Website pricing in India is deliberately opaque. Almost no agency publishes numbers, quotes arrive as a single figure with no breakdown, and buyers have no reference point — so the same twelve-page corporate site is quoted at ₹18,000 by one supplier and ₹4,00,000 by another, and the buyer has no way to tell which of them is wrong. Usually both are.
We have quoted several hundred website projects in Kolkata over twenty years, and we have also been hired to rescue a great many that were bought on price alone. This article publishes the numbers we actually work with, what drives them up and down, and how to read a quote so you can tell whether you are buying a website or a template with your logo on it.
Every figure below is for the Kolkata and wider West Bengal market as of 2026. Metro agencies in Mumbai or Bangalore typically run 40 to 80 per cent higher for comparable work, and offshore agencies serving US clients higher again.
Why nobody publishes prices
There are two honest reasons and one dishonest one. The first honest reason is that websites genuinely vary. A twelve-page brochure site and a twelve-page site with a customer portal, a payment gateway and an ERP integration are different products that happen to have the same page count, and a published price would mislead in both directions.
The second is that scope is usually unclear at quotation time. Most clients do not yet know whether they need a booking system, and the honest answer to "what will it cost" is "between these two numbers, and here is what decides it". That is a harder conversation than a single figure, so many suppliers avoid it.
The dishonest reason is that opacity lets a supplier price the buyer rather than the work. If a supplier can tell that you are an established manufacturer with a healthy turnover, and you have no reference point for what a website costs, there is a strong commercial incentive to quote what you can afford rather than what the work is worth. This is common enough in this market that you should assume it is happening until a breakdown proves otherwise.
The real price bands in Kolkata
These are the bands we see and work within. They assume original design rather than a purchased theme, hand-built rather than assembled in a page builder, and delivery by a team that will still exist next year.
| What you are buying | Kolkata range (2026) | Typical timeline |
|---|---|---|
| Template site, logo dropped in | ₹8,000 – ₹25,000 | 1–2 weeks |
| Small business site, original design, 6–12 pages | ₹45,000 – ₹1,20,000 | 4–6 weeks |
| Corporate / B2B site with CMS, 15–60 pages | ₹1,20,000 – ₹4,00,000 | 8–14 weeks |
| eCommerce on Shopify or WooCommerce | ₹1,00,000 – ₹5,00,000 | 6–14 weeks |
| Custom eCommerce / marketplace | ₹5,00,000 – ₹25,00,000+ | 4–9 months |
| Web application or customer portal | ₹3,00,000 – ₹30,00,000+ | 3–12 months |
The band that causes the most regret
₹25,000 to ₹45,000 is the most dangerous range in this market. It is too much to spend on a template and not enough to fund original design and build, so what usually arrives is a template with enough customisation to look bespoke in the demo and enough shortcuts to be unmaintainable in a year. If your budget lands here, our honest advice is either to reduce scope and buy a genuinely good small site, or to buy a clean template knowingly and spend the difference on content and photography.
What actually moves a quote
Clients almost always assume page count is the main driver. It is not, and understanding what actually is will save you more money than any negotiation.
What the cheap end really buys you
There is nothing wrong with a ₹15,000 website provided you know what you are buying. Our objection is not to the price; it is to the description. Here is what that money actually purchases.
You get a commercial theme, usually costing the supplier between ₹2,000 and ₹5,000, with your logo, your colours and your text substituted. The layout, the components and the underlying code are shared with several thousand other sites worldwide. It will look acceptable, particularly on a laptop, and for a business that simply needs a credible presence it may be entirely sufficient.
What you do not get is performance. Commercial themes are built to demonstrate well, which means they ship every feature the theme author could think of whether you use it or not. In production that typically means two megabytes or more of JavaScript, several competing animation libraries, and a stylesheet fighting itself. On a mid-range Android phone on a congested 4G cell — which is how most of your visitors will arrive — that is a five to seven second wait before anything useful appears, and a measurable share of visitors leave before it finishes.
You also do not get differentiation or ownership in any meaningful sense. Your competitor may buy the same theme next month. And when the theme author stops updating it in three years, which is typical, you are left with a site that cannot be safely updated and a plugin set with known vulnerabilities.
In practice
Ongoing costs people forget
The build is the visible number and frequently not the largest one over five years. A quote that ignores running costs is not a complete picture, and a supplier who does not raise them is either inexperienced or hoping you will not ask.
Domain renewal is trivial — ₹800 to ₹1,500 a year for a .in or .com. Hosting is where the range is wide and where cheap choices cost the most. Shared hosting at ₹200 a month will host a small site adequately until it gets traffic, at which point it will not. Proper managed hosting for a business site runs ₹1,500 to ₹8,000 a month, and for anything carrying transactions or real traffic, more.
Maintenance is the line most often omitted. A WordPress or WooCommerce site needs its core, theme and plugins updated regularly, and each update carries a small risk of breaking something, which is why it needs testing rather than clicking. Budget ₹3,000 to ₹15,000 a month for a business site, more for eCommerce. A custom-built site on a modern framework typically needs less routine maintenance but still needs dependency updates and monitoring.
