eCommerce Website Development in Mumbai
An eCommerce website in Mumbai costs ₹1,20,000 – ₹3,50,000 to build and takes 5–8 weeks. The platform decision comes down to one thing: WooCommerce if you need control over cost, catalogue structure and SEO; Shopify if you would rather pay ₹1,900 – ₹7,500 a month plus a card fee and never think about servers again.
Whichever you pick, the parts that actually decide whether the store makes money are the same — a working Indian payment gateway, GST set up correctly at the tax-class level, a shipping aggregator connected to real couriers, and category pages built to rank. This page covers all four, plus the running costs nobody quotes you upfront.
Key takeaways
- Build cost ₹1,20,000 – ₹3,50,000 for 10–25+ pages including catalogue setup, gateway, shipping and GST configuration. Under about ₹80,000 you are getting a theme demo with your logo on it.
- Running cost is the number people miss: ₹28,000 – ₹1,10,000 a year for a WooCommerce store once hosting, gateway fees, SMS/WhatsApp and a care plan are added up.
- Gateway fees are 2% on UPI and cards for most Indian gateways, and UPI is where the majority of Indian D2C orders now land. On thin margins that 2% matters more than the build price.
- GST goes on tax classes, not on a single sitewide rate — 5% textiles and 18% electronics cannot share one setting, and getting this wrong creates invoice problems you will be fixing for months.
- COD is still a majority channel in many categories and it needs an RTO plan, not just a checkbox at checkout.
On this page
- What an eCommerce site costs
- WooCommerce vs Shopify vs the rest
- Indian payment gateways compared
- GST and tax setup
- Shipping, COD and RTO
- eCommerce SEO
- Speed and Core Web Vitals
- What we build in
- Real running costs
- Process and timeline
- Mistakes that cost Mumbai sellers money
- Frequently asked questions
What an eCommerce site costs
| Store type | Scope | Build cost (ex-GST) | Timeline |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter store | Up to 50 SKUs, simple products, one gateway, one shipping method, standard theme customised | ₹1,20,000 – ₹1,60,000 | 5–6 weeks |
| Standard D2C store | 50–300 SKUs, variations, custom design, reviews, coupons, abandoned-cart recovery, shipping aggregator | ₹1,60,000 – ₹2,40,000 | 6–7 weeks |
| Large or B2B store | 300+ SKUs, tiered or login-only pricing, bulk ordering, GST-compliant B2B invoicing, ERP or Tally sync | ₹2,40,000 – ₹3,50,000+ | 8–12 weeks |
| Catalogue-plus-enquiry | Products browsable, no online payment — common for wholesalers and industrial suppliers | ₹60,000 – ₹1,00,000 | 3–4 weeks |
| Adding a store to an existing site | WooCommerce layered onto a working WordPress site | ₹70,000 – ₹1,50,000 | 3–5 weeks |
| Store care plan | Updates on staging, backups, monitoring, small edits | ₹3,000 – ₹6,000 / month | ongoing |
Excludes GST, hosting, domain and any paid app or plugin licences. Product photography and copywriting for hundreds of SKUs are separate — they are usually the largest hidden line item in a store project, and a realistic figure is ₹150 – ₹600 per SKU for photography depending on the product. Our general price ladder for non-store projects is on the website design cost in Mumbai page.
Why “eCommerce website for ₹25,000” quotes exist. They are a stock theme installed with demo content replaced, no gateway testing, no tax classes, no shipping integration, no category-page SEO and no performance work. The store technically loads. Then the first live order fails because the gateway was left in test mode, or the invoice shows the wrong GST rate, or the courier integration was never connected and someone is copy-pasting addresses into a portal by hand. Every one of those is cheaper to build correctly than to fix after you have customers.
