How much does a website cost in India in 2026?

A website in India costs two things: the build, paid once, and the running costs, paid every year. With us the build is ₹9,999 for a landing page or small brochure site, ₹19,999 for a multi-page business site on WordPress or another CMS, and from ₹29,000 for an online store or web application. On top of that you pay for a domain (₹899 to ₹1,499 a year at renewal for .in and .com), hosting (₹289 to ₹649 a month at renewal on Hostinger's three main plans), business email if you want it, and payment gateway fees if you sell online. Most of these third-party prices are listed before GST, which adds 18%.

What the build costs#

The build is the design and development work: page layouts, the content management system, forms, the store if there is one, on-page SEO and the launch. It is a one-off payment. These are our starting prices for clients in India; your quote sets the final price in writing before any work starts.

A dedicated store with a large catalogue has its own e-commerce development packages, from ₹14,999 for a Shopify or WooCommerce store. The full list of what each website plan includes is on the website design and development page.

Three things move the build price more than anything else: how many pages or products there are, who writes the content, and what the site has to do beyond showing information (take payments, book appointments, connect to other software). If you plan the site before you ask for quotes, every provider prices the same job and you can compare them. For what other Indian agencies charge, see our survey of published agency prices: of 13 agencies that list a website price, the median starting price was ₹15,000.

Domain name: cheap in year one, then the renewal#

Registrars in India advertise .in and .com domains at ₹1 for the first year. The renewal is the price you will pay every year after that.

Sources: Hostinger's .in page, Hostinger's .com page and BigRock's domain price table. Register the domain in your business's name, not your developer's, so you can move the site later.

Hosting: the long prepaid term and the renewal price#

Shared hosting is the entry level, and the low monthly prices in the adverts are introductory: they need a long term paid upfront, and the plan renews at a higher monthly price.

Other hosts work the same way. Bluehost India's Starter plan is ₹199 a month for 36 months and renews at ₹349; its Business plan is ₹279 and renews at ₹529 (Bluehost India's shared hosting page, GST not included). GoDaddy India's Economy plan is ₹219 a month "for first 3-yr term", and its page does not show the renewal price (GoDaddy India's web hosting page).

For a business site, budget for the renewal price from the year the introductory term ends. A slow host also costs you in a way that is not on the invoice: Google reports how fast your pages load for real visitors, and our guide to Core Web Vitals explains how to check it.

An online store: Shopify or WooCommerce#

Shopify charges a monthly plan fee. On its India pricing page, paying yearly, Basic is ₹1,499 a month, Grow ₹5,599 and Advanced ₹22,680, with no setup fees. If you take payments through a third-party gateway instead of Shopify's own, Shopify adds a transaction fee of 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow and 0.6% on Advanced (Shopify India pricing).

WooCommerce is the free alternative on WordPress. The plugin directory says "Our core platform is free" and that it "offers additional paid commercial upgrades or support" (WooCommerce on WordPress.org); WordPress itself is free to download (WordPress.org). A WooCommerce store has no platform fee, but it needs hosting that can carry it, and any paid extensions you choose.

Payment gateway fees, and what changed for UPI#

Every online payment costs a fee. Razorpay charges "a single flat platform fee across all domestic payment instruments" of 2% per successful transaction, 2.15% on corporate credit cards and up to 3% on international cards, with no setup or annual fee, and 18% GST on its fee (Razorpay pricing). Its UPI row says the MDR is zero but the 2% platform fee applies: the bank charge is nothing, the gateway's own fee is not.

The rules for UPI itself changed in September 2026. A Gazette notification of 14 September 2026 says no bank or system provider may charge for payments by RuPay debit card or by UPI "upto Rs. 2,000" (Gazette of India, S.O. 5067(E)). The government's release the next day said "a nominal MDR of 0.4% will apply only to P2M transactions above ₹2,000", capped at ₹300 for payments of ₹75,000 and above, while small merchants receiving up to ₹1 lakh a month through UPI QR codes keep zero MDR (PIB release of 15 September 2026).

The start date is not settled. The Ministry of Finance's FAQ gave 15 October 2026 (Department of Financial Services FAQ), and on 13 October NPCI said the charge "shall be implemented immediately post Diwali at a date to be notified separately" (NPCI press note). If you sell items above ₹2,000, check your gateway's current UPI rate before you price them.

The parts that are free#

• SSL certificate. Let's Encrypt "provides free TLS certificates" (Let's Encrypt), and most hosts install one for you. Nobody should charge you for a basic certificate.
• WordPress and WooCommerce. Both are free software. You pay for the work, the hosting and any paid themes or extensions.

Business email#

An address at your own domain needs a paid mailbox service. Google Workspace's Starter plan is ₹270 per user per month in India, before tax (Google Workspace India pricing). Zoho's Mail Lite is ₹59 per user per month, billed annually only, with local taxes added (Zoho Mail pricing).

GST: who adds it and when#

Web design and development is "information technology design and development services", service code 998314 (CBIC's scheme of classification of services), taxed at 9% central tax plus 9% state tax, 18% in all (Notification 11/2017-Central Tax (Rate)). A service provider must register for GST once its turnover in a financial year exceeds ₹20 lakh, or ₹10 lakh in special category states (CGST Act, section 22).

So a quote from a registered agency adds 18% to its price, and the hosting, domain and email prices above are also before GST. N&D Co. is not registered for GST at present, so our prices are the amount you pay, as our terms of service say.

Doing it yourself with a website builder#

A builder such as Squarespace bundles hosting, templates and the editor in one subscription: its Basic plan is ₹630 a month paid annually in India, with a 2% transaction fee on its online store (Squarespace pricing). The subscription is cheap; the cost is your time to design, write and maintain the site, and the limits of the template.

Example: a business website over two years#

Here is the Business plan with one Google Workspace user, using the published prices above. Year one includes hosting and a domain in our price; from year two you pay them at the provider's renewal rate.

A store adds its platform fee (Shopify Basic is ₹17,988 a year at ₹1,499 a month paid yearly) and payment fees on every sale. Updates, security fixes and changes after the support window are extra unless a maintenance package covers them.

How to compare website quotes#

• Check that each quote names the same pages, features and number of revision rounds.
• Ask whether hosting, the domain and email are included, for how long, and what they renew at.
• Ask whether the price includes GST, and whether the provider is registered.
• Ask who owns the domain, the accounts and the final files once you have paid.
• Get the price, the deliverables and the payment schedule in writing before you pay an advance.

If you want a figure for your own site, our pricing page has every starting price, and a short brief through our contact form gets you a written quote.