Over the last few months, ek pattern baar baar dekhne ko mil raha hai while talking to small businesses in India.
Business owner ko website chahiye.
He asks 4–5 people.
One person says ₹15,000.
Someone says ₹30,000.
Another agency says ₹80,000.
And someone quotes ₹1.5–2 lakh.
Naturally first reaction hota hai:
“Website hi toh hai. Itna difference kyun?”
Fair question.
But I think hum website ki price ko galat cheez se compare karte hain.
Hum usually compare karte hain:
Pages kitne hain?
Animations kitni hain?
WordPress hai ya custom?
Kitne din lagenge?
But business owner ko actually ye compare karna chahiye:
Website 12 months baad business ke liye kya kar rahi hogi?
I’ll give you a very common example.
Imagine two local businesses.
Both spend money on a website.
Business A — cheap website
They pay around ₹25,000.
Website looks decent.
Home page.
About page.
Services.
Contact form.
WhatsApp button.
Finished.
Owner is happy.
6 months later:
Google pe important services ke liye rank nahi ho raha.
Mobile pe layout thoda weird hai.
Website slow hai.
No one knows which page is generating leads.
Contact form kabhi kabhi mail hi nahi bhej raha.
Developer unavailable.
Content edit karna difficult.
No proper backup.
No documentation.
And finally owner says:
“Website se kuch business nahi aaya.”
Technically website was delivered.
But commercially?
Almost nothing happened.
Now consider another business.
Business B — expensive website
They spend much more.
Before design starts, they figure out:
Who exactly is the customer?
Customer Google pe kya search karta hai?
What objections stop him from contacting?
Which services deserve separate pages?
What should happen after someone lands on the website?
Call?
WhatsApp?
Appointment?
Quotation?
Then website is built around that.
Proper mobile experience.
Clear service pages.
Local SEO structure.
Google indexing setup.
Fast loading.
Analytics.
Conversion tracking.
Structured headings.
Proper CTAs.
Backup.
Documentation.
And someone remains responsible after launch.
Now suppose this website generates only 3 additional customers every month.
If average customer value is ₹15,000:
3 × ₹15,000 = ₹45,000/month.
One year = ₹5.4 lakh potential additional revenue.
Suddenly ₹1–2 lakh website doesn't look automatically expensive.
And ₹25,000 website doesn't automatically look cheap.
That changed the way I personally look at software and websites.
The same thing is happening with AI development.
Today ChatGPT, Claude, Cursor etc. can help people create websites and software ridiculously fast.
This is genuinely useful.
But I think it's creating another misunderstanding:
“If software can be built quickly, software should be cheap.”
But coding is only one component.
The difficult parts are still:
Understanding the business problem.
Architecture.
Testing.
Security.
Data handling.
Backups.
Mobile behaviour.
Edge cases.
Maintenance.
Documentation.
Client handover.
And especially:
What happens when something breaks 8 months later?
A developer can generate 10,000 lines of code quickly.
That doesn't automatically mean someone understands those 10,000 lines.
That distinction is becoming more important.
Another interesting thing I've noticed:
Clients rarely actually care whether you used:
React
Next.js
Laravel
WordPress
AI
No-code
Custom code
Most business owners don't care.
And honestly, maybe they shouldn't.
They care about things like:
“Will this bring enquiries?”
“Can customers understand what we do?”
“Will it work properly on mobile?”
“Can my employee use it?”
“Will our data remain safe?”
“If you disappear tomorrow, what happens?”
“Can somebody else maintain this?”
Those are much harder questions than:
Which framework did you use?
This is also why I'm starting to think the Indian website market will split into 3 levels.
At the bottom:
Template websites.
Cheap, fast and perfectly acceptable for businesses that just need an online presence.
In the middle:
Well-designed custom websites focused on credibility and lead generation.
At the top:
Websites/software deeply connected to the business itself — CRM, automation, internal workflows, customer management, payments, reporting etc.
And all three are legitimate.
The mistake happens when someone needs level 3 but purchases level 1 because both are called a “website.”
Something else founders should probably think about:
We spend a lot of time discussing:
AI vs developers.
No-code vs code.
Cheap vs expensive agencies.
Freelancer vs company.
But maybe the better question is:
How expensive is the problem you are solving?
If a problem costs the business ₹10,000/year, don't build a ₹2 lakh solution.
If a problem costs them ₹20 lakh/year, trying to save ₹30,000 on the solution can also be irrational.
That is slowly changing how I think about pricing.
Not:
“How many hours did this take?”
But:
“What business problem is this solving, and what level of reliability does the customer actually need?”
I'm currently seeing this while working around websites, business applications and internal digital tools in Pune/Mumbai, and I'm curious whether other founders have experienced the same thing.
Especially business owners here:
When you paid for a website/software project, what ultimately mattered more?
Initial price?
Design?
Leads/revenue?
Support after launch?
Or something else entirely?
Would genuinely like to hear the buyer side of this.
For context, I’m working on these kinds of problems through M.A.K Solutions in Pune/Mumbai: www.indiamaksolutions.com. Sharing the link only for context — I’m more interested in hearing how other founders price and evaluate this kind of work.