How Much Should a Business Website Actually Cost in India?

It's common to get website quotes ranging from ₹5,000 to ₹5,00,000 for what sounds, on paper, like the same project: "a website for my business." The gap is real, and it comes down to a few factors that are worth understanding before you compare quotes.

The first is whether you're getting a template or a custom build. A pre-made template, lightly customised with your logo and content, is the fastest and cheapest option -- reasonable for a very simple brochure site. A custom design built around your specific business, customer journey and brand is slower and costs more, but tends to convert better and is harder for competitors to copy.

The second is the technology underneath. A basic WordPress site with a page builder is quick to set up but can become slow and plugin-dependent over time. A custom-coded site (PHP/MySQL, for example) usually costs more upfront but gives you a faster, more secure, more maintainable foundation -- particularly important if you expect the site to grow.

The third, and most commonly missed, is what happens after launch. Does the quote include an admin panel so your own team can update content? Does it include basic on-page SEO setup? What about the first few months of support once real users start finding bugs? A very low quote that doesn't include any of this often costs more in the long run once you pay separately for each fix.

A reasonable approach: ask every vendor exactly what's included -- number of pages, whether content is written for you, whether you can edit it yourself afterwards, and what support looks like once it's live -- and compare on that basis rather than the headline number alone.