Ecommerce Website Development Company in India — Stores Built for How India Actually Buys
We build custom online stores for Indian brands: sub-second load times, UPI and cards through Razorpay or PayU, cash on delivery handled so it does not quietly eat your margin, GST-compliant invoicing, and Shiprocket or Delhivery wired in properly.
Fixed-price builds from ₹60,000, and the full source code is yours at handover.
Shopify vs custom: an honest comparison
A clear trade-off breakdown so you pick the right architecture for your scale.
Stay on Shopify if:
You are under roughly ₹50 lakh in annual revenue, a small team runs everything, your catalogue is straightforward, and no core flow is currently blocked. It is cheaper, faster to launch, and the right answer for most early brands. We will tell you this rather than sell you a custom build.
Go custom or headless when:
Page speed is measurably limiting conversion, you need content and commerce in one system, Shopify's constraints are blocking a flow you actually need, per-order platform fees have grown past what a build would cost, or you need deep integration with an ERP or an existing operations system.
The decision is usually about the second year, not the first.
| Requirement | Standard Shopify Theme | Custom Next.js Storefront |
|---|---|---|
| Page Speed & Performance | Average 40–60 on Mobile Lighthouse due to Liquid apps, scripts and theme bloat. | 90+ Lighthouse. Sub-second page transitions, instant pre-rendering on edge CDN. |
| Code & Platform Ownership | Rented ecosystem. Bound to Shopify theme licensing and hosting infrastructure. | 100% full code ownership. Self-hosted or serverless on your own cloud with zero lock-in. |
| COD & RTO Controls | Requires multiple 3rd party plugins; limited custom checkout rules on standard plans. | Built directly into checkout: partial advance token, OTP verify, live courier API pincode check. |
| ERP & Accounting Sync | Dependent on paid app connectors and generic sync webhooks. | Direct bi-directional integration with Tally Prime, Zoho Inventory, SAP, Oracle. |
| Platform Fees & Plugin Stacks | Monthly plan + 0.5–2% transaction fee (non-Shopify Payments) + monthly app subscriptions. | Zero platform tax. Pay only standard payment gateway rates (Razorpay/PayU). |
What a complete store includes
Six interconnected engineering systems required for high-volume commerce in India.
Product pages that rank
Product schema, real specifications, variant handling, image optimisation, and page speed that survives a large catalogue.
Checkout that converts
Minimal steps, UPI as a first-class option rather than an afterthought, guest checkout, saved addresses, and COD logic covered in section 5.
Inventory that stays accurate
Real-time stock, low-stock handling, and sync with Zoho Inventory, Tally Prime, SAP or Oracle where you already run one.
An admin panel your team uses
Built around how your operations actually work, not a generic CRUD interface someone has to be trained around.
Shipping integration
Shiprocket, Delhivery, Ekart and Blue Dart. Rate calculation at checkout, label generation, tracking pages your customer can use instead of emailing you.
SEO architecture
Category and filter URLs that do not create duplicate content, pagination handled correctly, breadcrumb and FAQ schema, and a sitemap that keeps up with your catalogue.
Cash on delivery, and the returns that eat your margin
Cash on delivery is not a payment option you toggle on. It is a business model decision with consequences that show up in your P&L three weeks later.
How RTO costs you
An order that is placed, picked, packed, shipped and then refused at the door costs you forward shipping, return shipping, handling, and the working capital tied up for the round trip. The product comes back, sometimes damaged, and nothing was sold. Prepaid orders effectively never do this. COD orders do it often enough to decide whether a category is profitable.
What can be built in to reduce it:
Partial prepay on COD.
Collect a small advance — a token amount at checkout — on cash-on-delivery orders. Someone who has paid something turns up. This is a checkout flow, and it is the single highest-leverage thing most Indian stores are not doing.
Address quality at the point of entry.
Pincode validation, serviceability checks against your courier's API before the order is accepted, and format validation that catches incomplete addresses. A large share of failed deliveries are addresses that were never deliverable.
Phone verification for COD.
OTP on cash-on-delivery orders above a threshold. It costs a small amount of friction and removes the casual and fraudulent orders.
COD limits by value, category and pincode.
High-value orders prepaid only. Historically poor pincodes prepaid only. Configurable in the admin panel so your operations team can adjust from data rather than filing a ticket.
Prepaid incentives at checkout.
A discount or free shipping on prepaid, presented at the moment of choice. Often cheaper than absorbing the RTO.
NDR handling.
When a delivery attempt fails, the customer needs contacting before the courier gives up. Automated notification with a reschedule link recovers orders that would otherwise return.
RTO reporting in your admin.
RTO rate by category, by pincode, by order value, by courier. You cannot manage what you are not measuring, and most store admins do not surface it at all.