WooCommerce vs Shopify vs the rest
| WooCommerce | Shopify | Shiprocket / Dukaan style | Custom (Laravel, Next.js) | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Build cost | ₹1,20,000 – ₹3,50,000 | ₹90,000 – ₹2,50,000 | ₹0 – ₹25,000 setup | ₹5,00,000+ |
| Platform fee | None — you pay hosting | ₹1,900 – ₹7,500 / month typical plans | Free to a few hundred a month | None |
| Hosting | ₹8,000 – ₹40,000 / year, yours to manage | Included | Included | ₹20,000+ / year |
| Catalogue control | Total — any attribute, any taxonomy, any URL | Good, but collection and URL structure is constrained | Basic | Total |
| SEO control | Best of these — full control of URLs, schema, content depth | Good; forced /collections/ and /products/ paths |
Weak | Total, but you build it all |
| Indian gateways | All of them, official plugins | Razorpay, PayU, Cashfree and Shopify Payments where available | Built in | Direct API work |
| GST invoicing | Plugin or custom; fully controllable | App required for proper GST invoices | Basic | Build it |
| Who maintains it | You or your agency | Shopify | Platform | Your developers, forever |
| Right for | Growing catalogues, content-and-SEO-led growth, cost control at scale | Fast launch, ads-led growth, small team with no technical staff | Testing an idea, tiny catalogues | Genuinely unusual business logic or very high volume |
How to actually decide
Pick WooCommerce if…
Your catalogue will grow past a few hundred SKUs, you want organic search to be a real acquisition channel, you need custom attributes or B2B pricing, or you want no per-month platform fee eating into margin as volume rises.
Pick Shopify if…
You want to be live fast, your growth plan is paid ads plus marketplaces, you have nobody in-house to own updates and backups, and a predictable monthly fee is easier for you than managing hosting.
Pick a catalogue-plus-enquiry site if…
You are a wholesaler, distributor or industrial supplier where price depends on quantity and relationship. Forcing a checkout onto a B2B business usually reduces enquiries.
Go custom only if…
Your business logic genuinely does not fit either platform — complex configurators, unusual subscription mechanics, deep ERP coupling — and you have budget for permanent developer capacity.
We build on both WooCommerce and Shopify and we do not have a commission reason to push either. If you are undecided, the deciding question is usually not technical: it is whether you want an asset you own outright and maintain, or a service you rent and never maintain.
Indian payment gateways compared
Indicative standard pricing for Indian businesses. Rates are negotiable at volume, and every gateway publishes current pricing on its own site — verify before you commit, since these change.
| Gateway | Typical rate | Setup | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Razorpay | ~2% on UPI, cards and netbanking | Nil to low | The most common choice for Indian D2C. Good WooCommerce and Shopify plugins, clean dashboard, fast onboarding. |
| PayU | ~2% | Nil to low | Long-established, strong on netbanking coverage, widely used by larger sellers. |
| Cashfree | ~1.75% – 2% | Nil to low | Strong payouts and vendor-settlement features; useful for marketplaces and multi-seller models. |
| CCAvenue | ~2% | Sometimes an annual fee | The oldest Indian option, very wide bank coverage. Checkout experience is dated compared to the others. |
| Instamojo | ~2% – 5% depending on plan | Nil | Fine for very small volumes and digital products; expensive as a primary gateway at scale. |
| Stripe / PayPal | Higher, plus FX | Nil | Only relevant if you sell internationally. Keep an Indian gateway as primary for domestic orders. |
What has to be configured, not just installed
- UPI as a first-class option, not buried behind “other methods”. A large share of Indian orders pay by UPI and hiding it costs conversions.
- Webhooks so an order marks as paid even if the customer closes the browser on the success page. Missing webhooks is the single most common cause of “paid but shows pending”.
- Test mode to live mode verified with one real ₹1 transaction before launch, then refunded.
- Refund flow tested from inside your admin, so your team never has to log into the gateway dashboard to reverse an order.
- RBI card-tokenisation rules handled by the gateway — confirm your gateway’s saved-card behaviour rather than assuming.
- Failure recovery: a failed payment should leave the cart intact and trigger a retry email or WhatsApp, not dump the customer on a dead end.
Get a fixed quote for your store
Tell us your SKU count, whether you need COD, and your GST rates. You get a written scope with platform recommendation and a fixed price.
