Short answer: in India in 2026, a template website from a freelancer typically costs ₹15,000 to ₹60,000, a custom-designed business website ₹60,000 to ₹3 lakh, a B2B website with a CMS, integrations and proper SEO setup ₹2 lakh to ₹8 lakh, and a web application or customer portal anywhere from ₹8 lakh to ₹40 lakh and up. These are market ranges we see across quotes in Gurugram, the Chandigarh tri-city and the wider country. They are not our price list. The useful part of this guide is the second half: why quotes for the same brief can differ by ten times, and how to tell which one you are actually being offered.
Typical website costs in India (2026)
| What you are buying | Typical market range (INR) | Usual timeline |
|---|---|---|
| Template site (WordPress or a site builder), 5 to 8 pages, by a freelancer | ₹15,000 – ₹60,000 | 1 – 3 weeks |
| Custom-designed business website, 8 to 20 pages, small studio | ₹60,000 – ₹3 lakh | 3 – 6 weeks |
| B2B website with CMS, CRM integration, analytics and SEO groundwork | ₹2 lakh – ₹8 lakh | 4 – 10 weeks |
| eCommerce store (Shopify or WooCommerce, standard catalogue) | ₹1 lakh – ₹5 lakh | 4 – 8 weeks |
| Custom or headless eCommerce | ₹5 lakh – ₹15 lakh+ | 8 – 16 weeks |
| Web application, portal or SaaS MVP | ₹8 lakh – ₹40 lakh+ | 8 – 20+ weeks |
Two caveats before you use that table. First, the bands overlap because the categories overlap: a "business website" with a booking engine is partly a web application. Second, GST at 18% applies to most web development invoices from registered vendors, and some quotes show it while others do not. Always compare pre-tax numbers with pre-tax numbers.
Why two quotes for the same website differ by ten times
When a buyer in Mohali gets one quote for ₹40,000 and another for ₹4 lakh, the usual assumption is that one vendor is cheap and the other is greedy. More often they are quoting different projects that happen to share a one-paragraph brief.
The ₹40,000 quote usually means: an existing theme, your logo and colours applied, your content pasted into pages, a contact form, and launch. Nobody writes copy, nobody plans the page structure around what buyers search for, and nobody checks what happens to your old URLs. For a new local business that needs a credible online presence, that can be exactly the right purchase.
The ₹4 lakh quote usually means: a few days of discovery, a sitemap built around how buyers search, original design for each page template, a component system so your team can add pages later, integration with your CRM, schema markup, a redirect plan from the old site, analytics events for every form and call button, and a support window after launch. If your website is meant to produce enquiries for a B2B sales team, most of that work is not optional.
So the first job when comparing quotes is not to haggle. It is to write down, for each vendor, what is included and what is not. The eight factors below are the ones that move the number most.
The eight things that actually drive website cost
1. Number of templates, not number of pages
A 40-page website with three page types (home, service, blog post) can be cheaper to build than a 12-page site where every page has a different layout. Designers and developers build templates; filling a template with content is comparatively fast. Ask vendors how many unique templates they are pricing. If they only talk in page counts, they have not thought about your site yet.
2. Original design versus a theme
Buying a premium theme costs a few thousand rupees and saves weeks. The trade-off is that you inherit its structure, its code weight and its limits. Original design costs more because someone has to make decisions about hierarchy, typography and layout for your buyers specifically. For a consumer brand or a B2B firm competing on credibility, that is usually worth it. For a clinic or a local service business that mainly needs to be found and called, a well-chosen theme is often enough.
3. Who writes the content
This is the most under-quoted line item in India. Many proposals assume the client supplies all text and images, and projects then stall for weeks while someone on your team tries to write twelve service pages between other jobs. Professional copywriting for a B2B site commonly adds ₹1,500 to ₹10,000 per page depending on depth and research. If a quote is suspiciously low, check whether content is in it.
4. How you will edit the site
A static site with no CMS is cheaper to build and harder to change. A CMS (WordPress, a headless CMS such as Sanity or Payload, or Shopify for stores) costs more to set up because content has to be modelled into fields and permissions. If marketing will publish weekly, pay for the CMS. If the site changes twice a year, you may not need one.
5. Integrations
Every connection to another system adds design, development and testing time: CRM (HubSpot, Zoho, Salesforce), payment gateways (Razorpay, Stripe, PayU), WhatsApp Business, booking tools, ERP or inventory systems, and lead routing. A form that emails your inbox is trivial. A form that creates a CRM contact, assigns an owner by city and triggers a WhatsApp confirmation is a small project of its own.
6. Platform choice
WordPress, Shopify, Webflow, Next.js and custom frameworks have different build costs, hosting costs and maintenance burdens. WordPress is usually cheapest to start; a React or Next.js build usually costs more up front and less in plugin maintenance later. We compare the two properly in Next.js vs WordPress for Indian B2B websites. The honest rule: choose the platform for the next three years of how the site will be used, not for the launch price.
