Ecommerce Website Development Cost in India (2026)

Ecommerce website development cost in India in 2026 ranges from about ₹25,000 for a basic starter store to ₹10 lakh or more for a custom platform. Published price guides put most small and growing stores at ₹60,000 to ₹3.5 lakh for the build. On top of that come 18% GST, a platform or hosting bill and about 2% of every online payment, which in our worked examples add 40% to 65% to the first-year bill.

This guide breaks down what Indian stores cost on Shopify, WooCommerce and custom code, the running costs most quotes leave out, and three worked first-year budgets for a small, a growing and a large store. Every price links to the page we checked it on, on 5 October 2026.

Ecommerce website development cost in India: 2026 price table

Indian agencies publish overlapping bands because each one defines "basic" and "advanced" differently. The table below uses the five tiers from a June 2026 Indian pricing guide, with a second agency's bands alongside for comparison.

Sources: tier prices from HTBG's 2026 ecommerce cost guide (published 27 June 2026); second-source bands from SolutionBowl's 2026 guide (published 11 May 2026). A Mumbai agency guide puts most stores between ₹60,000 and ₹6 lakh.

These are build prices only. Agencies in India almost always quote before tax, and the costs that recur every month are a separate conversation. The rest of this guide covers both.

GST on ecommerce website development

Website design and development falls under SAC code 998314 and attracts 18% GST. A ₹1,00,000 quote becomes ₹1,18,000 on the invoice.

GST also applies to the fees your payment gateway charges, and to yearly maintenance contracts. If your business is GST-registered, you can usually claim this as input tax credit. Confirm the treatment with your CA before you budget the net figure.

Shopify vs WooCommerce vs custom: what each costs in India

The platform you choose sets both the build price and the bill you pay every month afterwards. Here is how the three common routes compare on the costs you can check today.

Shopify costs in India

Shopify's India pricing page, checked on 5 October 2026, lists these plans:

Source: Shopify India pricing. The page also shows an introductory offer of a 3-day free trial, then ₹20 a month for 3 months.

The fee on third-party payments is the line most Indian merchants miss. Shopify Payments is not available in India, so Indian stores use Razorpay, Cashfree, PayU or a similar gateway. That means Shopify's transaction fee applies on top of the gateway's own fee. On the Basic plan, a ₹1,000 order pays ₹20 to Shopify and around ₹20 plus GST to the gateway.

WooCommerce costs in India

WooCommerce is free and open source, with no revenue share. You pay for three things instead:

• Hosting. In India, shared hosting runs about ₹1,000 to ₹3,000 a year, VPS hosting ₹16,000 to ₹30,000 and cloud hosting ₹30,000 to ₹1 lakh, according to GoDaddy India (updated April 2026). A store with real traffic should not sit on the cheapest shared plan.

• Extensions. WooCommerce lists paid extensions at about $29 to $299 a year each. These are billed in US dollars, so the rupee cost moves with the exchange rate.

• Upkeep. WordPress, WooCommerce and every plugin need regular updates. Someone has to do them, test them and keep backups.

WooCommerce has no per-sale fee of its own, so at higher sales volumes it can work out cheaper than Shopify's lower plans. It asks more of you, or your developer, in return.

Custom ecommerce development

A custom store is written for your business: your checkout flow, your pricing rules, your integrations. It makes sense for marketplaces, B2B ordering with customer-specific prices, subscription products and stores that have outgrown what themes and plugins can do. You pay more upfront and you own the code, but you also carry the hosting, security and maintenance on your own.

Payment gateway fees: the cost that grows with your sales

Every online order pays a percentage to the payment gateway. Unlike the build, this cost rises as your store does well.

Sources: Razorpay pricing and Cashfree payment gateway charges, both checked on 5 October 2026. Both pages were also running introductory offers for new merchants. Offers change often, so read the current terms when you sign up.

A quick way to estimate: multiply your expected yearly online sales by 2%, then add 18% GST to that figure. On ₹10 lakh of sales, that is ₹20,000 plus ₹3,600 GST. If you run Shopify on the Basic plan, add another 2% for Shopify's own fee.

