Choosing a web development company in India is a verification job more than a taste job. Ten questions and about twenty minutes of checking will separate a firm that still answers your call in month six from one that will not. Below are the checks you can run before you speak to anyone, the ten questions to ask, and what a good answer to each one actually sounds like.
Do the ten-minute check before you speak to anyone
All of these can be done from your phone, before you fill in a single enquiry form. They remove most of the risk at no cost.
- Run their own website through PageSpeed Insights. A company selling performance that scores 30 on mobile for its own homepage is telling you something. Below 50 is a real warning; 70 and above on mobile is a working standard. Anyone claiming a flat 100 is quoting the desktop score.
- Copy one sentence from their homepage and search it inside quote marks. If the same sentence sits on four other agency sites, the copy was bought or lifted, and so was the process behind it.
- Reverse-image search two portfolio screenshots. Stock mockups and unbuilt concept designs are common in Indian agency portfolios. A screenshot is not proof that anything shipped.
- Look up the CIN on MCA master data and the GSTIN on the GST portal. Both searches are free and take two minutes each. They show the legal name, the incorporation date and whether the registration is active.
- Check the age of their domain. A registrar WHOIS lookup shows the creation date. A domain registered eight months ago sitting under a “a decade of experience” line on the About page is a mismatch worth raising on the call.
- Message the number on their site on WhatsApp at 8pm. How a company replies to a stranger at an awkward hour is roughly how it will reply to you after launch.
Live URLs beat screenshots, always
Ask for three live URLs of sites built in the last twelve months, plus one that has been live for at least two years. The old link matters more than the new one. It tells you whether the work survived, whether the hosting is still being paid for, and whether that client stayed. Open each one on mobile data rather than office Wi-Fi, submit the contact form with your own number, and see whether anything arrives.
Be careful about the difference between a client site and a demonstration. Plenty of firms fill a portfolio page with template builds and concept layouts, which is fine if it is labelled: we keep demo sites live at codelithlabdemo.online precisely so buyers can open real pages on a phone, and we say plainly that those are builds of ours, not client work. Ask any company you shortlist to draw that line for you. If every project is “under NDA”, treat it as a portfolio of one: some NDAs are real, all of them being under NDA is not.
Registration, GST and the invoice trail
Being a registered private limited company is not proof of skill. A careful freelancer will beat a badly run company most days of the week. What registration buys you is recourse and a paper trail: a legal entity that can be held to a contract, a name that does not change every year, and a tax invoice you can put in your books.
Ask for the CIN and the GSTIN up front. All quoted prices in India are normally exclusive of 18% GST, so confirm whether the number you were given includes it — a ₹50,000 quote is ₹59,000 on the invoice once tax is added, and that gap has ended more than one project. If a vendor cannot raise a GST invoice, the input credit you cannot claim is roughly the discount you thought you were getting. A recently incorporated company is not a red flag by itself, as long as the year on the About page matches the MCA record.
The ten questions, and what a good answer sounds like
- “Can you send three live URLs from the last year, and one from two years ago?” A good answer arrives inside a day as plain links. A weak answer is a PDF of screenshots or a design-portfolio board with no live site behind it.
- “What is your CIN or firm registration, and will I get a GST invoice on every payment?” Good: the numbers given without hesitation, along with the legal name. Also honest and acceptable: “We are a proprietorship below the GST threshold, so there is no GST invoice.” That is fine if you do not need input credit. Vagueness about invoices is not.
- “Whose name will the domain, hosting and Google accounts be in?” Good: yours, created on your email ID, with logins handed over at launch. This is the most common trap in India — the agency holds the domain, and every renewal becomes a negotiation. Insist on a registrar account you control, not a sub-account inside theirs.
- “Can I see the page list and the timeline in writing before I pay?” Good: a document naming every page, what sits on each one, how many revision rounds are included, and dates in working days. “Around 8 to 10 pages” is not a scope; it is the argument you will have in week three.
- “Who writes the content, and where do the images come from?” Good answers name a person and a date: either you send copy by a stated day, or they write it from a questionnaire and a call, with licensed stock images or a guided phone shoot. Content is the single biggest reason Indian website projects run late, so it belongs in the scope with a deadline attached.
- “What is the payment schedule?” For a small site, 50% to start and 50% at launch is normal. Larger builds split across three or four milestones tied to something you can open in a browser. Be wary of 100% in advance, and equally wary of a firm that happily takes 10% — that risk is priced into something else in the deal.
- “How many revision rounds, and what counts as one round?” Good: a number, usually two or three, with a definition — a round is one consolidated list of changes, not each individual WhatsApp message. A published rate for extra rounds and extra pages keeps it a price rather than a dispute.
- “A form stops working on a Sunday evening. What happens?” Good: a written support window, typically 30 to 90 days after launch depending on the size of the build, followed by a paid care plan with a stated response time. Most studios do not run a 24×7 desk, and anyone promising one for a small business site is guessing.
- “Will Search Console, Analytics and the Business Profile be set up in my account?” Good: created on your Google ID with the agency added as a user. Not good: created on the agency ID with a promise of monthly reports. Ask which keywords are being targeted too, and remember that no honest provider of SEO services will give you a written ranking guarantee.
- “What does your own site score on PageSpeed Insights?” Good: they know the number and can explain the trade-off, for example that a video on the homepage costs them mobile points while a client site sits above 90. “Scores do not matter” from a company selling speed work is the answer that should worry you.