7. SEO and migration work
If you already have a site with rankings, a redesign can wipe them out. Changing URLs without 301 redirects, dropping pages that earned links, or launching a JavaScript-heavy site that search engines struggle to render are the usual causes. A proper migration (URL inventory, redirect map, metadata carried over, Search Console checks after launch) adds days of work. It is cheap compared with losing a year of organic enquiries. New sites need less, but still need schema, a sitemap, clean URLs and sensible internal links from the start. Our SEO services page explains what we include.
8. Who does the work
Freelancers have the lowest overheads and can be excellent for well-defined builds. Small studios add design and project management. Agencies add process, QA, multiple specialists and, ideally, accountability when someone leaves. Rates also vary by location: teams in Gurugram, Bengaluru and Mumbai generally charge more than teams in the tri-city or tier-2 cities for comparable experience, mostly because salaries and rents differ. Location matters less than whether the specific people on your project have built something similar before.
Recurring costs most quotes leave out
The build is a one-time cost. These are not, and they belong in your first-year budget:
| Item | Typical range | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Domain name | ₹800 – ₹2,000 per year | Register it in your company's name, not the vendor's. |
| Hosting | ₹3,000 – ₹30,000+ per year | Shared hosting at the low end; managed cloud or container hosting for busier or custom sites. |
| SSL certificate | Often free | Let's Encrypt or Cloudflare cover most business sites. |
| Theme and plugin licences | ₹5,000 – ₹40,000 per year | Common on WordPress; premium form, SEO and security plugins renew annually. |
| Platform subscription | Varies | Shopify plans and app subscriptions, headless CMS seats, email services. |
| Maintenance and updates | ₹5,000 – ₹50,000 per month | Security patches, backups, small changes, uptime monitoring. |
A useful sanity check: if a vendor's annual maintenance quote is higher than the build cost of a comparable site, either the site is unusually complex or you are being priced into a lock-in.
How to read a website quote, line by line
Before you compare totals, make sure each proposal answers these questions in writing:
- Scope: how many templates, how many pages, which integrations, and what counts as a change request.
- Content: who writes copy, who sources images, and how many rounds of revision are included.
- Ownership: whose name the domain, hosting, code repository, analytics and Search Console accounts sit under. The answer should be yours.
- SEO: what happens to existing URLs, and which on-page and technical items are included at launch.
- Payments: the milestone schedule. Splits such as 30% at kick-off, 40% at design or build sign-off and 30% at launch are common; 100% upfront is a warning sign.
- After launch: how long bugs are fixed without charge, response times, and the hourly or monthly rate after that.
Where to save money, and where not to
Places you can safely spend less: fewer page templates at launch (add more later), a theme instead of original design for a simple local business site, stock photography for secondary pages, and skipping animation that does not help a buyer understand you.
Places that cost more to fix later than to do now: the redirect plan on a redesign, tracking for every enquiry path, page speed on mobile, a content structure that matches how buyers search, and owning your own accounts. Most of the expensive rescue projects we see started as a cheap build that skipped one of these.
What this means for your budget
If you are a local business that mainly needs to look credible and be found, the ₹60,000 to ₹3 lakh band is usually right. If your website is a sales channel for a B2B company, budget ₹2 lakh to ₹8 lakh for the build plus content and a year of hosting and support. If customers log in, pay, book or manage something on it, you are buying a web application, and the conversation should start with scope rather than price.
At Digital Patron we build on Next.js and React from offices in Gurugram and Mohali, and we quote each project as a fixed scope after a discovery call rather than from a rate card. You can see how we approach builds on our web development page, or go straight to the page for your city: Gurugram, Mohali or Chandigarh. If you are still choosing between vendors, our guide on how to choose a web development company covers the questions to ask.
FAQ: website development cost in India
What is the minimum cost of a website in India?
A basic template website built by a freelancer typically starts around ₹15,000, plus a domain and hosting. Site builders can be cheaper still if you do the work yourself. Below that range, you are usually paying for a theme install with your logo added, which can be fine for a placeholder but rarely produces enquiries.
How much does a website cost for a small business in Gurugram or Chandigarh?
Most small and mid-sized businesses in Gurugram and the Chandigarh tri-city spend between ₹60,000 and ₹3 lakh for a custom-designed site of 8 to 20 pages. Gurugram quotes tend to sit higher for comparable teams because salaries and office costs are higher; the scope matters far more than the city.
Is a monthly website subscription cheaper than paying upfront?
Sometimes in year one, rarely by year three. Subscription models spread the cost but often keep the site, theme or hosting in the vendor's account. If you choose one, confirm what you own if you cancel.
How much does website maintenance cost per year?
Expect roughly ₹60,000 to ₹6 lakh a year for maintenance retainers, depending on how often the site changes and how much it is integrated with other systems. A static brochure site needs far less; a WordPress site with many plugins needs regular updates to stay secure.
Does a more expensive website rank better on Google?
No. Google does not reward spend. It rewards pages that answer searches well, load quickly and are technically easy to crawl. A more expensive build often includes the work that makes ranking possible (structure, speed, schema, migration care), but you should ask for those items by name rather than assume them.
Get a fixed-scope quote
Send us your brief, your current site if you have one, and what the website needs to do for your business. We will tell you which of the bands above you are in, what we would build, and what it would cost. Book a free discovery call.