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GST and tax setup
This is where store builds most often go wrong, because it looks like a settings screen and is actually an accounting decision.
| What has to be right | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Tax classes per product category | A store selling both 5% textiles and 18% accessories cannot use one sitewide rate. Rates attach to product classes, and every SKU has to be assigned to the right one. |
| Prices inclusive or exclusive, decided once | Indian retail customers expect the displayed price to be what they pay. B2B buyers expect tax shown separately. Mixing the two produces invoices that do not reconcile. |
| CGST/SGST vs IGST by destination | Maharashtra-to-Maharashtra orders split into CGST and SGST; interstate orders are IGST. The store must decide this from the shipping state automatically. |
| HSN codes on products | Required on compliant invoices. Storing them per product at build time is trivial; adding them to 400 SKUs later is not. |
| GSTIN capture at checkout | B2B buyers need their GSTIN on the invoice to claim input credit. If your store cannot capture it, you will lose business customers. |
| Sequential invoice numbering | Invoice series must be continuous and non-repeating across a financial year. Plugin defaults are not always compliant. |
| Shipping charge taxability | Shipping is generally taxed at the rate of the goods being shipped. Getting this wrong understates or overstates output tax on every single order. |
| Export or zero-rated supply | If you ship outside India, those orders need separate treatment rather than the domestic rate. |
We are not your accountant, and we say so. We configure the store to the rates and treatment your CA confirms. What we will not do is guess your HSN codes or decide your tax treatment for you, because the person who signs the return has to own that. What we will do is put the configuration in front of your CA before launch so it gets checked once, cheaply, rather than discovered in a quarterly filing.
Shipping, COD and RTO
Mumbai sellers have an advantage here — you are inside one of India’s densest logistics networks, with pickup availability that sellers in smaller cities do not get. Use it properly.
Shipping aggregators
Aggregators like Shiprocket, Delhivery, iThink Logistics, Nimbuspost and Shipway connect one integration to many couriers. The practical benefits are automatic AWB generation, label printing, courier selection by pincode serviceability, and tracking pushed back to the customer without your team touching a portal. For most stores this is worth more than negotiating directly with a single courier.
Rate logic
Flat rate, weight slabs, zone-based, or live aggregator rates at checkout. Live rates are honest but slow the checkout; weight slabs with a free-shipping threshold usually convert better.
Free shipping threshold
Set it just above your average order value and it lifts AOV. Set it at ₹499 when your AOV is ₹1,200 and you have simply given away margin.
Pincode serviceability
Check serviceability before the customer completes checkout, not after. Nothing annoys a buyer more than a cancellation email for an address you never could deliver to.
Tracking and notifications
Order confirmation, dispatch with AWB, out-for-delivery and delivered — over email plus WhatsApp or SMS. This one change cuts “where is my order” support volume dramatically.
Cash on delivery, honestly
COD remains a large share of Indian orders in fashion, home and general merchandise. It also carries return-to-origin risk: the order is shipped, refused or undelivered, and comes back at your cost with the product possibly unsellable. Sensible controls:
- A COD fee of ₹40 – ₹100, which both covers handling and nudges buyers toward prepaid.
- A prepaid discount — often more effective than a COD penalty because it reads as a reward.
- An order-confirmation step for COD orders above a threshold: one WhatsApp or call before dispatch removes a meaningful share of RTO.
- COD limits by pincode or order value, tightened for areas where your own data shows high refusal.
- Address quality checks at checkout — a mandatory 10-digit mobile and a pincode validated against the serviceability list.
eCommerce SEO
Most Indian store owners spend on ads from day one and treat search as something to look at later. That is backwards: category pages are the highest-intent, lowest-cost traffic a store can own, and they have to be built into the structure rather than bolted on.
