How to start an online store in Bulgaria: 9 steps

In short: to start an online store in Bulgaria, you decide what you sell, pick a platform and a domain, upload your products, turn on payments and a courier, register the store with the NRA (Bulgaria's National Revenue Agency) and place a test order. On a ready-made platform, a store with up to 100 products goes live in a few hours to a weekend. In CloudCart, new stores pay €1/month for the first 3 months, with a 0% transaction fee on sales.

How to start an online store: the 9 steps at a glance

These are the steps merchants follow to launch a store on CloudCart, the Bulgarian ecommerce platform. They apply to Bulgarian businesses, foreign founders with a company in Bulgaria and sellers shipping from Bulgaria across the EU.

1. Decide what you sell and to whom. One niche, a clear customer and proof that people search for the product.
2. Choose an ecommerce platform. A ready-made platform, open-source software, a web studio build or a marketplace only.
3. Get a name and a domain. A short name that is easy to spell, a .bg or .com domain and an SSL certificate.
4. Upload your products. Photos, descriptions, prices, variants and categories, by hand or from a spreadsheet.
5. Set up the design. A ready-made theme with your logo and colors, checked on a phone. If you don't have a logo yet, see how to make a logo for an online store.
6. Turn on payments. Cash on delivery (COD), cards, Apple Pay, Google Pay and, if needed, buy now, pay later.
7. Set up shipping. Bulgarian couriers such as Econt and Speedy, parcel lockers, shipping rates and a free shipping threshold.
8. Prepare the paperwork. A company, NRA registration, VAT, terms and conditions, a privacy policy and invoices.
9. Place a test order and launch. You go through the customer's path, from the cart to the shipping label.

What you need before you start

Most stores are delayed by missing content, not by technology. Gather these up front:

• A product list in a spreadsheet: name, price, quantity, SKU, and size or color if there are variants.
• Photos of every product on a light background, at least two per product. A good phone camera and daylight are enough to start.
• A registered business. Selling online on a regular basis is a commercial activity in Bulgaria, so you need a sole trader (ET) or a company such as an EOOD (single-member limited liability company), registered in the Commercial Register. The legal forms and steps are in the article on registering a company for an online store. Your accountant confirms which form fits you.
• A business bank account for card payouts and cash on delivery amounts.

Step 1: Decide what you sell and to whom

Start with one narrow product group and one type of customer: a store that sells a bit of everything struggles to rank and earn trust. If you already sell on Instagram, at markets or in a physical shop, your best sellers are your first catalog. If you are still choosing, see the online store business ideas, sorted by the capital they need.

• Type the product into Google and read the search suggestions. Those are the words people actually use.
• Work out your margin: supplier price, plus shipping, plus the payment fee, plus packaging. If less than 20 to 30% of the price is left, advertising will quickly eat the profit. Selling without your own warehouse is covered in dropshipping in Bulgaria.

Step 2: How to choose an ecommerce platform

The platform is the decision that is hardest to change later: switching after a year costs time, Google rankings and money. There are four main paths:

Option	Upfront cost	Time to launch	Who maintains it	Best for
A ready-made platform (SaaS), such as CloudCart	A monthly plan, no build fee	Hours to days	The platform: hosting, security, updates	Merchants without a developer who want to sell fast
Open-source software: WooCommerce, OpenCart, Magento	Hosting, a theme, plugins and usually a developer	Weeks	You or a developer you hire	Teams with a technical person
A web studio build	Usually several hundred to several thousand euros, plus maintenance	Weeks to months	The studio, under contract	Very specific requirements
A marketplace only	A percentage of every sale	Days	The marketplace, under its rules	Testing a product, an extra channel

For Bulgaria, compare the commission on sales, Bulgarian couriers and cash on delivery without custom development, built-in invoices and the NRA file, plan limits and local support.

Important: with open-source software, hosting, courier and payment plugins and developer hours are paid every month. Work out the cost for a full year.

The page how a store starts on CloudCart shows the three launch steps with a sample admin.

Step 3: Choose a name and a domain for the store

A good domain is short, easy to spell and has no hyphens or digits. Check that the name is available as a domain and on Instagram and Facebook, and is not a registered trademark.

