page.

Where CloudCart fits less well: if most of your customers are in the US or Western Europe and buy in English, Shopify's app store and agency ecosystem are larger. If you need root access to the server and the code, open source gives you more.

How to choose: a test you can run in one trial week

The fastest way to choose is to run the same Bulgarian order on each shortlisted platform before you upload your whole catalog:

1. Add three products with prices in euro and one product with size variants.
2. Turn on Econt or Speedy with your courier contract, and check that offices and lockers appear in checkout with live rates.
3. Place a COD order and a card order from your phone, in Bulgarian.
4. Create the shipping label from the order and check the office address on it.
5. Find the sales document and the N-18 file. If they need a plugin or a developer, add that to the cost.
6. Work out the yearly cost: plan, fee on sales at your expected revenue, apps, plugins and developer hours.

The full launch, from domain to first order, is in the guide how to start an online store in Bulgaria.

Switching from another platform

If your store already runs on WooCommerce, Shopify, OpenCart or Magento, the CloudCart team moves your products, customers and orders and sets up 301 redirects, so Google rankings carry over while the old store keeps selling. You can also import products yourself from CSV or XML, and customers through a separate customer import. See how online store migration works.

You can send your questions to support@cloudcart.com.

Frequently asked questions