8 min read
Ecommerce website cost in India: real prices by build path, and the monthly bills nobody quotes
What an online store really costs in India in 2026: Shopify DIY, agency Shopify, WooCommerce or custom, with one-time and monthly costs and a worked year-one budget.
On r/india, a founder asked what it would take to get a website for an ecommerce business. The most useful reply came from someone who had collected quotes: "the charges start from ₹35,000. And thats just the development charges payable." On r/shopify, an Indian seller with a ₹100 product on the Basic plan was stuck on a different question: how Shopify's 2% and the gateway's 2% stack up on every order.
Both are the right questions. Ecommerce website cost in India in 2026 runs from almost nothing upfront on a DIY Shopify or Dukaan-style store, to ₹40,000 to ₹1.5 lakh for Shopify set up by an agency, to ₹3 lakh and well beyond for a custom or headless build. On top of any of these, a small store pays a few thousand rupees a month in plan and app fees, plus payment and shipping charges on every order.
The build price gets the attention. The monthly bills decide whether the store makes money.
Ecommerce website cost in India by build path#
These are our ranges for a small to mid-sized Indian store, cross-checked against what ranking agency pages publish. Dollar figures assume about ₹88 to $1.
| Build path | One-time cost | Monthly running cost (before order fees) | Good for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Shopify or Dukaan-type SaaS, DIY | ₹0 to ₹30,000 ($0 to $340) | ₹2,000 to ₹5,000 | Testing demand, under 50 products |
| Shopify with an agency theme setup | ₹40,000 to ₹1.5 lakh ($450 to $1,700) | ₹3,000 to ₹10,000 | Most new D2C brands |
| WooCommerce on WordPress | ₹30,000 to ₹2.5 lakh ($340 to $2,800) | ₹1,500 to ₹8,000, plus upkeep | Content-heavy sites, unusual catalogue rules |
| Custom headless or Next.js | ₹3 lakh to ₹15 lakh+ ($3,400 to $17,000+) | ₹10,000 to ₹50,000+, plus a developer | Brands with revenue and a reason |
How this compares with agency quotes: The Mediaverse puts freelancer stock-theme Shopify stores at ₹20,000 to ₹60,000, small-agency customisation at ₹50,000 to ₹1.5 lakh and WooCommerce at ₹50,000 to ₹4 lakh. Aero Business Solutions quotes ₹40,000 to ₹80,000 for a small store of 10 to 100 products. Our bands sit in the same place. Where agency pages tend to go quiet is the monthly column, which is the part you pay forever.
1. Shopify or a Dukaan-type SaaS, set up yourself#
You pick a free theme, load products, connect Razorpay or another gateway, and set up shipping. Shopify India lists Basic at ₹1,800 a month billed yearly, or ₹1,994 monthly. Indian builders such as Dukaan sell a similar all-in-one package.
What it includes: hosting, SSL, checkout, inventory. What it does not: product photos, copy, decent shipping rules, and the time you will spend learning it. For a basic ecommerce website in India with a short catalogue, this is where we would start.
2. Shopify with an agency theme setup#
An agency or freelancer customises a premium theme to your brand, loads the catalogue, sets up the gateway, COD, a shipping aggregator, GST invoices and analytics. Paid themes on the Shopify Theme Store mostly cost $170 to $420 one-time (about ₹15,000 to ₹37,000), usually on top of the agency fee.
This is the sensible default for a Shopify ecommerce website in India. You get a store that looks like your brand without paying for custom code.
3. WooCommerce#
WooCommerce is free to download, but you pay for hosting, a theme and extensions, which WooCommerce itself prices at $29 to $299 a year each. There is no platform cut on sales. The catch is that updates, security and backups are your job. We compare the two properly in Shopify vs WooCommerce.
4. Custom headless or Next.js#
A custom storefront, often built in Next.js on top of Shopify or another commerce backend. You get full control of speed, design and checkout flow. You also take on a codebase that needs a developer for every change. Below a few lakh a month in sales, we rarely think it pays back.
One-time vs monthly costs#
| Cost | Type | Typical amount |
|---|---|---|
| Build or setup | One-time | See table above |
| Premium theme | One-time | ₹0 to ₹37,000 |
| Product photography | One-time, then per new product | ₹500 to ₹2,000 per product (our estimate) |
| Product copy and policy pages | One-time | Your time, or ₹10,000 to ₹30,000 from a writer (our estimate) |
| Platform plan | Monthly | ₹1,800 a month on Shopify Basic, yearly billing |
| Apps (reviews, WhatsApp alerts, COD rules, upsells) | Monthly | ₹1,000 to ₹10,000 |
| Payment gateway | Per order | About 2% on Razorpay's standard plan |
| Shipping aggregator | Per order | Shiprocket's entry plans advertise average shipments of ₹41 to ₹45 |
| GST invoicing | Monthly | Several Shopify GST invoice apps list a free plan |
| Domain and email | Yearly | ₹1,000 to ₹4,000 |
The gateway fee is covered in more depth in our guide to choosing a payment gateway for your website in India.
