Ask five people what a website costs and you’ll get five honest answers that are nowhere near each other. A cousin who knows WordPress might do it for ₹8,000. A freelancer on a portfolio site quotes ₹35,000. An agency sends a proposal for ₹1.2 lakh. Nobody is necessarily overcharging. They are quoting for different things.
This guide explains what changes the price, with typical ranges from published Indian price guides, checked on 20 October 2026. The numbers are ranges, not quotes, including for us.
The rough price bands
Hostinger’s 2026 India cost guide is one of the more detailed public breakdowns. Its ranges, one-time unless stated:
| What you get | Typical range |
|---|---|
| Do it yourself on a website builder | ₹2,000 to ₹7,500 a year, including domain |
| Small business site (5 to 15 pages), freelancer | ₹10,000 to ₹80,000 |
| Small business site (5 to 15 pages), agency | ₹50,000 to ₹1,50,000 |
| Online store, agency-built | ₹1,50,000 to ₹4,00,000 and up |
| Custom web app or startup product | ₹2,50,000 to ₹10,00,000 and up |
Other Indian guides, such as upGrowth’s, land in similar territory: freelancers at roughly ₹500 to ₹2,000 an hour and agency projects from ₹50,000 upwards.
Those ranges are wide because the word “website” covers everything from a template with your logo swapped in to a site where every page was planned, written and designed for your business.
What actually moves the price
1. Who writes the words. This is the most underrated cost. If you send the text, the build is faster and cheaper. If the agency writes it, someone has to interview you, understand your customers and write pages that answer their questions. That is real work, and it’s usually what decides whether the site brings enquiries.
2. Template or custom design. A theme you customise costs less up front. A custom design costs more but fits your brand and content instead of forcing your content into someone else’s layout. Template customisation alone can be ₹5,000 to ₹15,000; a fully custom design on WordPress is quoted from ₹25,000 to well over ₹1.5 lakh in the same Hostinger guide.
3. Number of page types, more than number of pages. Ten service pages built on one good template cost far less than ten pages that each need a different layout. Ask how many unique templates the quote includes.
4. What the site has to do. A brochure site with a contact form is simple. Booking, payments, a members’ area, a product catalogue linked to inventory, or multiple languages each add design, development and testing.
5. Speed and quality work you can’t see. Fast loading on a ₹10,000 Android phone, proper search setup, accessibility, analytics that work, spam protection on forms. Cheap builds usually skip these because the client won’t notice at handover. You notice later, when nobody enquires.
6. Photography and motion. Real photos of your work, team and space cost money and are worth it. Custom animation and video add more again.
7. Who owns what afterwards. Some low quotes are cheap because the site lives on the developer’s account and you rent it back. Our list of ownership questions to ask an agency covers this.
The yearly costs nobody quotes
The build is a one-time cost. These keep coming:
- Domain: about ₹500 to ₹1,500 a year for a .in or .com.
- Hosting: roughly ₹2,000 to ₹8,000 a year for a typical small business WordPress site, more for stores or high traffic.
- Paid plugins and themes: ₹3,000 to ₹15,000 a year for a few premium plugins on WordPress.
- Maintenance: updates, backups, security fixes and small edits. Freelance plans run from about ₹1,500 to ₹10,000 a year for small sites, and monthly retainers from ₹1,000 to ₹5,000.
- Email: business email on Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 is billed per user.
- Payment gateway fees for stores, usually around 2 to 3 percent of each transaction.
All figures above are from the Hostinger guide. A ₹15,000 website can easily cost ₹10,000 to ₹20,000 a year to keep running. Ask every quote to list these separately.
How to compare two quotes
Put each quote in the same table and ask:
- How many unique page designs are included, and which pages?
- Who writes the content, and how many rounds of edits?
- Is it a template or a custom design? Ask to see the template if it’s one.
- What is the mobile speed target, and how will it be checked?
- What search setup is included? Titles, descriptions, sitemap, structured data, Search Console, Google Business Profile link.
- Where will the site be hosted, in whose name, and what does it cost each year?
- Who owns the domain, the code, the design files and the content?
- What happens after launch? How long is the support window, and what does a small change cost after that?
If a quote can’t answer these, it is not a cheaper version of the same thing.
Which band makes sense for you?
- You’re testing an idea or just need to be findable: a builder, a clear one-page site and a good Google Business Profile is fine. Spend the rest on your actual business.
- Enquiries are how you make money: pay for content and a design built around the questions customers ask. This is usually the middle band, and it’s where the website starts paying for itself.
- You’re running ads to the site: the site has to convert. A sharp landing page may be a better first spend than a full redesign. Our article on when a landing page beats a redesign helps you decide.
- You sell online or need custom features: budget for the higher bands and for ongoing development, not only launch.
How we approach it
Our business website projects are custom: we plan the pages around your customers’ questions, write or edit the content, design it, build it to load fast on phones and set up search and analytics. We quote after a short call because scope decides the price, and the quote lists the yearly running costs separately. Afterwards, a care and maintenance plan keeps it updated if you’d rather not do it yourself.
Before you pay anyone, run our free launch checklist against your current site. It shows what you’re missing, which is a better starting point for any quote than “how much for a website?”