A basic business website in India costs between ₹10,000 and ₹25,000 in 2026. A custom WordPress site with proper design runs ₹25,000 to ₹70,000. An eCommerce store with payment integration typically costs ₹50,000 to ₹1,50,000. Custom web applications and portals start around ₹1,50,000 and can exceed ₹5,00,000. These numbers vary by agency. But if a quote falls far outside these ranges, ask why.
Most website pricing pages hide numbers behind a “contact us for a quote” form. Others throw out one flat figure that falls apart once you add real requirements. Neither approach helps you plan a budget. This breakdown explains what actually drives the cost of a website in India. It will help you tell a fair quote from an inflated one, and a suspiciously cheap one from a corner-cutting one.
What a Website Actually Costs, by Type
Website pricing in India splits into four rough tiers. Each tier reflects a different level of design work, functionality, and ongoing complexity.
Basic Static or Brochure Website: ₹9,999 – ₹25,000
This covers a small site with 3 to 6 pages: home, about, services, contact, maybe a gallery. It uses a pre-built template with your logo, colors, and content dropped in. There’s little to no custom coding involved. This tier suits a business that needs a professional online presence and doesn’t plan to update the site often.
Our own website design packages for Kolkata businesses start at ₹9,999 for exactly this kind of build.
Custom WordPress Business Website: ₹25,000 – ₹70,000
This is where most small and medium businesses land. You get a custom-designed layout, not a stock template stretched to fit. You get a content management system you can update yourself. You get contact forms, basic SEO setup, and usually 6 to 15 pages. The price climbs with the number of unique page designs. It also climbs with custom functionality like booking forms or multi-language support, and with how much original content and photography needs sourcing.
eCommerce Website (WooCommerce or Similar): ₹50,000 – ₹1,50,000
An online store needs everything a business website needs. On top of that, it needs product catalog setup, payment gateway integration, shipping rule configuration, tax handling, and inventory management. A store with 20 simple products costs far less than one with 500 products across variable sizes, colors, and stock levels. Payment gateway compliance and mobile cart optimization add real engineering time, not just design time.
Custom Web Applications and Portals: ₹1,50,000+
B2B portals, B2C marketplaces, booking systems, and custom dashboards fall outside standard CMS territory. These need custom backend development and database design. They usually need user role management too, and often API integrations with payment processors, CRMs, or third-party services. Costs scale with the number of user roles, workflow complexity, and how much traffic the system needs to handle without breaking.
Agency vs. Freelancer vs. DIY Platform: The Real Cost Trade-off
The tiers above assume you’re hiring an agency. Two other paths exist, and each comes with a different cost-and-risk profile.
Freelancers
A skilled freelancer often charges 30 to 50% less than an agency for a comparable basic or custom WordPress site. The trade-off is capacity and continuity. One person handles design, development, and support. If they get busy with another client, or move on entirely, you may struggle to find someone else who understands your existing setup.
DIY Platforms (Wix, Shopify, Squarespace)
Platform subscriptions run ₹800 to ₹5,000 a month, which looks cheaper than a one-time agency fee. Over two or three years, though, the subscription cost often adds up to more than a custom-built site would have cost outright, and you don’t own the design outright the way you do with a self-hosted WordPress build. DIY platforms work well for a founder who wants full control and has time to build the site themselves.
Why Two Agencies Quote Wildly Different Prices for the “Same” Website
Business owners often collect three quotes for what looks like the same project. The numbers can differ by 5x. Usually, the agencies aren’t actually quoting the same thing.
Template Customization vs. True Custom Design
A ₹15,000 quote and a ₹60,000 quote might both promise a “custom website.” One means picking a template and swapping colors and text. The other means a designer builds your layout from scratch based on your brand and content. Both are legitimate approaches. But they’re not the same product, and the price difference reflects real labor, not padding.
What’s Included After Launch
Some quotes bundle a year of hosting, security updates, and minor content edits. Others charge for every one of those separately after handover. A lower upfront number can end up costing more once you add these back in. Always ask what happens the day after the site goes live.