• .bg tells customers you sell in Bulgaria and helps with local searches.
• .com is the better choice if you plan to sell in other countries too.
• An SSL certificate (the padlock in the browser) is a must, or browsers mark the site as not secure.

In CloudCart, the store gets an address as soon as you register. You connect your own domain or buy one in the admin, and the SSL certificate is issued and renewed automatically. See the domain and certificate. Two-factor sign-in and staff permissions are in the guide 2FA, SSL and domain in CloudCart.

Step 4: Upload products, photos and descriptions

How to upload products fast

In CloudCart, the catalog is imported from a CSV file, Google Sheets or a supplier's XML file that updates on a schedule. You match the spreadsheet columns to the store fields: name, price, photo, quantity.

What every product page needs

• A title with the word people search for, for example "Lavender soy candle, 200 g".
• A description with the benefit, material, dimensions and how to use it.
• Variants for size, color or pack size, each with its own inventory and price.
• An SEO title and description for the Google result.

AURA, the AI built into CloudCart, writes descriptions and SEO copy with the tokens in your plan; add the details only you know.

Step 5: Choose a design and make it your own

You don't need a custom design for your first store. A ready-made theme already has a home page, categories, product pages, a cart and checkout, built for phones. In Bulgaria, about 63% of website visits come from phones (StatCounter), so check every change there first.

1. Choose a theme for your niche. Every theme in the admin has a live preview you can open on your phone before installing.
2. Add your logo, colors and font in the theme editor, without code. Put the "Buy" button in the color with the highest contrast.
3. Arrange the home page: a banner with your main offer, best sellers, categories and reasons to buy from you.
4. Add the pages "About us", "Shipping and returns" and "Contact".

Step 6: Turn on payments

19% of shoppers who abandoned a cart did not trust the site with their card details (Baymard Institute). In Bulgaria, offer cash on delivery and cards from day one.

Payment method	How it works	What to know
Cash on delivery (COD)	The customer pays the courier on delivery	The courier transfers the amount to you; there is a service fee and a risk of parcels nobody collects
CloudCart Pay	Visa, Mastercard, Apple Pay and Google Pay at checkout	You sign up in the admin, with no separate bank contract; 0% transaction fee through Dec 31, 2026; SEPA payouts in 11 currencies
Payment providers	Borica (the Bulgarian card network), ePay, myPOS, Paysera, PayPal, Stripe	Each has its own contract and fee
Bank transfer	The customer pays to your account	Suits larger orders and business buyers
Buy now, pay later	tbi bank, DSK Bank, Fibank, Mokka and others	The customer pays the lender in installments, you get the full amount

More about card payments is on the CloudCart Pay page.

Step 7: Set up shipping and couriers

40% of shoppers who abandoned a cart did so because of extra costs such as shipping, and 20% because delivery was too slow (Baymard Institute). Show both clearly from the product page on.

• Choose your couriers. In CloudCart, Econt and Speedy (the main Bulgarian courier networks), BOX NOW (parcel lockers), Sameday and others are turned on in the admin. At checkout, the customer sees the price and picks delivery to an address, a courier office or a parcel locker.
• Set the shipping rate: fixed, by weight, by order value or calculated by the courier.
• Set a free shipping threshold slightly above your average order, so customers add one more product to reach it.
• The shipping label is created in one click from the order, in the admin or the mobile app.

Step 8: Prepare the NRA paperwork, VAT, invoices and terms

Before launch, you need:

1. NRA registration of the store. Every online store is declared to the NRA before its first sale (Ordinance N-18, Bulgaria's sales reporting rules, Art. 52m, in Bulgarian). Under the Ordinance's alternative procedure for card payments, the store gets a unique number and you submit an XML file with the orders by the 15th of the following month (Art. 52t). In CloudCart, the N18 Audit app prepares the file, and you upload it to the NRA portal.
2. VAT registration when you reach the threshold. A business established in Bulgaria must register for VAT once its annual turnover in the country exceeds €51,130, a rule in force since Jan 1, 2026 (VAT Act, Art. 96(1), in Bulgarian). You can register voluntarily earlier.
3. A sales document and an invoice. The sales document is the receipt Ordinance N-18 requires instead of a fiscal receipt. In CloudCart, both are issued from the order. See invoices and Ordinance N-18 in CloudCart.
4. Terms and conditions for ordering, payment, delivery and returns. A customer can withdraw from an online purchase within 14 days of receiving the goods, without giving a reason (Your Europe).
5. A privacy and cookie policy under the GDPR. The GDPR app in CloudCart shows the cookie banner, records who accepted the policy and when, and handles data access and deletion requests.
6. Your company details in a visible place: name, UIC (company ID), address, phone and email, as the Bulgarian Electronic Commerce Act requires.

