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A dental clinic in CR Park got three quotes for the same eight-page website: ₹18,000, ₹65,000 and ₹2,40,000. Same brief, same page count, same city. The owner’s question was reasonable and nobody had answered it: which one of these is the real price?
None of them, and all of them. Roughly a fifth of any website development cost in India is a published number you can look up yourself in ten minutes. The rest is somebody’s time, and that is where quotes stop being comparable.
Key Takeaways
- Two separate costs hide inside one quote: a one-time build fee, and a recurring bill you pay every year for as long as the site exists.
- The recurring part is genuinely checkable. WordPress is GPLv2 licensed so the software is free, and Let’s Encrypt issues TLS certificates at no cost, so SSL should never be a line item.
- Hosting headline prices need a four-year prepayment. Hostinger’s India Premium plan is ₹149/mo on a 48-month term and ₹449/mo on renewal, which is three times higher.
- GST on website development is 18%. CBIC Notification 11/2017 puts heading 9983 services at 9% central tax, matched by 9% state tax.
- Ecommerce costs more to run than to build. Shopify’s Basic plan in India is ₹1,499/mo paid yearly and Razorpay charges 2% plus GST per transaction.
- The build fee is developer days multiplied by a day rate. Ask for both numbers and the ₹18,000 versus ₹2,40,000 gap explains itself.
- A quote with no hosting plan named, no page count and no revision limit is not a quote. It is a number.
What Is the Website Development Cost in India?
For a small business in 2026, a working website costs between ₹25,000 and ₹2,50,000 to build, and between ₹2,000 and ₹15,000 a year to keep online. Ecommerce sits higher on both counts because you are paying for a platform subscription and a payment gateway on top of the build.
Those ranges are wide for a reason, and it is not that some developers are greedy. A five-page site on a bought theme is a few days of work. A ten-page site with custom design, written copy, appointment booking and a Hindi version is a few weeks. Both are “a website.”
Here is how the ranges break down for the site types Indian small businesses actually buy. The build figures below are illustrative arithmetic, not a market survey: they assume a competent Delhi developer or small studio billing ₹8,000 to ₹15,000 a working day, which is the rate band you can verify yourself by asking two or three for a day rate.
| Site type | Illustrative build | Recurring, year one |
|---|---|---|
| DIY builder, you do the work | ₹0 | ₹15,000 to ₹45,000 |
| Brochure site, 5 to 8 pages, freelancer, bought theme | ₹25,000 to ₹75,000 | ₹2,000 to ₹6,000 |
| Business site, custom design plus copy, agency | ₹75,000 to ₹2,50,000 | ₹4,000 to ₹15,000 |
| Ecommerce, catalogue plus payments | ₹1,50,000 to ₹6,00,000 | ₹35,000 to ₹1,20,000 |
| Custom application or heavy integrations | ₹6,00,000 upward | Varies with infrastructure |
Add 18% GST to every build figure if your developer is GST registered, which any established one will be.
What Are You Actually Paying For in a Website Quote?
You are paying for four things, and only one of them is software. Design, content, build and testing are all somebody’s hours, while the software underneath is usually free.
Break any quote into these and it becomes comparable:
- Design. Wireframes and a visual design for each unique page layout. When people ask about website design cost in India separately from development, this is the part they mean, and it is priced per layout rather than per page: a site with eight pages might have only three unique layouts, which is why page count alone tells you little.
- Content. Somebody writes the words, sources or shoots the photographs, and writes the title tags. This is the line most often quietly excluded, and then you discover in week three that you are expected to supply 4,000 words.
- Build. Turning the design into working pages, mobile included. Google uses the mobile version of a site for indexing and ranking, so mobile is not a nice-to-have costed separately.
- Testing and launch. Forms that actually deliver, speed, and a working SSL certificate. This is where cheap quotes save money, and you find out six weeks later when nobody has received your enquiry emails.
The software is where quotes should not differ at all. WordPress is free under the GPL. Let’s Encrypt, run by the nonprofit Internet Security Research Group, issues the certificates that put the padlock in the address bar at no charge. If SSL appears as a ₹4,000 annual line item, ask why.
What Does a Website Cost to Maintain Each Year in India?
For a WordPress brochure site, expect ₹2,000 to ₹6,000 a year in year one for domain and hosting, rising once introductory terms expire. Add a maintenance retainer if you want somebody else applying updates and taking backups, and that is usually where the real annual spend sits.
The unavoidable recurring items are short:
- Domain. Hostinger lists .in at ₹899 and .com at ₹1,499 on renewal, with a ₹1 first year on promotion. Budget the renewal figure, not the promotion.
- Hosting. ₹149/mo on a four-year term for the Premium plan, so ₹1,788 for year one.
- SSL. Zero, via Let’s Encrypt.
- WordPress, and most plugins. Zero. Premium themes and plugins are usually one-off or annual licences, commonly in the ₹3,000 to ₹8,000 band.
