What a website costs in India, and what you’re actually paying for
Ask ten people what a website costs and you’ll get ten numbers, most of them followed by “depends”. It does depend. But “depends” isn’t an answer you can take to your accountant, so here is what it actually depends on, with our own prices as a reference point. Most studios don’t publish theirs. We do, partly so you can compare, and partly because a price you can see is a price nobody can quietly change later.
What you’re actually paying for
A website quote is a bundle of six or seven different things. Two quotes can differ by five times and both be fair, because they’re pricing different bundles.
Design. The biggest difference between a cheap site and an expensive one isn’t the code. It’s whether someone designed it for you, or picked a template that a thousand other businesses also picked. A template isn’t wrong; it’s just recognisable. If your competitor’s site looks like yours, customers notice, even if they couldn’t tell you why.
Words. Somebody has to write what goes on every page. Either you do it, or you pay someone who knows how a customer reads. Owners usually underestimate this one. Writing about your own business is strangely hard.
Photos. Your phone photos can work, if someone crops and colour-matches them. Products that need a white background or a styled shot cost more, because each image takes real time.
Pages. One well-built page can do the job for a business people already ask for by name. A business that sells five different services usually wants five pages, so each one can be found on Google on its own.
Hosting, domain and SSL. This is the rent. It’s small, it’s yearly, and it’s the part most often left out of a quote.
Changes later. Your prices change. Your timings change. Somebody will need to update the site, and that somebody costs something.
Ownership. The quiet one. Is the domain registered in your name? Can you take the site elsewhere if you want to? A cheap site you can’t leave isn’t cheap.
The three ways people buy a website
Build it yourself on a website builder. You pay a monthly subscription and spend your own evenings. It works well when you enjoy that kind of thing and your business is new enough that “a page that exists” is the goal. The cost is your time, plus a site that looks like the builder’s templates.
Hire a freelancer. This varies more than anything else on this page, from excellent to vanishing mid-project. Judge by live sites they’ve built, not by screenshots, and ask the six questions further down.
Hire a studio with fixed prices. You pay more than the subscription, and in return someone else does the design, the words and the photos, against a written list of what’s included. That’s what we do, so weigh this paragraph accordingly.
Our prices, in full
Every price below is one-time, and fixed before we start.
| Plan | What you get | Live in | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | One page, up to 8 sections, designed around your photos, hosting for year one | 7 working days | ₹11,999 |
| Growth | Up to 5 pages, art drawn for you, all the copy written, hosting for years one and two | 10 working days | ₹24,999 |
| Signature | A site built as its own world, with interactive moments, up to 8 pages | 21–30 days | from ₹79,999 |
The Signature price is fixed after a scoping call, before any work starts. Half of every price is paid to begin, and half once you’ve seen the finished site and said yes.
The costs that arrive later
This is where quotes that looked similar stop being similar. Ask every person you talk to what year two costs.
Ours: once the included hosting runs out, hosting, the domain, SSL and backups are ₹3,499 a year. A change after launch is ₹500, or 5 changes for ₹1,999. That’s the full list. There’s no monthly “maintenance” fee for a site that doesn’t need maintaining.
Before launch, Starter includes 2 rounds of revisions and Growth includes 3. A round of revisions is one list of changes, sent together — not a drip over a fortnight. That rule exists because the alternative is a project that never ends, and nobody enjoys that, including you.
Six questions to ask anyone before you pay a deposit
- Whose name is the domain registered in? It should be yours.
- What exactly is included? Pages, sections, forms, photos, words. In writing.
- How many rounds of changes, and what counts as one round?
- What does year two cost? Hosting, domain, and changes.
- Can I see three sites you built that are live right now? Click around them on your phone.
- What happens to the site if we stop working together? You should be able to take it with you.
If someone can’t answer these in a sentence each, that’s an answer too.
Which one do you need?
- Starter, if people already ask for you by name, and you need somewhere good to send them. Saras Snacks and CA Hardik Mevada both started here.
- Growth, if you sell more than one thing, and customers find you on Google before they find you on the road.
- Signature, if your brand is the product, and the goal isn’t “nice website”. It’s “have you seen their website?”
If you’re not sure, start smaller. A one-page site that looks like you is worth more than five pages that look like everyone. You can see every plan, and what’s outside each one, on our websites page, and the sites we’ve built on our work page. They’re all live.