E-commerce Website Cost in India (2026): What ₹3,00,000 Buys and When Shopify Is Cheaper

Every other line on our pricing page is a fixed number: ₹60,000 for a Starter site, ₹1,50,000 for a Growth site, ₹25,000 a month for Meta ads. The store tier is the exception. It says "from ₹3,00,000", and buyers rightly ask what the word "from" is hiding. The answer is that an online store is priced by its catalogue and its integrations, not by its page count, and no honest agency can fix that number before it knows how many products you sell, how you ship them and what has to talk to what. This guide sets out what the ₹3,00,000 floor includes, when a Shopify store is the cheaper answer, which costs sit outside any build quote, and what a six-month launch costs at published rates, in the same numbers we quote D2C brands every week.

How much does an e-commerce website cost in India in 2026?

Four options cover almost every brand, and only one of them is a store in the strict sense. The other three are worth listing because a surprising number of businesses that ask for an e-commerce site actually need a website that takes orders on WhatsApp, which is a fifth of the price.

The two middle rows matter more than they look. A brand with 8 products and a WhatsApp order flow does not need a cart, a gateway or a catalogue architecture, and paying ₹3,00,000 for them is the most common overspend we see in store briefs. Our website design cost guide sets the market bands those tiers sit inside; this post is about the top row and the bottom row, the two ways to actually take money online.

What does the ₹3,00,000 floor actually include?

The tier is listed on the website design page with six lines, and every one of them is a deliverable that goes into the written scope before work starts:

• Ecommerce or custom features: the cart, checkout, accounts, order management and whatever your model needs beyond a brochure site, built on Next.js to the same 90-plus PageSpeed target as every site we ship.
• Payment gateway integration: the gateway of your choice wired to checkout and tested end to end, with the gateway account registered in your name.
• Product and catalogue architecture: how products, variants, categories and filters are structured, which is the part that decides whether the store still works at 500 products, and the part template stores get wrong.
• Performance at scale: sub-2-second product pages and a checkout that holds up on a sale day, which is the reason a custom build exists at all.
• A dedicated project manager, a single person who owns the timeline and the scope document.
• A timeline scoped upfront, typically 6 to 12 weeks depending on catalogue size and integrations, with the same 48-hour written quote after the discovery call and the same 30 days of post-launch fixes as every other tier.

What moves the number above the floor is not design, it is plumbing: the count of products and variants to migrate, the number of systems the store must talk to (an ERP, a courier aggregator, a loyalty tool, a marketplace feed), and any feature that does not exist off the shelf, such as a configurator or a subscription model. A 40-product store with one gateway and one courier sits at the floor. A 2,000-SKU store with ERP sync and three shipping rules does not, and the scope document will say by how much before you sign.

Shopify or a custom store: which is cheaper for your revenue?

For most D2C brands, Shopify, and we say so on our ecommerce industry page: it is fast to launch, the checkout is reliable, and the app ecosystem covers most needs. The line we use is roughly ₹50 lakh in monthly revenue. Below it, the subscription and app fees are a small share of sales and the speed of launch is worth more than a custom build. Above it, three things start to justify a custom Next.js storefront: page speed you control end to end, experiences the theme cannot express, and app fees that have grown into a real monthly line. We build both and will recommend the cheaper option when it fits, because a brand that outgrows Shopify in year three is a better client than one that overbought in year one.

What costs sit outside the build quote?

Every store build quote we issue is fixed, and every one of them leaves four costs out, because they are paid to someone else or set by someone else. Budget for them separately, whichever route you take.

What does the first six months cost with ads?

A store without traffic is a warehouse with a nicer door, so the honest launch budget includes the ads. At published rates, Meta ads management is ₹25,000 a month on the Launch plan for ad budgets up to ₹1,50,000 a month, with pixel and Conversions API setup, a full-funnel build and 6 new creatives a month, live within 7 working days. The Growth plan at ₹50,000 a month adds catalogue and Advantage+ shopping campaigns, 12 or more creatives and landing page CRO audits for budgets up to ₹5,00,000 a month. The table costs six months on Launch with a ₹1,00,000 monthly ad budget, which is inside the plan's cap and a realistic first-year number for a brand that intends to sell online rather than merely exist online. Every fee is before GST; the ad budget goes from you to Meta.

The ROAS the ad budget needs depends on your gross margin, not on an industry average. The rule we set out on the ecommerce page is that a brand with 70 percent margins can profit at 2.5x ROAS while a 30 percent-margin brand may need 4x or better. On a ₹1,00,000 month that is ₹2,50,000 of revenue at 2.5x and ₹4,00,000 at 4x, before any of it is attributed to the store itself. We work that target backwards from contribution margin in the first strategy session, before a campaign launches.

How long does an e-commerce build take?

Six to twelve weeks, scoped upfront, against 3 to 4 weeks for a Starter site and 4 to 6 for a Growth site. The sequence is the same as every build: a 30-minute discovery call, a written scope and fixed quote within 48 hours, sitemap and design approved before anything is coded, then build, content and integrations in parallel, then launch, tracking verification and team training with 30 days of post-launch fixes. The store-specific weeks go to catalogue migration, gateway testing and courier or ERP integration, which is why the number is a range and why a clean product sheet on day one is the single biggest thing a brand can do to land at the short end. If you already have a store and are weighing a rebuild, our redesign cost guide explains why the tiers are the same either way.

Which should a D2C brand buy first?

Answer three questions in order. Do you need online payment on your own domain? If no, the Starter site at ₹60,000 with WhatsApp ordering is the right buy and this whole post is premature. Are you below roughly ₹50 lakh a month? If yes, launch on a hosted store, spend the difference on ads, and revisit the custom build when the platform fees or the speed ceiling start to cost you sales. Are you above that line, or do you need something no app provides? Then the custom build from ₹3,00,000 is the one that pays for itself, and the scope call is where the real number is fixed. Whichever route you choose, the ads need a page built for them; our landing page versus full website guide covers that decision, and the AI search page covers the buying-intent content that brings the shopper to your store before the marketplace does.