The honest answer is: it depends on what you need. But "it depends" is no help when you are planning a budget, so here are the real starting prices, and what moves them up or down.
The three packages
Starter Website, from ₹6,999: 1 – 4 pages, WhatsApp and call buttons, a photo gallery, your Google Maps location, and live in 3 – 4 days. It suits a shop, a salon or a small clinic that needs to be found and called.
Business Website, from ₹11,999: 5 – 8 pages with a fully custom design, an enquiry form that reaches your WhatsApp or email, a product or service catalogue, Hindi and English versions, and live in 4 – 7 days. It suits coaching centres, clinics and showrooms with many things to show.
E-commerce Website, from ₹29,999: up to 50 products with prices and stock, cart, checkout and online payment, order notifications on WhatsApp, and live in 10 – 15 days. The payment gateway fee is about 2% per order.
What moves the price
The number of pages, how custom the design is, how many products or services you list, whether customers pay online, and whether you want Hindi and English. A simple page that says who you are and how to reach you costs less than a catalogue of 40 products with online payment.
What you do not pay extra for
Hosting and the security padlock (SSL) are free for the life of your website. Many developers charge for these every year. Three rounds of changes are included in the quoted price too.
The one yearly cost is the domain name (your .com or .in address). It is registered in your own name, so it is always yours. You pay for it, including its yearly renewal; if it is not renewed, the website goes offline.
How payment works
50% advance to start, and the other 50% only after you have seen and approved the design. You get a written quote with a fixed price and a fixed delivery date before anything begins.
Questions to ask any developer
Whose name will the domain be in? Is hosting free after the first year, or will the bill come back? What exactly is included in the price, in writing? What happens after launch if something breaks? A very low price with vague answers to these usually costs more later.
A question about your own business? Message me on WhatsApp and I will answer in plain Hindi or English.