Shopify website cost in India (2026): every rupee, explained

If you ask five people what a Shopify website costs in India, you’ll get five different numbers. That’s because “cost” mixes up three separate things: what you pay Shopify, what you pay on every order, and what you pay someone to build it. Once you split them, the maths is simple.

This guide walks through each bucket with current INR prices from official sources, then puts them together into a worked example you can adapt to your own brand.

1. The Shopify plan (monthly or yearly)

Shopify’s India pricing page lists these plans (prices at the time of writing, before tax):

Plan	Paid monthly	Paid yearly (per month)	Extra fee on third-party gateway orders
Basic	₹1,994	₹1,499	2%
Grow	₹7,447	₹5,599	1%
Advanced	₹30,164	₹22,680	0.6%
Plus	from ₹1,75,000	—	0.2%

Shopify was also running an introductory offer when I checked: 3 days free, then ₹20/month for the first 3 months. Offers change, so check the page before you plan around it.

What most new Indian brands need: Basic. It includes unlimited products, the online store, discount codes, abandoned checkout recovery and marketing tools. Grow mainly adds staff accounts and a lower per-order fee, which starts to matter once your prepaid sales are large.

Over a year, Basic comes to about ₹17,988 if you pay yearly (₹1,499 × 12), or about ₹23,928 if you pay monthly (₹1,994 × 12), before tax.

2. The fees on every order

This is the part most quotes leave out.

Shopify’s third-party transaction fee

Shopify has its own payment system, Shopify Payments, but India isn’t on its list of supported countries. So Indian stores take online payments through a third-party gateway like Razorpay, PhonePe PG or Cashfree.

When you use a third-party gateway, Shopify charges a third-party transaction fee on top of the gateway’s own fee: 2% on Basic, 1% on Grow, 0.6% on Advanced. Shopify calculates it on the product price after discounts, plus tax and shipping.

The good news: cash on delivery (COD) orders don’t attract this fee. Shopify’s help page says transaction fees don’t apply to manual payment methods, and it lists COD and bank deposits as examples.

The payment gateway’s fee

Razorpay’s published India pricing is a 2% platform fee per successful domestic transaction (cards, UPI, netbanking, wallets), with 18% GST on that fee, and no setup or annual fee. Other gateways publish their own rates; compare them on their official pages.

Shipping and COD charges

Couriers and shipping aggregators like Shiprocket charge per shipment, by weight and distance, and usually add a charge for collecting COD. Rates depend on your plan and your parcels, so get a quote from Shiprocket’s pricing page or your courier with your actual box size and weight.

Also plan for returns to origin (RTO): when a COD customer refuses the parcel, you usually pay shipping both ways. That’s a business cost, not a website cost, but your store setup (COD limits, order confirmation) can help keep it down.

3. Apps, theme and GST invoices

• Theme. Shopify has free themes that work well. A paid theme from the Shopify Theme Store is a one-time purchase; the price is shown on each theme’s page. You don’t need one to launch.
• GST invoices. Shopify’s GST in India FAQ is blunt: “Shopify doesn’t create a GST-compliant bill.” You’ll need a GST invoicing app from the Shopify App Store or a local invoicing service. Some are free for small order volumes; others are paid monthly.
• Other apps. Reviews, WhatsApp chat, shipping integrations and so on. Many have free tiers. Add them when you need them, not on day one, because monthly app bills add up quietly.
• Domain. A .com or .in domain is a yearly cost from your domain registrar.

4. The build

This is the cost people usually mean when they search “Shopify website cost”. There are three routes:

Do it yourself. Your cost is your time. Shopify is built for this, and if you have a small catalogue and a free evening or ten, it’s a fair option. The parts that tend to trip people up are payment gateway activation, GST tax settings, shipping rules and getting the store to look like your brand rather than a demo.

Hire a freelancer or an agency. Prices in India vary a lot, because “a Shopify website” can mean anything from installing a theme to a fully designed store with custom features. When you compare quotes, compare what’s included (see the checklist below), not just the number.

What I charge, for reference. At The Webcrafters, a full store is ₹30,000 for full delivery, paid in milestones. Milestone 1 is a live store that can take orders within 24 hours, for everything in my control (payment gateway approval, like Razorpay’s, follows the gateway’s own timeline). The next milestones are agreed in writing upfront, and the last one is the full brand and styling. Changes after launch are ₹2,500 per day, with no retainer. Third-party costs like your Shopify plan, apps and gateway fees are paid by you, and I provide a GST invoice.

A worked example

Say you sell a ₹1,000 product (including tax and shipping) on Shopify Basic, with Razorpay as your gateway.

A prepaid order (UPI or card):

• Shopify third-party fee: 2% of ₹1,000 = ₹20
• Razorpay platform fee: 2% of ₹1,000 = ₹20
• GST on Razorpay’s fee: 18% of ₹20 = ₹3.60
• Total payment-related fees: about ₹43.60, or 4.4% of the order

A COD order:

• No Shopify third-party fee, no gateway fee
• But you pay the courier’s COD charge, and you carry the risk of RTO

Now the fixed costs for year one, on Basic paid yearly:

• Shopify plan: about ₹17,988 + tax
• Domain: your registrar’s yearly price
• Apps: ₹0 if you stick to free tiers at first
• Build: ₹0 (DIY) or your developer’s fee

Run your own numbers by swapping in your average order value and your expected split of prepaid vs COD. If your prepaid sales grow large, the drop from 2% (Basic) to 1% (Grow) can pay for the higher plan; the break-even depends on your volume, so work it out from the table above.

What to ask before you accept any quote

Whoever builds your store, ask these questions so you can compare like with like:

1. Is the payment gateway set up and tested with real payments, or just “installed”?
2. Who loads the products, and how many are included?
3. Are GST tax settings and a GST invoice app included?
4. Is shipping set up (rates, COD rules, a shipping app like Shiprocket if you need it)?
5. Which apps will I be paying for monthly, and what do they cost?
6. Are policy pages included? Gateways ask for them (more on this in my Razorpay setup guide).
7. Who owns the store account? It should be in your name, with you as the owner.
8. What does a change cost after launch?
9. When is the store actually able to take an order? Not “launched in 4 weeks”, but the date a customer can pay you.

Shopify or something else?

Shopify isn’t the only option. WooCommerce has no platform fee per order but needs hosting and upkeep, and a custom build makes sense for unusual product flows. I’ve compared them for Indian brands in Shopify vs WooCommerce in India. If you’re still at the very start, my checklist for starting an online store in India covers GST, payments and shipping in order.

The short version

• Platform: ₹1,499–₹1,994/month on Basic, before tax.
• Per order: about 4.4% on a prepaid order on Basic with Razorpay (2% Shopify + 2% gateway + GST on the gateway fee). No Shopify or gateway fee on COD, but courier COD charges and RTO risk.
• Extras: a GST invoice app, a domain, and any apps you choose.
• Build: your time, or a developer’s fee. Compare what’s included, and when you can take your first order.

If you’d like me to look at your plan and tell you what your store would actually cost to run, send me a message. It’s free, and you’ll hear back from me directly.