So a brochure site’s floor is genuinely low: about ₹1,800 in year one and about ₹2,700 in year two once the domain renews. What pushes annual cost to ₹15,000 or beyond is a person, not a server. Somebody has to update WordPress, check the backups restore, fix the contact form when the host changes its mail settings, and notice when your pages drift past Google’s Core Web Vitals thresholds of 2.5 seconds for LCP, 200 milliseconds for INP and 0.1 for CLS. Paying for that is optional right up to the week it isn’t.
Why Is the Advertised Hosting Price Not What You’ll Pay?
Because the headline rate buys a four-year prepayment, and the renewal rate is roughly three times higher. Hostinger publishes both figures side by side, which makes this easy to check rather than a matter of opinion.
The gap on every India shared plan, taken from the same page:
- Single: ₹69/mo introductory, ₹289/mo renewal
- Premium: ₹149/mo introductory, ₹449/mo renewal
- Unlimited: ₹249/mo introductory, ₹649/mo renewal
- Cloud Startup: ₹599/mo introductory, ₹1,599/mo renewal
None of that is a trick, and hosts are upfront about it. The problem is that it quietly breaks your budget comparison. A developer who quotes “hosting ₹1,800 a year” is quoting the introductory term, and the clinic that budgeted ₹1,800 forever will be paying ₹5,388 when that term ends. Ask which plan, which term, and what it renews at. Three questions, one minute.
How Much Does a WordPress Website Cost in India?
A WordPress site costs the same as any other site to build, because the cost is the labour rather than the licence. WordPress itself is free, so a ₹40,000 WordPress site and a ₹40,000 hand-coded site differ in what was done with the days, not in what was spent on software.
WordPress is worth choosing for a small business for one practical reason: staff turnover. It is the platform of choice for over 43% of all sites across the web, which means when your developer stops replying to WhatsApp, the next one already knows the system. A bespoke framework that only its author understands is a genuine business risk at this size, whatever it cost.
What does change the number is how the site is assembled. A bought theme lightly customised is a few days. A custom design built properly is a few weeks. Both are WordPress, and a quote that says only “WordPress website” has told you nothing about which one you are getting.
How Much Does an Ecommerce Website Cost in India?
Ecommerce build costs start around ₹1,50,000 for a straightforward catalogue and rise quickly with product count, variants and integrations. The part that surprises owners is the running cost, because a store pays a platform and a payment gateway every month whether it sells anything or not.
The published numbers, on ₹10,00,000 of annual online sales:
- Shopify Basic: ₹1,499/mo paid yearly, so ₹17,988 a year.
- Razorpay: 2% per successful transaction plus 18% GST on that fee, so ₹20,000 plus ₹3,600, that is ₹23,600.
- Running total before you pay anyone to build it: ₹41,588.
One detail worth catching before you commit. Shopify’s India pricing page lists a “2% 3rd-party payment providers” fee on Basic, falling to 1% on Grow and 0.6% on Advanced. If you use an outside gateway, that stacks on top of the gateway’s own 2%, so your effective cost per order is nearer 4% than 2%. On ₹10,00,000 of sales that difference is ₹20,000 a year, which is more than the Shopify subscription.
WooCommerce on WordPress avoids the platform subscription and pays for it in developer time and in your own attention. Neither wins on price by default. At low volume the subscription hurts more, and at high volume the maintenance does.
Should You Use a Website Builder Instead of Hiring Anyone?
If you have more time than money and need four pages by Friday, a builder is a sound decision rather than a compromise. If your site has to bring in enquiries, the constraint will not be the builder’s templates, it will be that nobody has written your copy or set up your title tags.
Wix publishes plans from $17.77 to $159.77 a month, noting that prices and currency vary by location, with most yearly Premium plans including a one-year free domain voucher. Call it ₹18,000 to ₹45,000 a year for a plan a small business would realistically use. That is the honest comparison: zero build fee against a recurring bill several times a self-hosted WordPress site’s.
Run the arithmetic over three years before deciding. A builder at ₹24,000 a year costs ₹72,000 by year three with nothing to show for it if you leave. A ₹60,000 WordPress build plus ₹3,000 a year costs ₹69,000 over the same period and the site is yours. The builder still wins when your own hours are the scarce resource, which for most owner-run businesses they are.
Is GST Included in the Quote You Were Given?
Assume it is not unless the quote says “inclusive of GST” in writing. Website development attracts 18% GST, so a ₹1,00,000 quote is a ₹1,18,000 payment, and that ₹18,000 has ended more than one project at 80% complete.
The rate is not a matter of interpretation. CBIC Notification No. 11/2017-Central Tax (Rate) lists heading 9983, “Other professional, technical and business services other than (i) above”, at 9% central tax, with the matching 9% state tax giving 18% in total.