Important: the requirements depend on your legal form and payment methods. Check them with your accountant.

Step 9: Place a test order and launch the store

Before you announce the store, order from a phone, pay by card and by COD, and check:

Check	What you look at
Product page	Photos load fast, price and inventory are correct, variants can be selected
Cart and checkout	The shipping price is shown, the promo code works, there are few fields
Payment	The card goes through, COD can be selected, the order becomes "Paid"
Delivery	The shipping label is created, the office or locker address is correct

When everything passes, cancel the test order and open the store to everyone.

What to do in the first 30 days after launch

• SEO on the main pages. The home page, categories and top products carry the words people search for you with.
• Abandoned carts. In CloudCart, the reminder email with a link to the full cart goes out automatically and brings some customers back.
• Facebook and Instagram. Connect your catalog and run Facebook Dynamic Ads for the products visitors viewed.
• Price comparison sites and marketplaces. A product feed for Pazaruvaj and Sravni.bg (Bulgarian price comparison sites), and sales on eMAG and OLX (marketplaces) from the same catalog.

How to sell to other EU countries from a Bulgarian store

A store based in Bulgaria can sell to consumers anywhere in the EU, and two things change when you do: VAT and delivery. Under the Bulgarian VAT Act, once your distance sales of goods to consumers in other EU countries exceed €10,000 a year in total, you charge the VAT of the customer's country. The EU One Stop Shop (OSS) lets you declare that VAT in one quarterly return through the Bulgarian portal, with one registration and one payment (Your Europe).

• Couriers abroad. In CloudCart, DPD Bulgaria ships directly to Romania, GLS covers Europe, DHL and DHL Express cover the rest of the world, and EuShipment and Sendcloud bring many couriers into one integration.
• Languages. The Multilang app runs a separate storefront for each language from one admin, with its own domain or subdomain and the catalog synced from the main store. See shipping in CloudCart for the full courier list.

Important: the €10,000 threshold and OSS are tax decisions. Confirm with your accountant when to switch to the customer's VAT rate.

How to start an online store with an AI assistant

With Claude Code, ChatGPT Codex, Gemini CLI, Cursor or VS Code, you build the store by writing to the assistant in plain English, and it creates products, categories and descriptions step by step.

1. Register the store on CloudCart.
2. Get an access key. In the admin: the menu at the bottom left, "PAT tokens", new key.
3. Paste the sentence into the assistant and give it the key and the store address. It asks about your goal and guides you.

How much it costs to start an online store

On a ready-made platform, you pay a monthly plan with no build fee. CloudCart prices exclude VAT and there is no commission on sales:

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

For new stores through Dec 31, 2026, the first 3 months on every plan are €1/month when billed monthly, with the full plan and no code. All features by plan are on the CloudCart pricing page. If the store is part of a digitalization project, see EU funding for an online store.

How long it takes to start an online store

A store with up to 100 products and ready photos goes live in a few hours to a weekend; several hundred products from a spreadsheet take one to several days. Company, courier and card payment contracts depend on how fast partners respond, so start them in parallel with the products.

Common mistakes with a first online store

• A platform just for starting out. A year later you move and lose rankings, time and customers.
• A marketplace only. Customers stay with the marketplace, and its percentage grows with your revenue.
• Launching without a test order. Your first customer finds the mistake instead of you.

If you already sell on WooCommerce, Shopify, OpenCart, Magento or another platform, the CloudCart team moves your products, customers and orders. See how online store migration works.

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

Frequently asked questions