Where the Team Is Based
Agencies with lower overhead, often outside metro cities, can genuinely charge less for the same skill level. This isn’t automatically a red flag. But if a quote seems too low relative to the scope, ask to see past work. Talk to a past client before signing.
Hidden Costs That Catch Businesses Off Guard
- Domain and hosting renewal: Domains typically renew at ₹800–₹1,500 per year. Hosting ranges from ₹2,000 to ₹15,000+ per year depending on traffic and server resources.
- Premium plugins and themes: Some functionality, like advanced forms, page builders, or booking systems, requires paid plugin licenses. These often run ₹3,000–₹10,000 per year per plugin.
- Stock photography or original photoshoots: Stock image subscriptions run a few thousand rupees a year. A professional photoshoot for product or team photos costs considerably more.
- SSL certificates: Most hosting now includes free SSL. Some older or budget hosting plans still charge extra for it.
- Ongoing maintenance: Security patches, plugin updates, and backups either come from a maintenance retainer or from your own time.
A quote that doesn’t mention any of these isn’t necessarily hiding something. But it’s worth asking about all five before you sign.
Why Your City Still Affects Your Website Budget
Website development is remote work, so location shouldn’t matter as much as it once did. In practice, it still shifts prices by a noticeable margin. Agencies in Mumbai, Delhi, and Bengaluru carry higher office rent and staff salaries, and that overhead shows up in their quotes. Agencies in Kolkata, Pune, or smaller cities often deliver the same skill level at a lower price, simply because their fixed costs are lower.
This doesn’t mean a Tier-1 city agency is overcharging, or that a smaller-city agency is automatically a bargain. It means location is one more variable to factor in when you compare quotes, alongside team size, portfolio quality, and what exactly is included. A 30% price gap between two agencies with similar work samples often comes down to nothing more than their office address.
How to Get an Accurate Quote for Your Project
Vague requirements produce vague quotes. Before contacting an agency, write down the number of pages you need. Note whether you need ongoing content updates, whether you’re selling products online, and any specific features like booking forms, multi-language support, or membership logins. A detailed brief gets you a detailed, comparable quote instead of a rough estimate that changes once real requirements surface.
It also helps to ask each agency the same three questions: What’s included in this price? What happens after launch? What would make this cost more? The answers usually reveal more about value than the number itself.
A Quick Example: Two Businesses, Two Very Different Quotes
A local bakery asked for “a website like our competitor’s.” Their competitor’s site was a 40-product WooCommerce store with online ordering, delivery zone rules, and a loyalty points system. Built to that spec, the honest quote landed near ₹1,20,000.
Once we broke down what the bakery actually needed right now, a 6-page informational site with a menu, photos, and a WhatsApp order button, the real cost came to ₹28,000. They could add online ordering later once the business justified the investment. The lesson: describe your actual current need, not someone else’s finished product, and the quote will match reality instead of an assumption.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is a cheap website ever a good idea?
For a very small business that needs a basic online presence, a budget template-based site can be the right call. The risk comes when a cheap site skips SEO basics, mobile responsiveness, or a CMS you can actually update. Fixing those later often costs more than building it properly the first time.
Do website costs include SEO?
Basic on-page SEO setup, like proper page titles, meta descriptions, a sitemap, and fast loading, is usually included in a standard build. Ongoing SEO, content marketing, and link building are separate, ongoing services with their own monthly cost.
How long does a typical website project take?
A basic website usually takes 1 to 2 weeks. A custom business website takes 3 to 6 weeks. An eCommerce store or custom web application can take 6 to 12 weeks or more. The timeline depends on how much content and product data needs preparing, and how many rounds of revisions you need.
Should I pay the full amount upfront?
Most agencies split payment into milestones: an advance to start, a payment at design approval, and the final balance at launch. Paying the full amount upfront to an unfamiliar agency carries more risk than a milestone-based structure.
If you’re planning a website project and want a quote based on your actual requirements rather than a generic package, see what our website design and development services in Kolkata include, or get in touch for a straight answer on what your specific project would cost.