Two practical notes. If your own business is GST registered, that 18% is input tax credit rather than a real cost, which quietly makes the registered developer cheaper than the unregistered one quoting less. And a developer who cannot issue a GST invoice is telling you something about the scale of operation you are about to depend on.
A Worked Example: The CR Park Clinic, Line by Line
Take the clinic from the opening and price the middle quote properly. These figures are illustrative, built from the published prices above plus a stated day rate, so you can substitute your own and check the arithmetic.
An eight-page WordPress site: home, about, three treatment pages, doctors, fees, contact. Three unique layouts. Appointment enquiry form. Photography supplied by the clinic.
Year one, one-time
| Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| Build: 7 days at ₹10,000 | ₹70,000 |
| Premium theme licence | ₹5,000 |
| GST at 18% on the ₹70,000 fee | ₹12,600 |
| One-time total | ₹87,600 |
Year one, recurring
| Item | Amount |
|---|---|
| .in domain, first year promotion | ₹1 |
| Hosting, Premium at ₹149/mo | ₹1,788 |
| SSL via Let’s Encrypt | ₹0 |
| Recurring total | ₹1,789 |
Year one lands at about ₹89,400. Year two is ₹899 for the domain and ₹1,788 for hosting, so about ₹2,700 if the clinic maintains the site itself. Year five, when the 48-month hosting term expires, that recurring figure becomes about ₹6,300.
Now the ₹18,000 quote is explainable: it is roughly two days of work, which buys a theme installed with placeholder text swapped out. And the ₹2,40,000 quote is explainable too, if it includes custom design, written copy for eight pages, photography and three months of support. Neither is dishonest. They are different jobs wearing the same job title.
How Do You Tell If a Website Quote Is Fair?
A fair quote tells you how many days of work it contains and what happens after launch. Price alone cannot be judged, because the same ₹75,000 can buy three weeks of careful work or three days of it with a comfortable margin.
Ask these five, and compare the answers rather than the totals:
- How many working days is this, and what is your day rate? Every other question is a variation on this one.
- Who writes the copy, and how many pages of it? Get this in writing.
- How many unique page layouts, and how many revision rounds are included?
- Which host and plan, on what term, and what does it renew at?
- Who owns the domain, the hosting account and the code on the day we stop working together?
Question five separates the two kinds of cheap. A ₹20,000 site where you hold the domain and hosting logins is a reasonable starting point for a new business. A ₹20,000 site registered in the developer’s name, on their account, is a subscription you have not agreed to, and the price of leaving is a rebuild.
If you would rather not audit five quotes yourself, that is fair enough. Our website design and development service is sold in three tiers, with the domain, hosting and admin access in your name from day one, and every quote arrives as one document covering scope, timeline and price. The packages page publishes the tier structure and the bundle and term discounts so you can see how the pricing logic works before you talk to anyone. A website that nobody finds is also a cost, so it is worth reading that alongside what SEO involves rather than treating the two as separate purchases.
FAQ
How much does a basic website cost in India?
A five to eight page brochure site from a freelancer on a bought theme is realistically ₹25,000 to ₹75,000 plus 18% GST, with about ₹2,000 in year-one running costs. Below roughly ₹20,000 you are buying a template with your text in it, which is a legitimate purchase as long as you know that is what it is.
Is GST charged on website development in India?
Yes, at 18%. CBIC Notification 11/2017-Central Tax (Rate) places heading 9983 professional and technical services at 9% central tax plus 9% state tax. If your business is GST registered you can claim it as input tax credit.
How much does it cost to maintain a website in India per year?
The hard costs are small: roughly ₹900 for a .in domain renewal and ₹1,788 a year for shared hosting on a four-year term, with SSL free through Let’s Encrypt. A maintenance retainer covering updates, backups and fixes is a separate decision and is usually the larger number.
Is WordPress cheaper than Shopify for an online store?
WordPress with WooCommerce has no platform subscription, while Shopify Basic in India is ₹1,499 a month billed yearly. WooCommerce trades that subscription for developer time and your own maintenance attention, so it is cheaper in cash and not always cheaper in total.
Why do website quotes in India vary by ten times for the same brief?
Because “website” describes an outcome, not a quantity of work, and the software underneath is free in every quote. The variable is days of labour and what those days include, which is why asking for days and day rate makes quotes comparable in a way that asking for a total never will.
Can I get a website for ₹5,000?
You can get a page published for ₹5,000, usually a single-page template with your details inserted. It will not include written copy, a considered structure or the technical setup that lets it rank, so treat it as a placeholder while you decide rather than as a website.
Before You Sign Anything
Take whichever quote you are holding and ask the five questions above. If the answers come back specific, you have a fair price whatever the number is. If they come back vague, the number is not the problem.
If you want a second opinion on quotes you have already received, send them over. We are in CR Park and we will tell you plainly which one is priced properly, including when the answer is the cheapest one. Get in touch or call +91-8882694339.
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