"Website" covers everything from a five-page brochure to a multi-tenant application with a login. That is why quotes range from ₹5,000 to ₹25 lakh and why comparing them on price alone tells you nothing. Work out which of these you are actually buying first.
Ranges you can plan against
| What you are buying | 2026 range in India |
|---|---|
| Business website (5–12 pages, CMS, forms) | ₹25K–₹1.5L |
| Content or SEO-led site (many landing pages) | ₹1L–₹3L |
| E-commerce (catalog, payments, orders) | ₹1.5L–₹6L |
| Web application with logins and roles | ₹4L–₹20L |
| Multi-tenant SaaS platform | ₹12L and up |
Website or web application — the line that matters
A website presents information and captures enquiries. Its job is to be found, to load fast, and to convert. Cost scales with content volume and design depth.
A web application does work: users log in, data changes, roles differ, and something is computed or tracked. Cost scales with roles, workflows, and integrations, and the interface is a small share of the total.
If your brief says "website" but describes users logging in to do things, you are buying the second one. Pricing it as the first is the most common budgeting mistake we see.
What changes the price of a website
- Page count and whether content exists. Content is the usual bottleneck. Decide before you start who is writing it — if the answer is the developer, get that in the scope and the price.
- Design approach. A clean build on a proven design system is efficient. A distinctive custom brand system with illustration and motion is a separate discipline with its own budget — see website design versus web development.
- Whether SEO is structural or sprinkled. A site built around what people search for costs more upfront and is the only version that returns anything.
- Performance targets. Under two seconds on a mid-range Android over mobile data is achievable and should be written into the scope with a way to verify it.
- Languages and accessibility. Bilingual content roughly doubles the content work.
- Integrations. CRM, payments, WhatsApp, ERP — each is real work, priced separately.
The ₹5,000 website
It exists, it is usually a pirated theme, you cannot edit it, it is not backed up, and it will be rebuilt within eighteen months. You pay twice, and you lose whatever search history the first site accumulated. If the budget is genuinely that tight, a well-configured page on a hosted builder is a more honest answer than a disposable custom site.
Recurring costs to plan for
- Domain, annually
- Hosting, from a few hundred to a few thousand rupees a month depending on traffic and whether it is an application
- SSL, usually included, occasionally not
- Maintenance — plugin, framework, and security updates
- Content updates, if you are not doing them yourself
Keep the domain and hosting in your own account, with your own billing. It is the single cheapest protection you can give yourself, and it costs nothing to insist on at the start.
How to avoid paying for the wrong thing
- Write down what a visitor should do on the site, and what an enquiry is worth to you.
- Ask for the quote itemised — pages, CMS, integrations, SEO structure, content.
- Ask what is explicitly out of scope.
- Ask for the target load time and how it will be measured.
- Confirm in writing that you own the domain, hosting, and code.
- Ask what the admin panel lets you change without a developer, and ask to see it.
Where to go next
If you want the site to generate enquiries rather than exist, start with what a business website should actually do. For a full application with logins and roles, the cost logic is different — see the custom software development cost guide.
We build both, in Ujjain and Indore, with the domain and code in your name.