Website design under ₹3,000 in Kolkata — what you actually get

You can. Genuinely.

There are people in Kolkata — and in Delhi, Lucknow and Bangalore, advertising into Kolkata — who will build you a website for ₹2,999, and some of them go down to ₹999. They are not all crooks, and this post is not going to pretend they are.

What almost none of them put in the advertisement is the second year. That is where the ₹3,000 website stops being a ₹3,000 website, and it is worth understanding the mechanism before you pay anybody anything — including me.

What ₹2,999 actually buys

Look at the packages sold at this price across India and they converge on roughly the same thing:

• Three pages. Usually Home, Services, Contact.
• A template, picked from a library, with your logo and colours dropped in.
• Domain and hosting included for the first year.
• Delivery in 48 hours to three days.
• A contact form, and social icons pointing at your Facebook and Instagram.

That is a real product. If what you need is a link to put on a visiting card so you look like a going concern, it does the job, and paying ₹15,000 for it would be daft.

The trouble starts when you need it to do anything else.

The four things that are not in the advertisement

Year one is the cheap year, on purpose

Domain and hosting are bundled in at first-year promotional rates, and those are not the rates you renew at.

A .in domain is currently sold for as little as ₹179 to ₹599 for the first year. It renews at roughly ₹800 to ₹999 a year, plus 18% GST. Shared hosting is advertised from ₹99 a month and renews at ₹299 to ₹799 a month — ₹3,588 to ₹9,588 a year.

So your ₹2,999 covers year one. From year two you are looking at somewhere between ₹4,500 and ₹10,500 a year, indefinitely, to keep the same three pages online.

Nobody is exactly hiding this. It is simply not mentioned, and most shop owners have never been told to ask.

Check whose name the domain is in

This is the one that costs people real money later.

Whoever is listed in the Organization field on the domain registration is the owner of record — regardless of what your invoice or your WhatsApp conversation says. If your developer registered yourshop.in with their own agency in that field, they own it. Not you.

Most of the time this never matters, because most of the time the relationship stays friendly. When it does matter, it is bad. For a .in domain your route is an INDRP arbitration through NIXI, which costs time and money — and even when you win, the remedy is the domain being handed back. There is no compensation for the months your site was down or your email stopped working.

Ask before you pay: whose name goes on the domain? Then ask them to send you the registrar login.

The template was not built for a ₹9,000 phone

Your customer is on a mid-range Android on patchy mobile data, somewhere between Gariahat and a metro platform. That is the actual test.

Library templates are usually built to look good in a demo on a laptop. They arrive carrying sliders, icon fonts, three or four web fonts and a stack of scripts nobody removed. On a good connection you never notice. On the connection your customer actually has, the page sits blank long enough for them to go back to the search results and tap the next shop down.

You do not have to take my word for this. Run any published site through a free speed tool and read the mobile number, not the desktop one.

Changing anything is a new negotiation

At ₹2,999 there is no budget for a support relationship, and that is not a criticism — the price simply does not contain one. So when you want to change your prices, add four photographs or update your Puja hours, you are raising a new job with somebody whose margin on you has already been spent.

Sometimes it is ₹500 and done that afternoon. Sometimes the messages stop being answered. You are not in a strong position either way, particularly if the domain point above also applies to you.

The three-year arithmetic, done in the open

Here is the honest version, and it does not say what you might expect.

The ₹2,999 route, over three years:

	Cheapest case	Dearest case
Year 1 — build, domain, hosting	₹2,999	₹2,999
Year 2 — domain + hosting renewal	₹4,587	₹10,587
Year 3 — domain + hosting renewal	₹4,587	₹10,587
Three-year total	₹12,173	₹24,173

Our route, over three years, at the offer price below:

Year 1 — build, paid once	₹11,999
Year 2 — domain + hosting, in your name	~₹3,000
Year 3 — domain + hosting, in your name	~₹3,000
Three-year total	~₹17,999

Now read that properly, because I am not going to pretend it says something it does not.

At the cheapest end, the ₹3,000 website is genuinely cheaper over three years. ₹12,173 against ₹17,999. If your host renews at the bottom of the range and you never need a change, you will have spent about ₹6,000 less. That is real, and I am not going to argue it away.

