What a website really costs in Jalgaon, and what the cheap ones leave out.

Ask five people in Jalgaon what a website costs and you will hear five numbers, anywhere from ₹3,000 to a lakh. They are all real. They are just not prices for the same thing.

I build websites for a living, so this is how I would think about it if I were buying one for a shop, a unit in MIDC or a coaching class.

The ₹5,000 website

Online marketplaces are full of website packages around this price. One IndiaMART listing offers website design and development for ₹4,999 a pack, without saying what the pack contains. At that price you are almost always getting a ready-made template with your name and photos dropped in.

That can be fine. If you just need something to come up when people search your business name, a template does the job. The trouble starts when you expect it to bring in enquiries from people who have never heard of you. Here is what is usually missing:

• Your own words. Most cheap sites reuse generic text, and Google has little reason to show a page that reads like a hundred others.
• Speed on a phone. Templates tend to load every feature they have, whether you use it or not, and most of your visitors are on mobile data.
• Ownership. Check whose name the domain is registered in and whether you get the login. If the developer disappears, you want to keep your site.
• Changes after launch. Ask what an edit costs before you pay, not after.

Around ₹20,000 to ₹25,000

This is where a small business website that is meant to bring in work should start. Our basic business websites start at ₹20,000, and an agency from Gurugram that publishes Jalgaon prices lists its websites from ₹25,000. At this level you should get a site planned around your business, not a template with your logo on it.

Whoever you hire, ask them to put these six things in writing:

• How many pages, and who writes the text.
• Whether a contact form, a WhatsApp button and your Google Maps location are included.
• Who registers the domain, in whose name, and what hosting costs from the second year.
• Whether basic SEO is set up: page titles, descriptions, a sitemap and Google Search Console.
• How many rounds of changes are included before launch.
• The launch date.

A good quote answers all six without you having to ask. If it does not, ask before you pay the advance.

What pushes the price up

The price climbs with the number of pages, and with anything the site has to do rather than just show:

• Online payments and a product catalogue, which turns it into an online store.
• Bookings, appointments or class timetables.
• A second language, such as English with Marathi or Hindi.
• Connections to other software: a CRM, your accounting software or a WhatsApp Business account.
• Writing all the content and photographing your products or premises.

The cost nobody mentions: the year after

A website is not finished when it goes live. The domain and hosting renew every year, and someone has to update prices, add new products and fix things when something breaks. Ask what that costs before you sign. For a small business site it should be modest and predictable.

So what should you spend?

If you only need to be findable by name, a template is fine, and nobody should talk you into more. If you want the site to bring in enquiries from people who do not know you yet, budget for a proper business website and judge it on one thing: whether it brings in more calls and WhatsApp messages than it cost.

If you are in Jalgaon and want a straight quote, message us or see what we build. We are in MIDC and happy to meet in person.