Website cost in Malaysia and India (2026)

Website prices at a glance

These ranges come from 2026 price guides published by agencies in both countries and from the vendors' own pricing pages. They cover the first build, before hosting and running costs.

• DIY builder: from about RM426 a year in Malaysia, or about ₹18,000 a year in India on Shopify Basic.
• Freelancer, template-based: RM1,500 to RM5,000, or ₹15,000 to ₹50,000.
• Small studio, custom design: RM6,000 to RM15,000, or ₹80,000 to ₹1,50,000.
• E-commerce store: RM8,000 to RM25,000, or ₹60,000 to ₹2,50,000 for most small and mid-sized shops.
• Web app or platform: RM30,000 and up, or ₹5,00,000 and up.

The gap between the bottom and top of each band is mostly scope. A five-page site with your own photos and copy sits at the bottom. Twenty pages, two languages and a booking system sit at the top.

What each price buys

DIY builders

You pay a subscription and do the work yourself. GoDaddy's builder starts at RM22.99 a month in Malaysia, about RM426 for the first year, according to GoDaddy's Malaysia cost guide. In India, Shopify's Basic plan is ₹1,499 a month billed yearly, plus a 2% fee per sale if you use a third-party payment provider.

This is the right call for a one-person business that needs to be online next week. It gets harder when you need a layout the template won't allow, or when subscriptions and paid add-ons creep toward what a custom build would have cost.

Freelancers

A freelancer usually installs a WordPress theme or builder template, adds your content and hands it over. RM1,500 to RM5,000 in Malaysia, or ₹15,000 to ₹50,000 in India, buys a five to ten page site this way.

The price is fine. The risk is what happens after launch. Before you pay, ask who hosts the site, who updates the plugins, and whether the domain and admin logins are in your name.

Small studios

At this level you pay for custom design, a content structure planned around your customers, and someone accountable after launch. Expect RM6,000 to RM15,000 in Malaysia and ₹80,000 to ₹1,50,000 in India for a marketing site with a CMS your team can edit.

The extra money goes into the parts that decide whether the site brings in work: page speed, copy that answers what customers ask, and SEO set up from the first commit. It's the kind of build we do in our web development work, usually on Next.js.

E-commerce stores

Shops cost more because every product type, variant, shipping rule and payment method is something to build and test. Most small and mid-sized stores land between RM8,000 and RM25,000 in Malaysia, or ₹60,000 and ₹2,50,000 in India.

Payments are where the two markets differ most. Malaysian shoppers expect FPX online banking, DuitNow QR and e-wallets like Touch 'n Go. Indian shoppers expect UPI, usually through a gateway such as Razorpay, and each gateway has its own onboarding paperwork.

Web apps and platforms

Once you need logins, dashboards, bookings or links to other systems, you're buying software. Pricing moves from per page to per feature, typically RM30,000 and up in Malaysia or ₹5,00,000 and up in India.

Duebox, which we built for Malaysian tuition centres, is that kind of project: billing, attendance and WhatsApp updates in one system. Work like that is scoped in milestones, not quoted from a price list.

Why India costs less, and when that matters

Developer salaries are lower in India, so the same hours cost less. At about ₹23.5 to the ringgit, an Indian studio quote for similar scope often comes in at around half the Malaysian one.

Cheaper hours don't always mean a cheaper project. A Malaysian business hiring an Indian team gains a 2.5 hour time difference, which is easy to work with, but loses someone who knows local search terms, Bahasa Malaysia copy and how local customers pay. Budget extra time for briefs and reviews if the team hasn't built for your market before.

Tax also works differently across the border. An Indian supplier can usually bill an overseas client without GST, as a zero-rated export under a Letter of Undertaking. Malaysian businesses buying services from abroad may have to account for service tax on imported services themselves, so check with your accountant.

We work in both markets. The Cradle is a Montessori school in Mysuru, and Klinik Mediviron is a clinic in Nilai.

Costs the quote usually leaves out

A build quote is rarely the full bill. These are the lines that surprise people in the first year:

• Tax: IT services from an SST-registered Malaysian provider carry 8% service tax, in force since 1 March 2024 according to KPMG Malaysia. In India, web development is charged at the 18% standard GST rate. A RM10,000 quote becomes RM10,800; a ₹1,00,000 quote becomes ₹1,18,000.
• Hosting: GoDaddy lists shared hosting in Malaysia at RM10.99 to RM49.99 a month. Custom sites often run on managed cloud hosting priced by usage instead.
• Maintenance: GoDaddy puts ongoing care at RM50 to RM500 or more a month in Malaysia. Indian retainers are usually lower in ₹ terms, for the same salary reasons.
• Content: copywriting, translation and photography. If nobody has written the words yet, that's a real cost, in money or in weeks.
• SSL: free on most modern hosts through Let's Encrypt. Don't pay extra for a basic certificate.
• Payment fees: a percentage per transaction on every sale, on top of any platform fee.

What pushes a quote up

Page count matters less than people think. What moves the price is how many different page layouts there are, and how much logic sits behind them.

The usual drivers, roughly from biggest to smallest:

1. Features beyond content: bookings, logins, member areas, calculators, integrations with a CRM or WhatsApp.
2. A second language. English plus Bahasa Malaysia, Chinese or Hindi means translated copy, layouts that handle longer words and other scripts, and separate URLs for search engines.
3. Custom design instead of a theme.
4. Content that isn't ready. Waiting for copy stretches the project, and time is what you pay for.
5. Open-ended revision rounds. Fixed feedback windows keep this predictable.

How to get quotes you can compare

Send every studio the same short brief: what the site is for, the pages and features you know you need, two or three sites you like, whether content is ready, your deadline and a budget range. Sharing a range isn't a weakness. It tells the studio whether to propose a template or a custom build, so the proposals you get are comparable.

Timelines follow the same logic as prices. Our guide on how long it takes to build a website breaks it down by project type. If you're weighing platforms, read Next.js vs WordPress before you pick.

If you'd like a number for your own project, send us the brief. We usually reply within a day.