Short answer: in 2026, a professional business website in India costs ₹50,000–₹2,00,000, an e-commerce store ₹1,50,000–₹8,00,000, and a custom web application ₹3,00,000 upward. Freelancers quote 40–60% less than agencies but carry delivery risk; template builders cost ₹5,000–₹30,000 but cap your growth. The real cost drivers are custom design, integrations and content, not the number of pages.
Cost by website type
- Basic business website (5–10 pages): ₹50,000–₹1,20,000. Custom design, mobile-first, contact forms, basic SEO setup.
- Corporate website (15–30 pages, CMS): ₹1,00,000–₹2,50,000. Content management your team can use, blog, multi-section architecture, analytics.
- E-commerce store: ₹1,50,000–₹8,00,000. Catalogue, payments (UPI/cards), shipping integration, GST invoicing. Shopify builds sit at the lower end; custom builds at the upper.
- Web application / portal: ₹3,00,000–₹15,00,000+. Login systems, dashboards, workflows, priced by features after a discovery phase, not by page count.
What actually drives the price
Design: template customisation adds ₹10,000–₹30,000; fully custom design ₹40,000–₹1,50,000. Integrations: payment gateways, CRMs, WhatsApp, ERPs, ₹15,000–₹75,000 each depending on complexity. Content: professional copywriting for 10 pages runs ₹20,000–₹50,000 and is the most commonly skipped item, and the most common reason websites don't convert. SEO architecture: proper heading structure, schema markup and speed optimisation adds ₹25,000–₹75,000 and pays for itself in rankings.
Freelancer vs agency vs builder
- Website builders (Wix/hosted templates): ₹5,000–₹30,000/year. Fine for a placeholder; weak for SEO, impossible for custom features, and you never own the platform.
- Freelancers: ₹25,000–₹80,000 for a business site. Cheapest custom option; risk sits in availability, testing discipline and long-term support.
- Agencies/companies: ₹50,000–₹2,50,000+. You pay for process, documented scope, testing, training, and someone to call in month eleven. Certifications like ISO 9001 signal that process is audited, not just claimed.
The hidden costs nobody quotes
- Domain + hosting: ₹3,000–₹25,000/year depending on traffic.
- Maintenance: ₹15,000–₹60,000/year for updates, backups, security patches and small changes.
- Content updates: either learn the CMS (insist on training) or budget per-change fees.
- Rebuilds: the most expensive website is the ₹20,000 one you rebuild twice. Budget once, properly.
How to keep the quote honest
Demand a fixed-scope quote broken into milestones with acceptance criteria; confirm you own the domain, hosting, code and content; get the maintenance price in writing before signing; and test the vendor's past sites on Google PageSpeed, if their portfolio scores under 70 on mobile, so will yours.
The bottom line
Pay for outcomes, not pages: a ₹1,00,000 website that brings enquiries is cheap; a ₹30,000 one that doesn't is expensive. ITSolvez builds fixed-scope, milestone-billed websites under ISO 9001-certified delivery, check our web development services, try the ROI calculator, or read how to choose a web development company.