Then there is the cost of change. Every business wants pages added, prices updated and campaigns launched. If your site was built with a real CMS and a design system, your own team does this at no marginal cost. If it was not, you pay your supplier for every change, and over five years that quietly exceeds the original build.
| Ongoing item | Typical monthly cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Domain | ₹70 – ₹125 | Billed annually |
| Shared hosting | ₹200 – ₹800 | Adequate only at low traffic |
| Managed hosting | ₹1,500 – ₹8,000 | What a real business site needs |
| Maintenance and updates | ₹3,000 – ₹15,000 | Higher for eCommerce |
| SSL certificate | ₹0 | Free via Let’s Encrypt; be wary of anyone charging |
| Content changes | ₹0 or ₹1,500/hr | ₹0 if you were given a usable CMS |
How to compare two quotes fairly
Two quotes for the same brief will almost never be for the same work, and the difference is usually invisible in the numbers. These questions make it visible, and none of them require technical knowledge.
Ask whether the design is original or theme-based, in those words, and get the answer in writing. Ask who owns the code and the design files at the end, and what happens if you part ways. Ask what is explicitly excluded — content writing, photography, migration and third-party licences are the usual omissions that reappear as invoices. Ask what the performance standard is, and whether it is in the contract or merely an intention.
Then ask what happens after launch: how long is the warranty period, what counts as a bug versus a change request, and what does support cost. A quote that is cheaper on build and silent on support is frequently more expensive by month eight, and that is often the commercial model rather than an oversight.
In practice
Where to spend and where to save
If your budget is constrained — and most are — the allocation matters more than the total. After watching several hundred of these projects, the pattern is consistent.
Spend on the things that are expensive to change later: information architecture, the content model, performance, and whether you can edit the site yourself. These are structural, and retrofitting them costs several times what building them correctly costs.
Save on the things that are cheap to change later: the number of pages at launch, custom illustration, animation, and any feature you are not certain anyone will use. Launch with fewer pages done properly and add more once you can see what visitors actually look for. We have never regretted advising a client to launch smaller; we have frequently watched clients pay for features that analytics later showed nobody touched.
The one exception worth stating plainly: never save on photography if you sell a physical product or a physical space. Stock imagery on a manufacturer, restaurant, hotel or property site does more damage than an unfashionable layout, because buyers read it instantly as evidence that there is nothing real to show.
A reasonable first project
For most Kolkata small businesses, ₹60,000 to ₹90,000 buys a genuinely good eight-to-ten page site: original design, fast on mobile, a CMS you can edit, proper schema and local SEO groundwork, and a contact path that reaches you on WhatsApp. That is enough to compete, and it leaves budget for photography and for the advertising that will actually bring people to it.
Key takeaways
- Original design and build for a small business site in Kolkata runs ₹45,000 to ₹1,20,000; corporate sites ₹1,20,000 to ₹4,00,000.
- Page count is a weak cost driver. Integrations, data migration and approval complexity are the real ones.
- ₹25,000 to ₹45,000 is the worst band to land in — too much for a template, not enough for original work.
- Budget ₹3,000 to ₹15,000 a month for hosting and maintenance; a quote that omits this is incomplete.
- Spend on structure, performance and editability. Save on page count, animation and unproven features.
- Never economise on photography if you sell something physical.
Frequently asked
A genuinely good small business website with original design, six to twelve pages, mobile performance and a CMS you can edit runs ₹45,000 to ₹1,20,000 in Kolkata as of 2026. Below roughly ₹25,000 you are buying a commercial theme with your content substituted, which is a legitimate product but should be described as one rather than sold as bespoke design.
Because they are usually not for the same work. The largest differences are original design versus a purchased theme, whether integrations with your existing systems are included, whether data migration is scoped, and whether content writing and photography are inside or outside the price. Ask each supplier what is explicitly excluded and the quotes usually converge.
Cheaper at the start, and for a very small business with simple needs that can be the right call. The costs appear later: monthly fees that never stop, limited control over performance and technical SEO, difficulty integrating with business systems, and no straightforward way to move the site elsewhere if you outgrow the platform. For a business expecting to grow or to rely on organic search, the economics usually favour owning the site.
Domain around ₹1,000 a year, hosting between ₹200 and ₹8,000 a month depending on what the site actually needs, and maintenance between ₹3,000 and ₹15,000 a month for a business site. SSL should cost nothing. The cost most often overlooked is paying a supplier for routine content changes, which is avoidable if you insisted on a usable CMS at build time.
No, and no reputable supplier will ask you to. A normal structure in this market is a third to start, a third at design approval or a defined milestone, and the balance at launch. Be cautious of anyone requiring full payment before work begins, and equally cautious of anyone who does not ask for a deposit at all — both are signals worth understanding before you commit.