Ask five agencies what a website costs and you will get five numbers that are hard to compare. The price follows the work, and the work depends on a handful of decisions you can make before you ask. This guide explains those decisions, and how we quote.
The short answer
A business website in India is priced on five things: how many distinct page layouts it needs, what it has to do beyond showing information, who supplies the content, how much design work it needs, and what happens after launch. We quote a fixed price for an agreed scope after a 30-minute discovery call, and larger builds are split into phases, so you pay for one release at a time.
Page layouts, not page count
Twenty service pages that share one layout cost far less than five pages that each need their own design. So count layouts instead: home, a service or product page, a listing page, an article, contact.
Mr Antidot, a pest-control company in Ahmedabad, has a page for each of its ten treatments, with the time it takes, the starting price and the method. All ten use one layout, and every Book Now button opens the contact form with that service selected. The site is large in pages but modest in layouts. Read the case study.
What the site has to do
A site that only presents information is the simplest to build. Each of these adds design and build time:
- Enquiry or booking forms that carry context, such as the service a visitor was reading about
- Online payments and a cart
- Customer accounts and order history
- A content management system your team can use without a developer
- Integrations with a CRM, WhatsApp, email or accounting software
Who supplies the content
Writing, photography and product data are often the slowest part of a project. If you supply final text and images, the build is shorter. If we write and source them, that time is added to the quote.
How much design work it needs
Applying an existing brand costs less than creating one. Custom illustration, animation and interactive features add time, and they are worth it only where they help visitors understand or decide.
What happens after launch
A domain, hosting, security updates and small changes are ongoing costs. They are easy to forget when comparing quotes, so ask every agency what is included in the first year and what costs extra.
How long it takes
Time and price move together. The timelines we publish are 3–6 weeks for marketing sites and landing pages, and 8–14 weeks for MVPs and web apps.
How to get quotes you can compare
Send every agency the same one-page brief:
- What the business sells, and to whom
- The page layouts you expect
- The features you need from the list above
- Who supplies the content
- Your deadline
Then ask each one for the deliverables, timeline and payment milestones in writing. A quote without those is a guess, and two guesses can't be compared.
What to do next
If you are budgeting for software people log into rather than a website, read what changes the cost of a SaaS MVP. For the stages of a build, read our website development process. To get a number for your own project, send us a short brief and we will reply within one business day.