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.