What an online store platform really costs an Indian seller each month, from a free plan to enterprise. All-in rupee prices with forex and 18% GST included.
You want to sell online in India. The first question is simple. What does the platform actually cost per month?
The honest answer is that a basic online store platform runs an Indian seller anywhere from free to about Rs.17,700 a month. The gap is huge because these tools serve very different sellers. Every figure below is all-in monthly rupees. That means we have already added forex conversion and 18% GST, so the number you see is close to the number you pay. Read our India software pricing method if you want to see how we build these.
Entry pricing, cheapest first, all-in per month.
| Platform | Approx price per month | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Dukaan | Rs.353 | India-built, rupee-priced, free plan |
| Shopify | Rs.471 | INR-priced in India, deep app ecosystem |
| Ecwid | Rs.587 | Bolts a store onto a site you already have |
| BigCommerce | Rs.3,407 | Bigger catalogs and higher order volumes |
| StoreHippo | Rs.17,700 | Enterprise B2B and D2C, built in India |
The plan price is the easy part. In India the money that actually moves is spread across a few line items that a foreign pricing guide will never mention.
First is the payment gateway. Whether you use Razorpay, PayU, or the gateway built into your platform, expect roughly 2% to 3% on every online payment. On a Rs.1,000 order that is Rs.20 to Rs.30 gone before you count anything else.
Second is cash on delivery. A large share of Indian orders still arrive as COD. That means courier COD fees and a real risk of return to origin, known as RTO. When a COD parcel comes back unsold you still pay both legs of shipping and get nothing for it.
Third is shipping itself. A store platform does not ship anything. You plug in an aggregator like Shiprocket or Delhivery and pay per shipment by weight and zone.
So the platform fee is the floor, not the ceiling. A Rs.353 plan can easily sit under a few thousand rupees of gateway, COD, and shipping cost once orders start flowing. Budget for the whole picture. Our how to start selling online in India guide walks through these steps in order.
If you are not ready to spend anything, Dukaan has a free plan. You can list products, share a store link, and take orders without paying a monthly fee. It is the lowest-risk way to test whether people will actually buy from you before you commit rupees to a paid plan. Start free, prove demand, then upgrade.
Pick by the kind of seller you are, not by the sticker price alone.
For a quick, low-cost Indian store, go with Dukaan. It is priced in rupees, understands COD and Indian shipping out of the box, and the free plan lets you start today.
For a serious brand that wants room to grow, Shopify earns its slightly higher fee through its ecosystem. The app store, themes, and integrations mean you rarely hit a wall as you scale. See our Shopify vs Dukaan vs WooCommerce breakdown for the full comparison.
For larger operations with big catalogs, high order volumes, or B2B needs, BigCommerce or StoreHippo are built for that weight. They cost far more per month, but so does the scale they support.
Browse the full e-commerce category to compare every option side by side.
Start with what you truly need this quarter. A first-time Indian seller does not need a Rs.17,700 plan. Begin free or near-free with Dukaan, add Shopify when the brand and volume justify it, and always budget for gateway, COD, and shipping on top of the plan fee. The cheapest platform is the one that matches the store you actually run today.
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Start with the product itself: a place to write and ship code, host it reliably, and catch errors in production, because nothing else matters until customers can actually use what you built. Next, get the team coordinated with project management and a shared knowledge base so work and decisions are not lost in chat. Then put customer acquisition on a real CRM so leads, demos, and deals are tracked rather than living in inboxes. Add billing and accounting once you have paying users, choosing payment rails that fit whether you sell to India, abroad, or both, and keep GST-clean books from day one. Finish with customer support, product analytics, and access security so you can keep users happy, see what they actually do, and not get breached. Do not buy enterprise sales, analytics, and security suites before you have product-market signal; sequence around shipping and getting your first paying customers.
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