| Element | What we do at build time |
|---|---|
| Category pages as landing pages | Each category gets a real H1, 200–400 words of genuinely useful intro copy above or below the grid, and internal links to related categories. These are what rank for “buy X online India” style queries. |
| URL structure | Short, stable, lowercase, no dates or IDs. Decided once, before any product is published, because changing it later means hundreds of redirects. |
| Product schema | Product with Offer, price, currency and availability, so listings can show price and stock status. Ratings only if you have real collected reviews on the page. |
| Faceted navigation control | Filter combinations create near-infinite URLs. We decide which are indexable and canonical-tag or block the rest, so crawl budget goes to pages that can rank. |
| Out-of-stock handling | Keep the URL, show alternatives, mark availability in schema. Deleting the page throws away every link and ranking it earned. |
| Product titles and descriptions | Unique per SKU. Manufacturer boilerplate pasted across 300 products is the most common reason a store’s product pages never rank. |
| Image optimisation | WebP, correct dimensions, descriptive alt text, lazy loading below the fold. Product photos are usually 70%+ of a store’s page weight. |
| Search Console and GA4 | Both connected at launch with eCommerce events — view item, add to cart, begin checkout, purchase — so you can see where the funnel leaks from week one. |
Speed and Core Web Vitals
A store is the hardest kind of site to keep fast, because product images, review widgets, chat, tracking pixels and cart scripts all fight for the same milliseconds. What works:
- Hosting sized for a store, not shared hosting bought for a brochure site. WooCommerce is database-heavy at checkout and shared plans throttle exactly when you least want it.
- Page caching plus object caching, with cart, checkout and account pages correctly excluded.
- A CDN, which for an India-first store mainly matters for image delivery.
- Ruthless plugin discipline. Every extra plugin on a store is a query, an asset and a security surface. We routinely see stores with 40+ plugins where 15 would do.
- Images converted to WebP and served at display size, not 3000px originals scaled down in the browser.
- Deferred third-party scripts — chat, heatmaps and remarketing pixels loaded after interaction rather than blocking first render.
- A real mobile test, on a mid-range Android on 4G, not on your own laptop over office broadband.
What we build in
Catalogue
Category and attribute structure, simple and variable products, stock management, bulk import from your spreadsheet, and a documented way for your team to add products.
Checkout
Short single-page flow, guest checkout, saved addresses, coupons, order notes, and mobile-number-first form design suited to Indian buyers.
Payments
Gateway integrated, webhooks verified, refunds tested from admin, UPI prominent, ₹1 live transaction before launch.
Tax and invoicing
Tax classes per category, HSN fields, GSTIN capture, CGST/SGST/IGST by destination, PDF invoice on order.
Shipping
Aggregator connected, rate rules configured, pincode serviceability, AWB and tracking pushed to the customer automatically.
Recovery and retention
Abandoned-cart email or WhatsApp sequence, back-in-stock alerts, post-purchase review request.
Trust
Shipping, returns and refund policy pages written properly, contact details visible, real photographs, review collection set up.
Measurement
GA4 eCommerce events, Search Console, Meta pixel and Google Ads conversion tags, all validated with test orders.
Handover
Admin credentials, full backup, and a screen-recorded walkthrough covering adding a product, processing an order and issuing a refund.
Real running costs
Indicative annual figures for a small-to-mid WooCommerce store doing modest volume. The point of this table is that the build price is not the whole decision.
| Item | Yearly range | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting | ₹8,000 – ₹40,000 | Store-grade only. Do not run a store on ₹200-a-month shared hosting. |
| Domain | ₹800 – ₹1,200 | Registered in your name. |
| Plugin or app licences | ₹0 – ₹35,000 | Depends on how much you buy versus build. We keep this low deliberately. |
| Shopify plan (if Shopify) | ₹23,000 – ₹90,000 | Replaces hosting; add paid apps on top. |
| Gateway fees | ~2% of revenue | The largest cost at any real volume. ₹20 lakh of sales is roughly ₹40,000. |
| Shipping | Per shipment | Varies by weight and zone; RTO on COD is the number to watch. |
| Transactional SMS / WhatsApp | ₹3,000 – ₹20,000 | Per-message pricing; scales with order volume. |
| Care plan / AMC | ₹36,000 – ₹72,000 | ₹3,000 – ₹6,000 a month. Optional in name only for a store. |
| Realistic total, excluding gateway and shipping | ₹28,000 – ₹1,10,000 a year | |
Process and timeline
| Week | Stage | What you need to supply |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Discovery, platform decision, written scope, category architecture | Product list, GST rates, whether COD is required, target markets |
| 2 | Design of home, category, product and checkout on staging | Logo, brand assets, feedback on the staging link |
| 3–4 | Build, catalogue import, tax classes, gateway and shipping integration | Product data in a clean spreadsheet, images, gateway account access |
| 5 | Policy pages, emails, abandoned cart, analytics and pixels | Approved shipping and returns policy |
| 6 | QA: test orders across payment methods, real-device checks, ₹1 live transaction, speed pass, CA review of tax setup | Final sign-off |
| 7 | Launch, redirects if replacing a site, sitemap submitted, monitoring on | DNS access |
| 8+ | Handover, training walkthrough, 30 days of support | Nothing |
Larger catalogues and ERP integrations extend this. The variable that moves a store timeline most is never development speed — it is how quickly clean product data and photographs arrive.
