Setting up and managing offshore entities are generally expensive. Add trusts or foundations to them and your paperwork burden will increase as well as your costs.
Where people get burnt is on the ongoing fees that are charged by the chosen management company. Fees can easily be €300 per hour and to open an email or to approve a payment or to submit compliance documents etc. all adds up. You may think you are paying €2500 per annum but end up paying €700 per month + €2500 per annum + time spent on end of year financials etc.
So the reason for wanting to set up an offshore entity needs to be good. You may need licensing (such as gambling) or you may be offering a product that is not legal in your local jurisdiction or expensive to get licensing for (financial products as an example) or even a lack of legislation (crypto related products). Those are good reasons to have an offshore entity designed to be regulated or licensed.
If you are selling some digital product and you want to save a few bucks, then, in my opinion, a simple offshore entity may be best. Running an IE entity is cheap and easy to set up. No one is going to bat an eyelid when dealing with one, you are going to cough up 12.5% on your profits. If however you are churning out products and finding yourself with a large amount of income, then a more complicated and expensive structure may be desired and the associated costs would be acceptable.
You can of course, start with a simple structure, and as your business takes off, move to a more desirable one. How you do it, is really up to you...
