How much does a website cost in India in 2026?
September 11, 2026 · 5 min read · APPITE Admin
"How much for a website?" is the first question almost every client asks, and it is the hardest one to answer well. The honest reply is that a website is not one product. A five-page brochure site and a booking platform with payments and an admin panel are as different as a scooter and a delivery van — both have wheels, and that is where the similarity stops.
So instead of a single number, here are the ranges we actually quote in 2026, what sits inside each one, and what pushes a project from the bottom of a range to the top.
The short version
| What you are building | Realistic range | Typical timeline |
|---|---|---|
| Landing page (one page, one goal) | ₹15,000 – ₹35,000 | 3–7 days |
| Business website (5–10 pages) | ₹35,000 – ₹1,00,000 | 2–4 weeks |
| Website with a CMS your team edits | ₹60,000 – ₹1,50,000 | 3–5 weeks |
| E-commerce store | ₹80,000 – ₹3,00,000 | 4–8 weeks |
| Custom web application / portal | ₹2,00,000 upwards | 8–16 weeks |
These are development ranges for a competent small studio or senior freelancer in India. A large agency in Gurgaon or Bangalore will quote two to four times higher for the same scope, mostly because you are paying for account managers, sales staff and an office. A ₹5,000 quote on a marketplace is a different thing entirely — more on that at the end.
What actually drives the price
Five things move the number far more than page count does.
1. How much of it is custom. A theme customised with your content is cheap. A layout designed from scratch in Figma, reviewed and iterated, is not. Design is usually 20–35% of a website project, and it is the part clients most often underestimate.
2. How many moving parts talk to each other. Every integration is a small project of its own: a payment gateway, a shipping API, WhatsApp notifications, a CRM sync, an ERP feed. Each one adds testing, error handling and edge cases. Two integrations is a normal website. Six integrations is a software project wearing a website's clothes.
3. Whether someone needs to log in. The moment you have accounts, roles and permissions, you have a database of people, password resets, session security, and an admin panel to manage it all. Authentication reliably adds 30–50% to a build compared to the same site without it.
4. Who edits the content afterwards. A hard-coded site is cheapest to build and most expensive to live with — every text change costs you a developer's time. A proper CMS costs more up front and pays for itself the first month you update your own pricing page. We build admin panels into almost everything for this reason.
5. How much content already exists. Copy, photos and product data are the silent budget killer. If you hand over finished text and real images, a project moves fast. If the developer is waiting three weeks for product descriptions, you are paying for that delay one way or another.
What should be included in any honest quote
Ask for these in writing before you pay anything. A quote that does not mention them is not a quote, it is a guess.
- A written scope — what is being built, page by page and feature by feature
- A fixed price or a clearly capped estimate, with what happens if scope changes
- A launch date, and what you owe (content, approvals) to keep it
- Mobile-responsive design — this is not an extra in 2026, it is the default
- Basic on-page SEO — titles, descriptions, clean URLs, a sitemap, fast loading
- Who owns what — the domain, the hosting account, the code, the repository
- What happens after launch — how long are bug fixes free, what does support cost
That last one matters more than people expect. Our own projects include a support window after launch for genuine bugs; changes of mind are quoted separately. Any studio that will not put this in writing is planning to argue with you later.
The recurring costs nobody mentions
The build is a one-time number. Running the site is not.
| Item | Typical yearly cost |
|---|---|
| Domain (.in / .com) | ₹800 – ₹1,500 |
| Shared hosting | ₹3,000 – ₹9,000 |
| VPS (if you need it) | ₹6,000 – ₹20,000 |
| SSL certificate | ₹0 (Let's Encrypt is free and fine) |
| Business email | ₹0 – ₹2,000 per user |
| Maintenance / updates | ₹0 – ₹60,000 depending on plan |
A small business site runs perfectly well on ₹5,000–₹12,000 a year. Do not let anyone sell you a ₹40,000 "hosting package" for a ten-page website.
Where the cheap quotes come from
You will find offers at ₹3,000 and ₹5,000. They are real, and they are usually one of three things:
- A template with your logo dropped in. Fine if that genuinely is all you need, and be clear that is what you are buying.
- A subscription in disguise. Low build cost, then you cannot leave because the code, hosting and domain are all in their account, not yours. Ask who owns the domain before you pay.
- A learner's first project. Sometimes this works out very well and cheaply. Often it produces a site nobody can maintain after the person moves on.
The cost of a bad website is rarely the money. It is the six months you spend with something that does not convert, followed by paying again to rebuild it properly.
How to get a quote worth comparing
Send the same brief to everyone you ask. Three paragraphs is enough:
- What the site is for. "Generate enquiries for our clinic" is a brief. "A website for my business" is not.
- What it must do. List the features: booking form, payment, gallery, blog, login, multilingual.
- What you already have. Logo, content, photos, existing site, existing hosting.
With that, any competent developer can give you a fixed price in a day. Vague quotes come from vague briefs far more often than from dishonest developers.
What we do
We publish our starting prices on our services pages because we would rather filter out mismatches early than waste a week of your time and ours. Tell us what you are building through the Start a project form and you will get a written scope, a fixed price and a launch date within one business day — from the person who would actually build it, not a salesperson.
More posts
Free tools for Indian students: CGPA, attendance, citations and more
CGPA to percentage, credit-weighted SGPA, the 75% attendance question, typing practice and citations — with the catch that matters for each one.
397 free file converters that run in your browser
Images, documents, spreadsheets, data, audio, video, archives, fonts and 3D models — converted on your own device, with no upload, sign-up or size limit.
Free calculators for salaried people in India
CTC to in-hand, income tax, HRA exemption, EMI, gratuity, EPF, PPF and SIP — which calculator answers which question, and what each one will not tell you.