GST, invoicing and compliance for Indian stores
An Indian store is a tax document generator as much as a shop. Getting this wrong is not a design problem, it is an audit problem.
GST-compliant invoicing.
Every order needs an invoice carrying your GSTIN, the buyer's GSTIN where they provide one, HSN codes per line item, the correct tax split, and a compliant invoice number series. Built into order processing, not bolted on by exporting to a spreadsheet at month end.
CGST, SGST and IGST split correctly.
Intra-state orders split into CGST and SGST; inter-state orders carry IGST. This is determined by place of supply and it has to be computed per order, not configured once and forgotten.
HSN codes per product.
Different products carry different GST rates. The rate lives on the product record, applies at time of transaction, and is retained — so a return processed next quarter uses the rate that applied at purchase.
Mandatory registration for online sellers.
Under Section 24(ix), e-commerce sellers must register for GST regardless of turnover — the ₹20 lakh and ₹40 lakh thresholds do not apply, and the composition scheme is unavailable to platform sellers. Worth knowing before you launch, and a question we will ask early.
If you are building a marketplace, TCS applies to you.
E-commerce operators must collect Tax Collected at Source on the net value of taxable supplies made through the platform by registered sellers — currently 0.5% (0.25% CGST + 0.25% SGST intra-state, 0.5% IGST inter-state), reduced from 1% in July 2024. It is reported monthly in GSTR-8, due by the 10th of the following month, with late filing penalties of ₹200 a day capped at ₹5,000.
That means a marketplace build needs seller-wise TCS computation, the data structure to produce GSTR-8, and settlement reporting that accounts for TCS withheld. We built this for Online Planet .
We are not tax advisers. We build to the requirements your CA sets and document what we did. For an opinion on your specific obligations, ask your accountant — and verify current rates before launch, because they change.
Ecommerce website development cost in India
What drives the price of a store, in rough order of impact:
Catalogue complexity.
Fifty simple products is a different build from five thousand with variants, configurable options and specification tables.
Custom versus platform.
A Shopify theme customisation, a headless Shopify storefront and a fully custom build are three different products at three price points.
Integrations.
Each ERP, accounting system, or third-party tool is real engineering. Tally sync is not the same effort as a payment gateway.
Multi-vendor.
A marketplace with independent sellers, split payments, seller onboarding and TCS handling is several times the work of a single-seller store.
Content readiness.
Product photography, descriptions and specifications — if you are supplying them, the build moves faster and costs less.
Ongoing costs to budget separately:
Hosting (₹5,000–₹30,000/year), payment gateway fees (2–3% per transaction, permanently), shipping aggregator fees, and maintenance.
Our ecommerce pricing
Transparent fixed-price tiers with complete code ownership and zero vendor lock-in.
Catalogue store
Up to ~200 products, single payment gateway, one shipping integration, standard checkout, admin panel, GST invoicing.
Full-featured store
Large catalogue with variants, multiple gateways, COD with partial prepay and RTO controls, multiple shipping partners, ERP integration, customer accounts, returns flow, analytics.
Marketplace
Multi-vendor: seller onboarding, split payments, per-seller inventory, TCS computation and GSTR-8 data, settlement reporting, seller dashboards.
Fixed price. Full source code transferred at handover.
Stores we've built
Real commercial platforms handling live transactions, multi-carrier logistics, and vendor settlements.
Nature Medica
Ayurvedic e-commerce with three shipping providers behind one checkout.
Online Planet
Multi-vendor marketplace with vendor onboarding, split payments and inventory across independent sellers.
Unigold
Agri-inputs store reaching farmers across regions, where the store had to work on poor connections and low-end devices.
What we don't do
Clear boundaries protect your budget and ensure we only take on work we excel at.
Shopify theme tweaks as a standalone service.
If you need small changes to an existing theme, a Shopify specialist is cheaper. See Shopify development for the work we do take on.
Amazon and Flipkart listing management.
Different discipline entirely.
Performance marketing.
We build conversion tracking properly. We do not run your ads.
Migrations that should not happen.
If you are on Shopify, it is working, and the numbers do not justify a rebuild — we will say so.
Questions from store owners
Direct answers on platforms, Indian payment and logistics integration, pricing, GST compliance, and code ownership.
Shopify if you are under roughly ₹50 lakh annual revenue with a small team and a straightforward catalogue. Custom or headless when speed is measurably limiting conversion, platform constraints are blocking a flow you need, or per-order fees have grown past what a build would cost. We will tell you which applies rather than defaulting to the more expensive answer.
Ready to sell online?
Tell us what you sell, roughly how many products, and where you are now. You will get a fixed-price range and an honest view on whether you need a custom build or should stay where you are.