What an online store costs to build and to run

Ask what an online store costs and the honest answer starts with a question back: is this a shop, or is it software that happens to sell things? The two cost completely different amounts, and the same product catalogue can sit in either one.

The bands

₹30,000 to ₹1,00,000. Shopify or a similar hosted platform, set up properly — a theme adapted to how you actually sell, payments connected, and only the apps you genuinely need. Three to six weeks. For most businesses starting out, this is the right purchase, and there is no shame in it.

₹1,00,000 to ₹3,00,000. The same hosted platform with its operations actually connected — shipping worked out, GST invoices generated automatically, order updates going out on WhatsApp, so nobody is copying an order from the cart into a courier's portal by hand. Six to twelve weeks.

₹3,00,000 to ₹10,00,000. A custom build, or a store selling to businesses rather than consumers — bulk pricing, credit terms, a catalogue a standard cart was not designed to hold. Three to six months. This is software you now own, not a subscription, and it should be budgeted like software.

Above that. A commerce platform — marketplace-scale, or several brands sharing one back end. Scoped and budgeted in stages, by a team that stays rather than a project that ends.

The cost calculator will place a store in one of these bands from five questions, if that is quicker than reading the reasoning.

What actually moves the number

Not the product count, past a few hundred lines. Import tools handle a large catalogue without much extra design work.

Whether you stay on a hosted platform. This is the single biggest lever. Shopify and its equivalents already do checkout, tax, inventory and fraud protection correctly, for a monthly fee smaller than maintaining any of that yourself. The moment you move off one, you are paying for all of it again, as your own code.

What it has to connect to. Shipping and courier tracking, GST-compliant invoicing, WhatsApp order updates, a marketplace listing, an existing ERP. Each is its own small project, and each fails in its own way when the two sides disagree about a status or an address.

Who is buying. Consumer carts assume one price per product and payment on the spot. A B2B store — different prices per customer, credit terms, approval before an order ships — rarely fits a standard cart, which is what pushes a store into the custom band.

Whether the process it replaces has been agreed. If returns, exchanges and out-of-stock handling are decided differently depending on who is on shift, the first weeks of any build go into settling that, not writing code.

A hosted platform is not the cheap option because it is smaller. It is cheaper because someone else is maintaining the parts you would otherwise own.

The costs after launch

Platform and apps, roughly ₹2,000 to ₹10,000 a month on a hosted store, more on a custom one once you count hosting and the security work Shopify was doing for you.

Payment gateway fees, a small percentage of every order, whichever platform you choose.

Keeping the catalogue honest. Stock, prices and product photos drift out of date faster than anyone plans for, and a store showing something that is not actually available costs more in refunds and reviews than it saved in effort.

What we would say

Most businesses asking this question do not need a custom store. Shopify or a similar platform covers the large majority of what a small or growing business sells, for a fraction of the cost and none of the maintenance. Build custom when the way you sell genuinely does not fit a cart — not because a subscription feels like renting.

If you are choosing between the two, that decision is worth making properly before either quote arrives. The platform question decides more of the final cost than anything on this list.