Mistakes that cost Mumbai sellers money
- Launching with 300 SKUs of manufacturer copy. Duplicate descriptions across your own site and every competitor selling the same goods. Write unique copy for your top 50 sellers first, then work down.
- No abandoned-cart recovery. A significant share of carts are abandoned in every store ever measured. A two-message sequence over WhatsApp and email is among the cheapest revenue available.
- Ignoring COD economics until RTO has eaten a quarter’s margin.
- Deleting discontinued product pages, destroying accumulated rankings and links. Keep the URL, redirect to the nearest live product, or mark it out of stock with alternatives.
- Never testing checkout on a real phone on mobile data. Most Indian traffic is mobile; most checkout testing is done on desktop.
- Skipping GA4 eCommerce events, so you can see traffic but not where the funnel breaks. Then spending on ads blind.
- Letting the agency hold hosting and domain. On a store this is not just an inconvenience — it is your revenue held by a third party.
- Adding apps for every idea. Twenty apps at ₹800 a month each is ₹1.9 lakh a year and a store that loads in six seconds.
Frequently asked questions
How much does an eCommerce website cost in Mumbai?
₹1,20,000 to ₹3,50,000 for a properly built store, depending on catalogue size and integrations. A starter store of up to 50 SKUs is ₹1,20,000 – ₹1,60,000; a standard D2C store is ₹1,60,000 – ₹2,40,000; large or B2B builds run ₹2,40,000 upward. A catalogue-plus-enquiry site without online payment is ₹60,000 – ₹1,00,000.
How long does it take to build an online store?
Five to eight weeks for most stores, and eight to twelve for large catalogues or ERP integration. The realistic constraint is how fast clean product data and photographs arrive from your side, not development capacity.
WooCommerce or Shopify — which is better for an Indian store?
WooCommerce if you want full control of catalogue structure, URLs and SEO with no monthly platform fee, and you are willing to own hosting and maintenance. Shopify if you want to launch fast, grow through paid ads, and have no one in-house to manage updates. Both handle Indian gateways and GST; WooCommerce gives more control, Shopify removes more work.
Which payment gateway should I use?
Razorpay, PayU and Cashfree are the common choices at roughly 2% on UPI, cards and netbanking, with negotiable rates at volume. CCAvenue has the widest bank coverage but a dated checkout. Add Stripe or PayPal only if you sell internationally, and keep an Indian gateway as primary for domestic orders.
How is GST handled on an eCommerce website?
Through tax classes assigned per product category, not one sitewide rate — 5% textiles and 18% electronics need separate classes. The store must also split CGST/SGST for intrastate orders versus IGST for interstate, store HSN codes per product, capture buyer GSTIN at checkout for B2B orders, and issue sequentially numbered invoices. We configure to the treatment your CA confirms and put it in front of them before launch.
Can you integrate Shiprocket or Delhivery?
Yes. We integrate the major aggregators including Shiprocket, Delhivery, iThink Logistics, Nimbuspost and Shipway, with rate rules, pincode serviceability checks at checkout, automatic AWB generation and tracking notifications pushed to the customer.