The hidden costs#
1. Shopify's extra 2% in India#
Shopify Payments is not available in India, so every Indian store uses a third-party gateway. On Basic, Shopify then charges 2% of each sale, on top of the gateway's own fee. That is the stacking the r/shopify seller was asking about. Grow drops it to 1%, but costs ₹6,700 a month on yearly billing, so it only pays for itself above roughly ₹4.9 lakh a month in sales.
2. App creep#
Each app looks cheap. Ten of them do not. One r/shopify commenter summed up the app store: "Usually there are free tier apps but then everybody wants the cash." Review your app bill every quarter.
3. COD returns#
Cash on delivery sells in India, but refused parcels come back and courier aggregators bill for that leg too. Check the return-to-origin charge on your rate card before you turn COD on for every pin code.
4. GST on the build#
Agency quotes are often "GST extra". At 18%, a ₹1 lakh build is ₹1.18 lakh leaving your account.
5. Photos and content#
Agencies usually exclude them. Phone photos on a cluttered table cost more in lost sales than a proper shoot.
What drives the price#
- Catalogue size and variants. Ten products is a weekend of uploads. Five hundred with sizes and colours needs filters, bulk imports and careful structure.
- Custom design. A tuned premium theme costs a fraction of a designed-from-scratch storefront.
- Integrations. ERP, marketplace sync, accounting and WMS connections are where custom development starts.
- Business model. Subscriptions, B2B price lists, bundles and multi-vendor marketplaces all add real work.
- Who builds it. A solo freelancer, a small studio and a large agency will quote very differently for similar scope. Our checklist for hiring a web agency helps you compare them fairly.
For the wider question of what drives any website or product build, see our guide to website and MVP costs in 2026.
A worked example: a small D2C food brand#
Take a hypothetical Kochi brand selling cold-pressed coconut oil and spice blends: 25 products, an agency-built Shopify store, and a target of ₹2 lakh a month in sales at an average order of ₹800 (about 250 orders).
| Year-one cost | Amount |
|---|---|
| Agency theme setup (a quote within market bands) | ₹60,000 |
| Premium theme ($300) | about ₹26,400 |
| Photography for 25 products | ₹20,000 to ₹40,000 |
| Shopify Basic, billed yearly | ₹21,600 |
| Apps at ₹1,000 to ₹3,000 a month | ₹12,000 to ₹36,000 |
| Domain and one email inbox | about ₹2,000 to ₹3,000 |
| Total before order fees | about ₹1.4 to ₹1.9 lakh |
Then the sales-linked costs. On ₹24 lakh of yearly sales, roughly 2% to the gateway plus 2% to Shopify is about ₹96,000. Shipping 3,000 orders at Shiprocket's advertised ₹45 average is around ₹1.35 lakh, before heavier parcels and returns, though much of that is usually recovered from customers.
The point: in year one, the fees on sales can cost more than the store itself. That should shape your pricing and your free-shipping threshold more than the build quote does.
Once the store is live, upkeep is its own budget line. Our guide to website maintenance cost in India covers it. For reference, our Starter Sprint starts at ₹24,999 ($499) and Launch System at ₹74,999+ ($1,499+); see pricing.
Common questions#
What is the basic ecommerce website cost in India?#
A basic store on Shopify or a Dukaan-type builder can go live for under ₹30,000 if you do the setup yourself, then costs about ₹2,000 to ₹5,000 a month in plan and apps, plus order fees.
How much does a Shopify ecommerce website cost in India?#
Expect ₹40,000 to ₹1.5 lakh for an agency to set up a premium theme, plus ₹1,800 a month for Basic on yearly billing, apps, and the 2% Shopify fee on each sale.
What is the Shopify website cost per month?#
₹1,994 a month for Basic on monthly billing, or ₹1,800 a month billed yearly. Most small stores add ₹1,000 to ₹5,000 in apps.
Is WooCommerce cheaper than Shopify in India?#
On paper, yes, because there is no platform cut. In practice, hosting, paid extensions and someone to handle updates often close the gap for a small team.
The short version#
An ecommerce website in India costs anywhere from almost nothing upfront to well over ₹3 lakh, depending on the build path. For most new D2C brands, an agency-tuned Shopify theme at ₹40,000 to ₹1.5 lakh is the sensible start. Budget just as carefully for the monthly side: plan, apps, the extra 2% Shopify charges in India, gateway fees and shipping.
Planning a store and want a realistic year-one budget before you commit? Book a free strategy call and we will work through the numbers for your catalogue with you.
