What a website actually costs in Kolkata
Ask three studios in Kolkata what a website costs and you will get three answers that are not close to each other. One quotes under ten thousand rupees. One says forty. One asks for a meeting before naming a figure at all.
They are not describing the same thing, but from outside it is very hard to tell what is different. This is an attempt to make the difference legible, so you can read a quote and know what you are being offered.
What we charge, for reference
We publish our floors on the services page, and they are these: a business or corporate site from ₹18,000, an e-commerce build on Shopify or WooCommerce from ₹40,000, logo and brand identity from ₹6,000, UI/UX projects from ₹25,000, and ongoing SEO or social work from ₹10,000 a month.
Those are starting points, not quotes. What follows is what moves a project above its floor, and it is worth understanding regardless of who you hire.
The five things that actually change the price
How many pages, and how many are different. This is the one most people get wrong. A twenty-page site built from five repeating templates is cheaper than a five-page site where every page has its own layout. You are not paying per page, you are paying per design. If someone quotes you per page without asking what is on them, they are guessing.
Whether the content exists. Text and images are usually the thing that delays a project and often the thing that quietly inflates it. If you arrive with copy written and photographs taken, the build is a build. If the studio has to write your services page and source your images, that is a different job with a different price, and it should be quoted separately so you can see it.
Custom versus adapted. A site built on an existing theme with your brand applied costs a fraction of one designed from nothing. Neither is wrong. A restaurant that needs a menu, photos and a phone number does not benefit from a bespoke design system. A company whose website is the product does.
What it has to do besides exist. A brochure site shows information. The moment it takes payments, manages inventory, books appointments, logs in users, or talks to software you already run, you have crossed from a website into an application, and the cost changes shape entirely.
Who maintains it afterwards. A site handed over with a CMS your team can actually use costs more to build than one only a developer can change. It costs far less over two years. Ask which you are being sold. This is covered in more detail in why websites get worse after launch.
What the very cheap quotes usually mean
A site under ten thousand rupees is real, and for some businesses it is the right purchase. It is worth knowing what it typically involves.
Usually a template, lightly recoloured. Usually a page builder, which means the page weight is high and you cannot easily move the site elsewhere later. Usually no content work, no performance work, and no structured data. Often hosting bundled in at a rate that becomes the actual business model: the build is cheap and the hosting is not, and leaving is difficult by design.
None of that is dishonest. It becomes a problem when a business buys it expecting the other thing.
What the expensive quotes should include
Above roughly a lakh, you should expect to see things named explicitly rather than implied: a discovery stage, content strategy, a design system rather than a set of page designs, accessibility, performance budgets, analytics configured to measure something specific, and a defined support arrangement after launch.
If a high quote does not itemise those, ask what the money buys. A good studio will have a clear answer.
Questions that get you a comparable quote
The problem with collecting quotes is that each studio scopes differently, so the numbers are not comparable. These questions make them comparable.
- How many unique page designs are included, as opposed to pages?
- Who writes the copy, and who sources the images?
- Is this a template, a theme, or a custom build?
- What can my team change without a developer after launch?
- What is included for the first three months, and what is billed?
- If we leave, what do we take with us?
Ask all six of every studio. The answers will differ more than the prices do, and that difference is the thing you are actually choosing between.
The honest summary
There is no correct price for a website, because "a website" describes outcomes that differ by an order of magnitude in effort. What there is, is a correct price for your website, and you can only find it once the scope is described precisely enough that two studios would quote the same work.
Most bad website purchases are not overpaying. They are buying something cheaper than what was needed, and discovering the gap a year later.
If you want a number for something specific, tell us what you are building and we will scope it properly rather than guess.
Questions people also ask
Because the brief is rarely as fixed as it looks. One studio has priced a template with your branding applied, another has priced original design for every page, and a third has assumed you are writing the content. Until the scope is written down in the same words for everyone, the numbers are describing different jobs.
Often yes, if you know what you are buying. A template site with your own photographs and honest copy beats an expensive site nobody maintains. The problem is not the price, it is buying a template while expecting a custom build, then discovering the gap a year later when you want to change something.
Monthly plans usually bundle hosting, small changes and support, which suits a business with nobody technical. Read what happens if you stop paying. If the site disappears or you cannot take the code with you, you are renting rather than buying, and the total over three years is often higher than a build plus a maintenance retainer.
Not by itself. Price buys design, structure and content, and the last two do affect ranking. Spending on visual polish while leaving the pages thin and the site slow will not move you, which is why a cheaper build with real content often outranks a costly one that has nothing to say.