Should I offer cash on delivery?
In most Indian consumer categories, yes — it is still a large share of orders. Manage the return-to-origin risk with a COD fee of ₹40 – ₹100 or a prepaid discount, a confirmation message before dispatch on higher-value COD orders, COD limits by pincode where your data shows high refusal, and a validated mobile number and pincode at checkout.
What does it cost to run an online store every year?
Roughly ₹28,000 to ₹1,10,000 a year excluding gateway fees and shipping — hosting ₹8,000 – ₹40,000, domain ₹800 – ₹1,200, plugin or app licences ₹0 – ₹35,000, transactional SMS or WhatsApp ₹3,000 – ₹20,000, and a care plan at ₹3,000 – ₹6,000 a month. Gateway fees at about 2% of revenue are usually the largest cost once volume builds.
Do I need product photography, and is it included?
You need it, and it is quoted separately because it scales with SKU count — budget roughly ₹150 – ₹600 per SKU depending on the product. Product photography is often the largest hidden line item in a store project, so plan it before the build starts rather than discovering it in week four.
Can you migrate my store from Shopify to WooCommerce, or the other way?
Yes. A migration covers products, variations, customers, order history, and — critically — a one-to-one redirect map from every old URL to its new equivalent so you keep the search rankings you already have. That redirect map is the deliverable that determines whether a migration is safe.
Will my store rank on Google?
Category pages built as real landing pages with unique intro copy, clean URLs, controlled faceted navigation and unique product descriptions can rank well — nobody can guarantee a position, and anyone who does is telling you something about themselves. What we guarantee is that the structure will not be the reason you cannot rank.
Do you build B2B or wholesale stores with tiered pricing?
Yes — login-only pricing, quantity-break tiers, minimum order quantities, GST-compliant B2B invoicing with GSTIN capture, and bulk order forms. For many wholesalers a catalogue-plus-enquiry site converts better than a checkout, and we will tell you if that is the case for you.
Can you connect the store to Tally or an ERP?
Usually yes, depending on what the ERP exposes. Some sync through an API, others through scheduled file exchange. We scope this specifically because the effort ranges from a few days to several weeks depending entirely on the ERP.
Who owns the store and the data?
You do, completely. Domain in your name, hosting account in your name, admin credentials handed over, full database and file backup, no licence you must keep paying to keep the store running. Ask every vendor this before you pay an advance.
Do you provide training for my team?
Yes — a screen-recorded walkthrough covering adding and editing products, processing and dispatching an order, issuing a refund, and running a coupon, plus 30 days of support after launch. The recording matters more than a live session because your next hire can watch it.
Are you based in Mumbai?
No. Amezing Tech is based in Satara with a presence in Pune, and we work with Mumbai and MMR sellers remotely — fixed written scope, live staging link, scheduled review calls and WhatsApp for daily contact. Not carrying Mumbai office overheads is part of why our store pricing is what it is.
What if I already have a website and just want to add a store?
Layering WooCommerce onto a working WordPress site is ₹70,000 – ₹1,50,000 over three to five weeks, depending on catalogue size and how well the existing theme handles shop templates. We audit the current site first and tell you honestly whether adding to it or rebuilding is the better economics over two years.
Do you offer maintenance after launch?
Yes, at ₹3,000 – ₹6,000 a month for a store: core, theme and plugin updates tested on staging before production, off-server backups, uptime and malware monitoring, and a monthly report. For a store this is not optional in practice — an unpatched checkout is a genuine liability.
Ready to price your store properly?
Send your SKU count, GST rates and whether you need COD. You get a platform recommendation and a fixed written quote — no discovery-call gatekeeping.
Related reading
- Website design services in Mumbai — the full service, process and coverage overview.
- Website design cost in Mumbai — the complete price ladder and first-year totals.
- WordPress website design in Mumbai — the platform WooCommerce runs on, done lean.
- Website redesign services in Mumbai — including SEO-safe store migrations.
- Website maintenance services in Mumbai — care plans for live stores.
- All our Mumbai resources — every guide and service page in one place.
