Ask five web agencies in Nepal what a website costs and you will get five versions of "it depends, let's jump on a call". That is not evasiveness for its own sake — the honest answer really does vary — but it leaves you unable to budget, which is the one thing you actually needed.
So here is a straight answer, including the parts that are genuinely variable, and the costs that get left out of quotes.
The short version
Across the Nepali market, published figures generally land in these bands:
- A simple brochure site (a few pages, contact form): roughly Rs 15,000–80,000
- A corporate/business site (5–10 pages, proper design): roughly Rs 35,000–1,50,000
- An e-commerce store (catalog, checkout, payments): roughly Rs 50,000–5,00,000+
- A custom web application or portal: Rs 3,00,000 upwards, sometimes far upwards
Those ranges are wide because they cover everything from a student's first freelance job to a proper agency build with a real design process. Which end you land on depends on the factors below.
What actually moves the price
1. Template vs custom design
This is the single biggest lever. A well-chosen template, properly customised with your content and brand, is dramatically cheaper than a design created from scratch — and for many small businesses it is genuinely the right choice. Custom design is worth paying for when you are competing on brand, or when your workflow does not fit any template.
2. Page count and content
Not just the number of pages, but who writes them. Most quotes quietly assume you supply the text and images. If you do not have them, either the project stalls for months or you pay for copywriting and photography.
3. Functionality
A contact form is nothing. Online booking, payments, a customer login, inventory, or multi-language each add real engineering. Be precise about what you actually need on day one versus what sounds good in a meeting.
4. Who is building it
A freelancer, a two-person shop and an established agency price differently — and the difference is mostly in what happens after launch. Cheap builds are frequently abandoned; you save Rs 30,000 and lose the site in a year.
The costs nobody quotes you
These are the ones that surprise people six months in:
- Domain — roughly Rs 1,500–2,500 per year, forever.
- Hosting — roughly Rs 5,000–15,000 per year depending on traffic and storage.
- SSL certificate — often free now, but confirm it is included and auto-renewing.
- Maintenance and updates — an unmaintained site is a security incident waiting to happen. Budget something annually.
- Content changes — if you cannot edit your own site, every price change is a support ticket with a fee attached.
Ask any quote to state these explicitly. "Rs 40,000 for the site" means very little if year two costs another Rs 20,000 you did not plan for.
Our actual prices, published
We publish ours rather than hiding them, and they vary by industry because the work genuinely does — a restaurant site with online ordering is not the same build as a lawyer's brochure site.
The structure is four packages:
- Startup — a 1–3 page template-based site, mobile-friendly, contact form, WhatsApp button and Google Maps. Currently $100.
- Basic — a custom-designed 5-page site with on-page SEO and enquiry forms. From $250.
- Growth — everything in Basic plus booking or ordering, an easy-edit CMS and analytics. From $450.
- Premium — fully custom build with e-commerce, payments and ongoing maintenance. From $750.
Exact prices per industry — restaurants, salons, clinics, real estate and 18 others — are on the pricing page, with the full feature list for each. Pick your industry and the real number appears. No call required.
How to compare quotes without getting burned
When you have three quotes in front of you, ask each of them these five questions. The answers separate a real proposal from a number pulled out of the air:
- What exactly is included, page by page? Get it in writing.
- Who writes the content and sources the images? The most common cause of a stalled project.
- Can I edit it myself afterwards, and can you show me? Ask for a demo of the admin, not a yes.
- What happens in year two? Hosting, domain, updates, support — total annual cost.
- Do I own everything? Domain, hosting account, code, content. If the agency holds your domain, you are not a client, you are a hostage.
Do you even need an agency?
An honest detour, because sometimes the right answer is "don't hire us yet".
- Wix / Squarespace, built yourself. Realistically a few thousand rupees a month and a weekend of your time. Genuinely fine for a single-location business that needs a presence and a contact form. The catch is the ongoing subscription and that you are the maintenance team forever.
- WordPress with a bought theme. Cheap to start, and there are plenty of people in Nepal who can maintain it. The catch is that an unmaintained WordPress site is a security liability — plugins need updating, and "we'll do it later" is how sites get defaced.
- A freelancer. Often the best value if you find a good one and they stay reachable. The risk is entirely continuity — one person, one phone number, no handover.
- An agency. Worth it when the site has to do something — bookings, ordering, payments, integrations — or when you need it to still work in three years without you thinking about it.
If your business is a shop with a phone number and no online transactions, start small. If customers need to book, order or pay, the DIY route usually costs more in lost bookings than it saves in fees.
Red flags in a quote
Some things should make you slow down before signing:
- The agency registers the domain in their own name. Non-negotiable — the domain must be in your name, on your account. Everything else is recoverable; this is not.
- A price with no scope attached. "Rs 50,000 for a website" without a page list means the scope will be argued about later, and you will lose.
- No mention of who writes the content. Silence here usually means "you do", discovered three weeks in.
- Hosting bundled with no exit. Fine to have them host it. Not fine if you cannot take the site elsewhere.
- Payment fully up front. Staged payments tied to milestones protect both sides.
How long it should take
Realistic timelines, assuming you supply content promptly:
- Template-based starter site — under a week.
- Custom 5-page business site — two to three weeks.
- Site with booking or ordering — three to six weeks.
- Full e-commerce with payments — six weeks and up.
If a project is running months past these, the cause is almost always content — text and photos that never arrive — rather than development. Get your content ready before you start and you will beat the estimate.
What we would tell a friend
If you are a small local business getting online for the first time, do not start with a Rs 3,00,000 custom build. Start with a clean, fast, mobile-friendly site that ranks for your name and takes enquiries, see what customers actually do with it, then invest in the parts that earn their keep. The most expensive websites we see are the ones that were over-specified up front and under-used afterwards.
See your exact price
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