What the table does say is this: the gap is nothing like the gap on the sticker. ₹2,999 against ₹14,999 looks like a five-fold difference. Over three years it is closer to one-and-a-half — and on the cheaper path there is a decent chance the domain is not in your name.

So the question is not "which is cheaper". It is: is the difference worth about ₹2,000 a year to you? For plenty of shops the honest answer is no. Which brings us to the part most agencies leave out.

When ₹3,000 is the right call

Take the cheap option, with my blessing, if:

• You need a link on a card and nothing more. No orders, no enquiries, just proof you exist.
• Your customers already find you on Google Maps or WhatsApp, and the website is a formality.
• You are testing an idea and might not be doing this in a year.
• Money is genuinely tight. A ₹2,999 site online this week beats a ₹14,999 site you keep postponing.

And if that is you, spend ₹0 with anybody first and go and claim your Google Business Profile. For a shop with a physical address in Kolkata, a properly verified listing with real photographs will bring you more customers than a three-page website will. It is free to do yourself, and I would rather say so than sell you the wrong thing.

Seven questions to ask anyone quoting under ₹5,000

Copy these into WhatsApp and send them before you pay a deposit. The answers tell you more than the price does.

1. Whose name goes in the Organization field on the domain? ("Mine" is the only right answer.)
2. What is the renewal cost in year two, in rupees, for domain and hosting?
3. Will you send me the registrar and hosting logins when the site is live?
4. Is this a template? Which one? Nothing wrong with a template — you just want to know.
5. What does a text change cost after handover, and how fast?
6. Can you show me a live site you built, so I can test it on my own phone on mobile data?
7. Will the link show a proper preview card when a customer forwards it on WhatsApp?

A developer worth ₹2,999 answers all seven without getting defensive. One who dodges question 1 or 2 is telling you exactly what the next three years look like.

The offer: ₹3,000 off, because you came from this post

You arrived here with about ₹3,000 in mind. So here is the straightforward version.

Take that ₹3,000 off my price. The website build is normally ₹14,999, published on the website design page where anyone can check it. Mention this post and it is ₹11,999, one-off.

What that gets you, unchanged from the standard package:

• Up to five pages, built mobile-first for a mid-range phone on mobile data
• Domain and hosting registered in your name on day one — you get the logins, and you can walk away with everything
• WhatsApp button and a contact form that reaches your inbox
• Search basics: page titles, descriptions, sitemap, structured data
• A proper preview card when a customer forwards your link
• Live in seven working days from when I have your content
• No monthly fee to me, ever

And the parts I am not going to bury in small print: domain and hosting renew yearly, directly to the registrar and host in your name, currently a few thousand rupees a year in total. You get the figures before you commit. If you later want a change you cannot make yourself, it is quoted as a small separate job — not a retainer you stop noticing.

Offer code: KOL3000. Valid until 31 October 2026. One per business. GST invoice, as with everything here.

→ Claim ₹3,000 off on WhatsApp

Not ready to spend anything? That is a fine answer, and the better first move anyway. Run the free scan — under a minute, tells you in writing what is actually broken, and you keep the findings whether or not you ever speak to me. Sometimes it comes back saying you do not need a website yet. I would rather tell you that.

The things people actually ask

Is ₹14,999 expensive for Kolkata?

No — it sits in the normal band. Published guides put a basic five-to-seven page business website in Kolkata at roughly ₹8,000 to ₹25,000, and a professional ten-to-fifteen page site at ₹25,000 to ₹60,000. I am in the lower half of the ordinary range, not below it. Anyone claiming to be dramatically cheaper than that band is usually recovering the difference somewhere you have not looked yet.

Can you match ₹2,999?

No, and I would be lying if I said I could deliver what is on this page at that price. What I can do is take ₹3,000 off, publish exactly what is included, and put the domain in your name. If ₹11,999 is still more than this is worth to you right now, take the seven questions above to a cheaper developer and use them properly. That is a genuinely good outcome.

I already paid someone ₹3,000 and I am not happy. What now?

Run the free scan first. Sometimes an existing site needs three fixes rather than a rebuild, and I would rather tell you that and take nothing. Either way, go and check whose name is on the domain today — sort that out while everyone is still on speaking terms.

Do I have to decide now?

No. The offer runs to 31 October 2026 and the price is on the page either way. Nobody here will ring you repeatedly — if you do not reply, that is your answer and I leave it there.