How Much Does a WordPress Website Cost in India?

Ask three people what a WordPress website costs and you will get three answers that seem to describe different planets. One friend built his own for almost nothing. A freelancer quotes a modest figure. An agency sends a proposal several times higher. All three can be honest, because they are pricing different things.

This lesson explains what you are actually paying for, so you can tell a fair quote from a cheap one and a thorough one from a padded one. It also covers the part most budgets forget: what the site costs every year after launch.

WordPress itself is free. The rest is not.

01What Are the Ways to Get a WordPress Website Built?

There are four broad routes. Each trades money against time, risk and how much the site can do.

02What Does an Agency Build Cost Today?

Our website development cost guide lays out the full ranges and what changes them. In short, these are CodingCafe’s 2026 ranges for India, as of November 2026:

• Business website, 5 to 10 pages: ₹40,000 to ₹60,000.
• E-commerce site, up to about 100 products: ₹60,000 to ₹2,00,000.
• Custom web application: ₹2,00,000 to ₹10,00,000 and above.
• Ongoing maintenance: ₹3,000 to ₹15,000 a month, depending on what is included.

Two notes before you compare any quote with these. GST at 18% is often shown separately, so check whether a figure includes it. And a range is a range: where you land inside it depends on the things in the next section, not on haggling.

03Why Do Quotes for the Same Site Differ So Much?

Take an immigration consultant in Chandigarh who helps families with study, work and visitor visas for Canada, Australia and the UK. Two agencies quote very different prices for “an eight-page website”. When you read the proposals side by side, the difference almost always comes from a handful of things.

• Who writes the words. Writing service pages that answer real questions takes time. If the consultant supplies all the text, the build is cheaper. If the agency writes it, someone is paying for those hours.
• Design from a theme or from scratch. A well-chosen theme adapted to the brand is quicker than an original design for every page.
• Forms and connections. A simple enquiry form is one thing. An eligibility check that asks a few questions and sends the lead to a CRM or a WhatsApp number is more work.
• Languages. A site in English and Punjabi, or English and Hindi, is close to two sites’ worth of content.
• SEO and speed work. Proper titles, schema, a sitemap and a fast mobile score take effort that a bare build skips.
• What happens after launch. A month of fixes, training and backups set up, or a handover and goodbye.

If the consultant later wants clients to log in, upload passport scans and track their file status, that is no longer a business website. It is a custom web application, and it belongs in the much higher range, with very different security needs.

04What Does a WordPress Website Cost Every Year?

This is where budgets go wrong. Owners plan for the build and forget that a website has rent.

The yearly costs for most business sites are:

Domain renewal, every year — Hosting renewal, at the renewal price, not the first-year offer — Premium theme or plugin licences, which renew yearly for updates and support — Business email, per user — Maintenance, if you pay someone to keep it updated and backed up

Premium licences catch people out the most. A page builder, a form plugin, a backup tool and an SEO add-on can each carry their own yearly fee. Let one lapse and it stops getting security updates, which is how many WordPress sites get hacked. Before agreeing to a build, ask for a list of every paid licence it uses and who pays the renewal.

Maintenance is the other line people skip, then regret. Somebody has to update WordPress, the theme and the plugins, check the backups and test the forms. That somebody is either you, monthly, or a person you pay. Module 5 has the full checklist so you can decide which.

05Is a Very Cheap Website Ever a Good Deal?

Sometimes. A new business testing an idea may only need a simple, honest page with a phone number, and spending heavily would be a mistake.

But when one quote is far below the rest, find out what is missing. Common answers: a nulled (pirated) premium theme that will never update safely, no backups, accounts registered to the seller, your text pasted into a demo layout with no thought for searches or enquiries, and no help once the invoice is paid. Each of those costs more to fix later than it saved.

A cheap site is not the risk. A cheap site you cannot own or update is.

06How Do You Build Your Own Website Budget?

Work it out over three years rather than the first month, the same way you would judge any business purchase.

1. Take your page plan from the earlier lesson and decide which route fits: yourself, freelancer, agency or custom.
2. Get the build cost, with GST shown clearly.
3. Add domain, hosting and email at their renewal prices, times three.
4. Add every premium licence, times three.
5. Add maintenance, either your hours or a monthly fee, times thirty-six.
6. Compare the three-year totals, then set them against your goal line. If the site brings the enquiries you planned for, what are they worth?

The template below does this with a row per cost, one-time and yearly columns, and a three-year total at the bottom. Fill it in with real quotes. For a deeper look at how a WordPress project runs from brief to launch, and when a custom build makes sense, read our WordPress development guide. If you would like a quote to put in the sheet, you can ask us about WordPress development with your page plan attached.

07What Comes Next?

All of this assumes WordPress is the right platform. For many businesses it is, but not for all of them. The last lesson in this module compares WordPress with Wix and Shopify honestly, including the cases where WordPress is the wrong choice.