E-commerce Website Cost in India (2026): Shopify, WooCommerce, Custom or Headless, Priced Side by Side

Ask for an e-commerce website quote in India and the answer depends less on design than on one earlier decision: which platform the store runs on. A stock Shopify theme, a customised Shopify store, a WooCommerce build, a store written on our own stack and a headless storefront are five different products with five different price floors and five different monthly bills. We build all of them, and the prices are public on our Ecommerce and Shopify development page and our pricing page. This guide lines them up side by side, adds the running costs nobody puts in the build quote, and works one six-month launch budget through to the rupee.

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

Across the Indian market, the published bands on our service page are wide because the products are different. A basic Shopify store on a stock theme typically costs ₹20,000 to ₹60,000 from a freelancer. Theme customisation with integrations from a small agency runs ₹50,000 to ₹1,50,000. A custom theme with bespoke UX, larger catalogues and system integrations sits between ₹1,50,000 and ₹5,00,000. Shopify Plus projects run ₹5 lakh to ₹15 lakh, and WooCommerce builds range from ₹50,000 to ₹4,00,000 depending on how much custom development the plugins cannot cover.

What does each route cost at Mediaverse Digital?

Five routes cover almost every brief we receive, and only four of them are stores. The first row is there because a surprising share of brands asking for e-commerce actually need a website that takes orders on WhatsApp. The prices below are the published tiers from the website design page and the Ecommerce and Shopify page, one-time, with 18 percent GST shown because the landed number is what leaves your account.

Two rows share a ₹3,00,000 floor and answer different briefs. Shopify Custom keeps the store on Shopify, with its checkout and app ecosystem, and spends the budget on a designed theme and integrations. The ecommerce or custom build on the website design page is for a commerce model a store platform does not fit, where the features themselves have to be built. The Shopify tiers are unpacked product by product in our Shopify website development cost guide; this post is about choosing between routes, not between Shopify tiers.

Shopify, WooCommerce, custom or headless: which is cheaper?

Shopify is the cheaper default for most D2C brands in India, and our own service page says so plainly. Checkout is reliable, hosting and security are handled, the app ecosystem covers Indian payments, COD and courier integrations, and a non-technical team can run the store. For a brand doing under a few crore a year, nothing else is worth the operational overhead. The other three routes each earn their price only under specific conditions.

WooCommerce is the one route with no published price from us, because the build is priced by how much custom development the plugins cannot cover, which only a scoping call reveals. It is cheaper to license and more expensive to keep healthy. We build it when the reasons are real, and steer clients away from it when the only reason is avoiding Shopify's monthly fee.

What does an e-commerce website cost to run every month?

A store is not a one-time purchase, and the build quote covers none of the lines below, because each is billed by someone other than the agency. Our service page lists them as exclusions for exactly that reason: Shopify plan and app fees, gateway and courier charges, product photography and copy beyond the templates, ongoing marketing, custom app development beyond the listed integrations, and GST.

Our arithmetic on one example makes the point. A store selling ₹5 lakh a month pays about ₹10,000 a month to its gateway at 2 percent, or ₹1,20,000 a year, on any platform. Its app stack adds ₹36,000 to ₹1,80,000 a year. So a Shopify Launch store at that size spends ₹3,33,000 to ₹4,77,000 in its first year before the Shopify plan and courier bills: ₹1,77,000 to build with GST, plus gateway, plus apps. The build is roughly half the first-year cost or less, which is why comparing quotes on the build line alone misleads.

Is a ₹3,00,000 store worth double the ₹1,50,000 one?

Only for capability. The gap between Shopify Launch and either ₹3,00,000 route is ₹1,50,000 upfront. At the published app-stack band of ₹3,000 to ₹15,000 a month, that gap equals 10 to 50 months of apps, on our arithmetic. No brand should buy the bigger tier on the theory that it saves on Shopify fees; the numbers do not return fast enough. What the extra ₹1,50,000 buys is capacity the Launch tier does not have: 500 plus products against 100, subscriptions or bundles, ERP, CRM or marketplace sync, a theme designed from wireframes, and 30 days of support against 2 weeks of training. If none of those is on your list, Launch is the right buy and the difference belongs in the ad budget.

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 ads. At published rates, Meta ads management is ₹25,000 a month on the Launch plan for ad budgets up to ₹1,00,000 a month, with pixel and Conversions API setup, up to 3 campaigns and 4 new creatives a month, live within 7 working days of inputs. Growth at ₹45,000 a month covers budgets up to ₹5,00,000 with full-funnel and retargeting campaigns and 8 creatives; catalogue and Advantage+ campaigns sit on the Scale plan at ₹75,000 a month for budgets above ₹5,00,000. The table costs six months on Launch at a ₹1,00,000 monthly ad budget, the top of that plan's range and the top of the ₹75,000 to ₹1,25,000 all-in monthly band our ecommerce industry page gives for a brand still testing product-market fit.

The ROAS that budget needs depends on your gross margin, not an industry average. The rule on our 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. We work the target backwards from contribution margin, including shipping, gateway fees, returns and packaging, in the first strategy session.

How long does an e-commerce build take?

Shopify Launch stores go live in 3 to 4 weeks from receiving product data and brand assets, Shopify Custom builds take 6 to 10 weeks, and Plus or headless projects are scheduled in the scope document, typically 10 to 16 weeks. The store scoping call is 45 minutes and produces a platform recommendation, written scope and fixed quote within 3 working days. The biggest variable is product data: a clean spreadsheet with images, prices, variants and descriptions saves two weeks on almost every project. Migrating an existing store carries a redirect map for every product, collection and blog URL, the same discipline our redesign cost guide sets out for any site that already ranks.

Which route should a D2C brand buy first?

1. Do you need online payment on your own domain? If not, a Starter site at ₹60,000 with WhatsApp ordering is the right buy. Price the chat channel first with our WhatsApp marketing cost guide.
2. Up to 100 products, standard payments, COD and shipping? Shopify Launch at ₹1,50,000, and put the difference into ads.
3. More than 100 products, subscriptions, bundles or an ERP to sync? Shopify Custom from ₹3,00,000.
4. A commerce model no store platform fits? The custom build from ₹3,00,000 on the website design page, scoped before you commit.
5. Above roughly ₹50 lakh a month, or needing B2B pricing and checkout control? Headless or Plus from ₹8,00,000, with Plus making sense from about ₹1.5 to 2 crore in monthly revenue.

Whichever route you take, the ads need a page built for them, which our landing page versus full website guide covers, and the wider market bands for business sites sit in our website design cost guide. Every account, from the Shopify store to the gateway and the courier, is opened in your name, because a store you cannot log into is not yours.