Shipping and logistics costs

Many Indian D2C stores ship through an aggregator such as Shiprocket rather than signing with each courier. Shiprocket's plans, as listed on its pricing page:

Source: Shiprocket pricing. These are average figures; your real rate depends on weight, distance, courier and whether the order is cash on delivery. Use the rate calculator with your own product weights before you set shipping charges.

On the development side, connecting the store to Shiprocket is usually a plugin or app on Shopify and WooCommerce. On a custom build it is API work, and your quote should say so.

One-time vs recurring costs: the full list

Use this as a checklist when you compare quotes. Anything in the right-hand column comes back every month or every year.

Domain range from GoDaddy India. For maintenance, one 2026 Indian guide suggests budgeting 15 to 20% of the development cost every year.

Marketing is the easiest cost to underestimate. A store nobody visits sells nothing. If you are planning search traffic, our guide to SEO cost in India covers what monthly retainers look like.

Rules that add work (and cost) to an Indian online store

Two sets of rules shape what an Indian store has to include. A good developer builds these in. Check that the quote includes them.

Consumer Protection (E-Commerce) Rules, 2020

The E-Commerce Rules require online sellers to appoint a grievance officer and show their name, contact details and designation. Complaints must be acknowledged within 48 hours and resolved within one month. Stores selling their own inventory must also show accurate information on returns, refunds, exchanges, warranty, delivery and shipment.

In practice that means a clear returns and refund policy page, a shipping policy, a grievance contact and a total price at checkout that matches what the customer pays.

DPDP Act and Rules

A store collects names, phone numbers, addresses and order histories, which makes it a heavy user of personal data. The Digital Personal Data Protection Rules were notified on 14 November 2025 with an 18-month phased compliance timeline. Plan for clear consent notices at sign-up and checkout, an updated privacy policy and a way for customers to ask for their data to be deleted.

Worked examples: first-year budgets for three store sizes

The numbers below are illustrative. They use figures from inside the ranges and price lists above to show how costs add up in year one. They are not quotes, and your store will differ.

Example 1: small Shopify store, ₹3 lakh in online sales

A home-run brand with about 50 products, average order ₹600, so roughly 500 orders in the year.

The build is ₹70,800 of the ₹1,02,868 store total. The rest, about ₹32,000, recurs every year and grows with sales. Shipping is shown separately because many stores pass some or all of it to the customer.

Example 2: growing WooCommerce store, ₹15 lakh in online sales

About 500 products, average order ₹1,000, so roughly 1,500 orders.

The extensions figure assumes roughly ₹85 to the US dollar; check the rate on the day you buy. Notice there is no platform fee per sale. On the same ₹15 lakh, Shopify Basic would add ₹30,000 in transaction fees, though Shopify would also remove the hosting and some of the maintenance line.

Example 3: custom D2C store, ₹50 lakh in online sales

A brand with its own checkout rules, inventory sync and loyalty programme.

At this size, the gateway fee alone is ₹1.18 lakh a year. Razorpay's pricing page points high-volume merchants to custom pricing, so it is worth asking before you sign.

Across all three examples, the first year costs between about 40% and 65% more than the build price on its own. Compare quotes on the full first-year figure, not the build line.

What pushes an ecommerce quote up or down

Two stores with the same number of products can be very different projects. These factors move the price most.

• A customised theme is a fraction of the cost of a design built from scratch.

• 50 products with no variants is a day of uploading. 2,000 products in sizes and colours needs bulk import, clean data and careful filters.

• Each connection to a gateway, Shiprocket, WhatsApp, an ERP like Tally, or a CRM adds development and testing time.

• COD limits by pincode, B2B pricing, GST invoices with your GSTIN, coupons that stack: each rule is extra work.

• If the agency shoots product photos or writes descriptions, that is its own line item.

• A Hindi or Marathi version of the store doubles much of the content work.

• A freelancer, a small studio and a large company will quote very different prices for the same brief. Our website development cost guide lists typical Indian hourly rates for each.

How long it takes to build an ecommerce website

Time is a cost too: every week the store is not live is a week without online sales. Published Indian timelines look like this.

Source: HTBG's 2026 guide. In practice, delays rarely come from the code. They come from product photos, descriptions and pricing data that are not ready when development is. Get your catalogue in a spreadsheet before the project starts.

