The honest answer is that nobody can quote your store from a web page. Two businesses with the same product count routinely differ by a factor of five, and the difference is never the number of pages.
So this guide does something more useful. It shows you exactly which decisions move the number, so you can read any quote you receive and know what you are being charged for.
We do not publish package prices. A page that says "stores from ₹X" is either quoting a template you will outgrow, or it is bait.
Every agency page you have read this week opened with a number. It exists to get you on a call, and it is almost never the number on the final invoice.
Here is why the honest version is more useful. A clothing retailer with two hundred products and a fashion brand with two hundred products can be the same project or a five-times difference, depending on whether one needs a configurator, dealer rates, a warehouse sync or nothing at all. The product count told you nothing.
What actually determines cost is the eight drivers below. Learn to read those and you can compare any two quotes properly, including ours. A cheap quote is not a bargain if it omits the courier integration and the GST invoice format your accountant needs. An expensive quote is not automatically thorough.
We give a fixed written quote after a scoping call, itemised by module. Most clients then remove one or two lines and defer another to phase two, which is exactly what an itemised quote is for.
I asked for a big fancy website and they told me to start smaller and put that money into proper product photography instead. That one piece of advice tells you what kind of people they are.
Pick one to see what it covers, what makes it cheaper, and the question to ask any agency quoting you.
The largest single factor, and the one most quotes get wrong. A retail cart, a dealer portal and a marketplace are three different sizes of project even with the same catalogue.
Ask whether their quote covers customer-specific pricing, and what happens to the number if you add it later.
Shopify trades a lower build cost for monthly fees. Custom is the reverse. WooCommerce sits between the two, with hosting quality deciding your speed.
Ask them to compare total cost over three years, not just the build price.
A configured theme, a customised theme, or a storefront designed from scratch. Each step adds design and front-end time, and each is a legitimate choice.
Ask which of the three they are quoting, and to see an example of that depth.
Fifty clean products is an afternoon. Three thousand with variants, specifications and images that need renaming is a workstream with its own timeline.
Ask whether catalogue upload is included, and what happens if your data is messy.
A payment gateway and a courier are routine. A two-way ERP or Tally sync with stock and invoices is real engineering, needs API access and a test environment.
Ask which integrations are standard app installs and which are custom development.
Configurators, quotation flows, subscriptions, loyalty and multi-warehouse logic. Each is scoped and priced on its own, because each is genuinely separate work.
Ask for each custom feature as its own line item, so you can defer any of them.
Whether photography, descriptions and policies exist. Producing them is a genuine cost line, not an afterthought, and it is the most common cause of a delayed launch.
Ask what they need from you and by when, in writing, before you sign.
Hosting or platform subscription, apps, domain, gateway percentage and maintenance. These continue after launch and belong in the budget from day one.
Ask for a written list of every recurring cost with its monthly or annual figure.
Retail, B2B and marketplace are three different sizes of project even when the catalogue is identical. This is where most budget surprises come from.
One price for everyone, one checkout, one delivery model. The platform already does most of this, so you are paying for design, catalogue and integrations.
Every dealer sees different prices, different minimums and their own credit position. None of that is standard behaviour, so it has to be specified and built.
You are building software, not a store. Anyone who quotes a marketplace from a phone call has not understood what you asked for.
This is the section most agencies skip, and it is the one that causes arguments in month two. Ask for it in writing from whoever you hire.
The build itself, quoted by module
A one-off cost, registered to you
Import, structure, variants, image cleanup
Gateway, courier, invoicing, ERP
Photography and descriptions, where you need them
Shopify charges monthly. WooCommerce needs hosting you choose.
The quiet one. Five apps at a few hundred each adds up fast.
A cut of every order, plus any COD handling fee
Small, annual, and yours to own
Optional with Shopify, close to essential with WooCommerce
Compare platforms over three years, not on build price. A lower Shopify build plus subscription and apps can overtake a higher WooCommerce build that carries only hosting. Or it may not. It depends on your app list, and we will do that sum with you honestly before you commit.
Composite scenarios drawn from the kind of work we do, not client records. The point is the shape of each project, not a price tag.
Eighty products, photos already shot for social, one delivery model, owner will run the store herself.
Shop plus warehouse, stock must match both, invoices go into Tally, part of the range also sells on Amazon.
Every dealer has their own rates and credit terms, sales engineers handle quotations, and the ERP is the source of truth for stock.
COMPOSITE SCENARIOS — these describe project shapes we work on, not specific clients. No client names, figures or outcomes are implied.
Send these to three agencies and you will get three comparable quotes instead of three guesses. Use it with us or with anyone else.
If an agency quotes without asking most of these, that quote will move later. That is not a prediction, it is arithmetic.
Send us your answersAsk anything else on WhatsApp. You will get a straight answer from the person who would build it.
On a fifteen minute call, yes. We will tell you which of the three scenarios above your project resembles and roughly what that means for budget and timeline. What we will not do is put a number on a web page that we would then have to walk back once we understand your ordering rules.
Usually because they are quoting different work. Check whether the cheaper quote includes catalogue upload, the courier integration, GST invoice format, test orders, redirects from your old URLs and staff training. Also check who owns the accounts afterwards. Sometimes the cheaper quote is genuinely leaner and better suited to you, which is a good outcome. You just need the line items to tell.
Yes, and it is usually the right call. Launch with payments, shipping and a clean catalogue, then add the ERP sync or the dealer portal once orders are flowing. The one thing worth deciding early is the platform, because moving between platforms later costs more than building the feature would have. We flag that during scoping.
Staged against milestones rather than dates, so you pay as work is delivered. Typically an advance to begin, a stage on design approval, a stage during development and the balance at launch. Larger B2B and marketplace projects are broken into more stages. It is all written into the proposal before anything starts.
Small adjustments during design are normal and included. A genuine change of scope, such as adding dealer pricing after we have built a retail cart, gets quoted separately before we touch it. You always see the cost and the timeline effect before agreeing. Nothing gets absorbed quietly and then billed at the end.
No. On Shopify many clients manage without a plan because the platform handles updates and security. On WooCommerce someone has to own updates, backups and monitoring, and if that is not us it needs to be someone. We will tell you honestly which situation you are in rather than selling an AMC by default.
Answer as much of the eight-question list as you can. The more you tell us, the closer the first number is to the final one.
We will read it properly and come back with the questions that actually affect your number, then a costed proposal. If it is urgent, call or WhatsApp +91 88620 92781 .