What different budgets can honestly buy
The bands below are what the Indian market delivers in 2026 for the work described, not quotes. They are here so you can tell a serious quote from a fantasy one.
| Budget (before 18% GST) | What is realistic | What to check hardest |
|---|---|---|
| Below ₹10,000 | A template with your logo, text and photos placed by one person. Enough for a single-page presence for a local shop. | Whether the domain and hosting are in your name, and what renewal costs from year two. |
| ₹20,000 – ₹50,000 | Seven to fifteen custom pages, mobile-first, enquiry forms delivered into WhatsApp, on-page SEO basics, analytics configured. | The written page list, the revision-round definition and the post-launch support window. |
| ₹1,00,000 – ₹3,00,000 | An online store with UPI and card payments, shipping integration and GST invoices on orders. | Who configures Razorpay or PhonePe and Shiprocket or Delhivery, and how COD returns (RTO) are handled. |
| ₹1,50,000 and above | A web application or SaaS product, scoped after a paid discovery sprint and delivered in milestones. | Source-code ownership in writing, and what you receive if the project stops midway. The same applies to custom software and app development quotes. |
Our own ladder at Codelith Lab is published for the same reason: Business Website ₹24,999 for up to 7 pages in 7–10 working days, Business Pro + SEO ₹49,999, E-commerce Store ₹99,999, and Web App or SaaS from ₹1,49,999 after a paid discovery sprint, with extras listed openly — extra page ₹1,999 · care plan ₹1,499/month. All prices exclude 18% GST, and payment is 50% to start, 50% at launch. The honest limit: we deliver remotely from an office in Pune, roughly 60% of our clients are elsewhere in India and never meet us, and if you want someone in your office each week you should hire locally instead.
Get the scope and the maintenance terms in writing
What a usable scope contains
A scope that protects you is boring and specific: every page named, the number of sections on the key pages, which integrations are included, how many revision rounds, who supplies content and by when, the launch date in working days, and what is explicitly excluded. Exclusions matter as much as inclusions: if logo design, product photography or translation are not listed, assume they are not in the price.
What maintenance should cover
Ask what happens on day 31. A care plan should state, in writing, what is covered: CMS and plugin updates, backups and where they are stored, uptime monitoring, SSL renewal, security patches, a fixed number of small content changes per month, and a response time. A plan that only promises “support” promises nothing. Website care is worth paying for on any site that takes enquiries; it is optional on a static one-page site you never touch.
Where a cheaper option is the honest answer
Not every business needs an agency. If you run a single clinic, a tiffin service or a local repair shop and your customers find you on Google Maps, a well-maintained Google Business Profile plus a one-page site will do more for you this year than fifteen pages will. If your whole order flow already runs on Amazon or Flipkart, a marketplace listing plus a simple brand page beats a ₹99,999 store until your direct orders justify one. And if your budget is genuinely small, a careful freelancer is a better use of it than the cheapest quote from a company. Our guides on small business websites and web development in India cover where each option stops making sense.
Red flags that should end the conversation
- A ranking guarantee of any kind, written or spoken.
- A portfolio that is entirely screenshots, or where every project is under NDA.
- No written scope, only a price on WhatsApp.
- The domain registered in the agency name, described as “standard practice”.
- A price that drops by ₹20,000 in one phone call. If the discount comes that easily, the first number was invented.
The short version
- Verify before you talk: PageSpeed on their own site, a quoted-sentence search, MCA and GST lookups, and three live URLs opened on a phone.
- Get the page list, revision rounds, payment milestones, support window and exclusions in one written document before the first payment.
- Domain, hosting, Search Console, Analytics and the Business Profile in your name from day one — this is what lets you change vendors without rebuilding.
- Nobody can guarantee rankings. A company that offers to is telling you what else it is willing to say.
Frequently asked questions
How do I verify that a web development company in India is actually registered?
Ask for the CIN or firm registration number and the GSTIN. Put the CIN into the MCA master data search on mca.gov.in and the GSTIN into the search taxpayer tool on the GST portal. Both are free, take under two minutes, and show the legal name, incorporation date and whether the registration is active. If a company will not share either number, treat that as your answer.
Is it safe to pay 50% in advance for a website in India?
For a small project, 50% to start and 50% at launch is the normal structure and it is reasonable. What makes it safe is the paperwork around it: a written scope with the page list, dates in working days, the revision-round definition, and a GST invoice for the advance. Avoid paying 100% up front, and split larger builds into three or four milestones tied to something you can open in a browser.
Should I choose a web development company in my own city?
Only if you genuinely need people in the room. Most website work in India now runs on WhatsApp updates, staging links and Google Meet reviews, none of which improve with proximity. A local vendor who ignores your messages is worse than a remote team that replies within an hour. Judge responsiveness, written process and ownership of accounts rather than the pin code on the invoice.
What happens if the company disappears after my site goes live?
This is why ownership matters more than the contract. If the domain, hosting, Search Console, Analytics and Business Profile sit in your own accounts, another developer can take over in a day. If they sit inside the agency accounts, you may have to rebuild from scratch. Collect the logins at handover, change the passwords yourself, and keep an offline copy of the site files and database.
Can a web development company guarantee first-page Google rankings?
No, and a written guarantee should end the conversation. Nobody controls Google ranking systems, and in many Indian searches directories and marketplaces hold the top results for months regardless of what you publish. What a company can commit to is the work itself: technical fixes, page speed, an agreed keyword list, content on a schedule, and monthly reporting you can verify inside your own Search Console.