How to keep your ecommerce website cost down

Cutting the upfront price is easy; the trick is cutting it without paying more later. These trade-offs usually work.

1. Start on a theme, not a custom design. A well-chosen theme with your brand colours, fonts and photography looks professional. Move to custom design when sales justify it.

2. Launch with your best sellers. You do not need the full catalogue on day one. Launching with 30 to 50 products gets the store earning while the rest are photographed and written.

3. Pick the Shopify plan by your sales, not by features. The jump from Basic's 2% third-party fee to Grow's 1% only pays off once the fee saved is larger than the higher subscription. At yearly billing, Grow costs ₹4,100 a month more than Basic, so the 1% saving only covers it once online sales pass about ₹4.1 lakh a month.

4. Budget photography properly once. Product photos and videos cost about ₹500 to ₹5,000 per product. Good photos are reused on the store, marketplaces, ads and WhatsApp, so they are rarely the place to save.

5. Keep apps and extensions to the ones you use. Each one adds a monthly or yearly fee, slows the store a little and adds something else to update. Review them every quarter and remove what you have stopped using.

6. Do not skip maintenance to save money. An outdated plugin on a store that holds customer data is a security problem and, under the DPDP Rules, a compliance one.

How to get an ecommerce quote you can compare: a checklist

1. Write a one-page brief: what you sell, to whom, and roughly how many orders you expect a month.

2. Count your products and list the variants (size, colour, weight).

3. Pick a platform, or ask the agency to recommend one and explain why in writing.

4. List every integration: gateway, shipping, WhatsApp, accounting, inventory, marketplaces.

5. Decide who supplies product photos and descriptions.

6. Ask for an itemised quote split by design, development, catalogue setup, integrations and testing.

7. Ask whether GST is included.

8. Ask for a first-year cost estimate that includes platform, hosting, apps and maintenance.

9. Confirm the store, domain and gateway accounts are registered in your business's name.

10. Check that returns, shipping, privacy and grievance pages are part of the scope.

11. Agree what happens after launch: who fixes bugs, for how long, and at what cost.

12. Agree milestones, for example 40% to start, 30% on design approval and 30% on launch.

Frequently asked questions

How much does an ecommerce website cost in India?

Most 2026 Indian price guides put a basic store at ₹25,000 to ₹80,000 and a small business store at ₹80,000 to ₹2 lakh, before 18% GST. Mid-scale and custom stores run from ₹2 lakh to ₹10 lakh and beyond. Add platform or hosting fees, gateway fees and maintenance for the true yearly cost.

Is Shopify or WooCommerce cheaper in India?

WooCommerce is cheaper on software (it is free) and has no per-sale fee. Shopify includes hosting but costs ₹1,499 to ₹22,680 a month on yearly billing and charges 0.6% to 2% on each sale made through an Indian gateway. For small stores the difference is modest; as sales grow, Shopify's transaction fee becomes the deciding number.

Can I build an ecommerce website for ₹10,000?

You can start a store on a builder plan yourself for less, but a professionally built store is rarely under ₹25,000 in 2026 price guides. Very cheap offers often leave out the domain, gateway setup, policy pages or the right to the store itself. Check who owns the account before you pay.

How much does a 20 page website cost in India?

For a regular business website, 20 pages usually falls between ₹30,000 and ₹4.5 lakh depending on how many unique designs it needs. For a store, page count matters less than product count, integrations and checkout rules. Our website cost guide breaks this down.

Do I have to pay GST on ecommerce website development?

Yes, if your developer is GST-registered. Website development is taxed at 18% under SAC 998314. GST also applies to payment gateway fees and maintenance. A GST-registered business can usually claim it as input tax credit; check with your CA.

What are the hidden costs of running an online store?

The main ones are payment gateway fees on every order, Shopify's transaction fee if you use a third-party gateway, paid apps or extensions, shipping, hosting upgrades as traffic grows, maintenance, and marketing to bring in visitors. In our three examples, these added 40% to 65% to the first-year cost.

Plan your store with a clear first-year budget

Webhorse Studio builds Shopify, WooCommerce and custom ecommerce stores for businesses in Mumbai and across India. See our ecommerce and website development services, or tell us about your store and we will send you an itemised quote with the yearly costs included.