A procurement manager at a manufacturing company in Chakan sent the same one-page brief to five agencies last year. The quotes came back at Rs. 45,000, Rs. 1.8 lakh, Rs. 3.2 lakh, Rs. 6 lakh and Rs. 11.5 lakh. None of them were dishonest. They had each imagined a different website.
That spread is not a pricing problem, it is a brief problem. This guide covers what to put in a website RFP so the responses you get are comparable, and so the winning vendor cannot claim scope creep three weeks in.
Why vague briefs produce useless quotes
“We need a modern, professional website for our company” contains no decisions. The agency must guess at page count, whether content is being written, whether the site is multilingual, whether it connects to an ERP, and who maintains it afterwards. Optimists guess low and blame you later. Careful firms guess high and lose the bid to the optimist.
Every hour you spend making the brief specific saves you a month of arguments during delivery.
The eight sections a website RFP needs
1. Business context, in three sentences
What the company does, who the website is for, and what the site must achieve. “We manufacture industrial valves, sell to procurement teams in India and the Gulf, and need the site to generate RFQ submissions” already tells an agency more than most three-page briefs.
2. The measurable objective
Pick one primary number: enquiries per month, RFQ downloads, distributor applications, or online orders. If you cannot name one, the project has no success criterion and nobody can be held to anything.
3. Scope: page list, not page count
List the actual pages. Not “about 15 pages” but Home, About, 6 product category pages, 40 product detail pages, Quality & Certifications, Careers with a form, Blog, Contact with a map. Product detail pages are where estimates diverge most, so be precise about how many and where the data comes from.
4. Content and images: who is producing them
This is the single most common cause of delay on Indian website projects. State plainly whether you are providing final copy, providing rough copy for editing, or expecting the agency to write it. Same for photography. If the agency is writing, that is a separate line item and it changes the timeline by weeks.
5. Technical requirements
- Platform preference, if any, and why. WordPress, Shopify, custom — and whether your team must be able to edit pages themselves.
- Integrations: CRM, ERP, payment gateway, WhatsApp, marketing automation, existing login systems.
- Hosting: existing or new, and who owns the accounts.
- Languages, and whether translations are provided.
- Accessibility or security standards you are contractually bound to.
6. Ownership and handover
State explicitly that you will own the domain, hosting, source code, design files and all accounts at the end. Ask what happens if you leave the vendor. This clause has saved more Indian companies from hostage situations than any other line in an RFP.
7. Timeline with your own dependencies
Give a target launch date, and list what you will provide by when: content, approvals, logins, product data. Agencies miss deadlines mostly because approvals sit with a client for two weeks. Naming the approver in the RFP fixes half of that.
8. Budget band
Yes, share it. A band such as Rs. 2–4 lakh does not cause agencies to inflate; it causes them to tell you honestly what fits inside it and what does not. Hiding the budget guarantees the spread you were trying to avoid.
Ask every vendor these five questions
- What is not included in this quote?
- Who specifically does the work, and are any parts subcontracted?
- What does support cost after launch, and what response time comes with it?
- Show two sites you built that are still live and still maintained by the client.
- What will you need from us, and by when, to hit this timeline?
Question one filters more bad vendors than a portfolio review ever will.
The comparison table that ends the confusion
Put every response into a single table before you look at the totals:
| Line item | Vendor A | Vendor B | Vendor C |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design (templates vs custom) | |||
| Number of unique page designs | |||
| Copywriting included? | |||
| Integrations covered | |||
| SEO setup included? | |||
| Training and documentation | |||
| Annual maintenance cost | |||
| Ownership at exit |
Nine times out of ten, the cheapest quote is missing three rows in this table. Once those are filled in, the real difference between vendors is usually much smaller than the headline numbers suggested.
Two things to leave out of the RFP
- Design instructions. Do not specify colours, fonts or layouts in the brief. Specify who the visitor is and what they must do. Judge design on the response.
- A demand for free mockups. Agencies that give away speculative design work either pad the quote to cover it or produce something templated. Ask for relevant case studies instead.
A realistic Indian price map, for sanity checking
| Type of site | Realistic range |
|---|---|
| Brochure site, 6–10 pages, template-based | Rs. 35,000 – Rs. 90,000 |
| Custom-designed corporate site, 15–25 pages | Rs. 1.5 – 4 lakh |
| Product catalogue site with 100+ items and enquiry flows | Rs. 3 – 8 lakh |
| Custom web application with logins and integrations | Rs. 6 lakh + |
We publish detailed breakdowns for custom web application development and ecommerce builds if you need to sanity-check a specific quote.
Before you send it
Read your RFP once more and ask: could two different agencies read this and build two different websites? If yes, keep editing. If no, you are ready to send it — and the quotes that come back will finally be comparing the same thing.
Want us to review your brief before you circulate it? Send it on WhatsApp to +91 86691 17894. We will point out the gaps that will cost you later, whether or not you invite us to quote.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I share my budget in a website RFP?
Yes. Sharing a band such as Rs. 2 to 4 lakh does not make honest agencies inflate their quote; it makes them tell you what fits within it and what does not. Hiding the budget is the main reason companies receive quotes that differ by ten times for the same brief.
What is the most common thing missing from a website brief?
Who is producing the content and photography. This one omission causes more delays and more disputed invoices on Indian website projects than any technical requirement. State clearly whether you provide final copy, rough copy, or expect the agency to write it.
Should I ask agencies for free design mockups before awarding the project?
No. Vendors who give away speculative design either recover the cost inside the quote or produce something templated to keep it cheap. Ask instead for two live sites they built that are still maintained by the client, and speak to those clients.
How do I compare quotes that vary widely?
Put every response into one line-item table covering design scope, unique page designs, copywriting, integrations, SEO setup, training, annual maintenance and ownership at exit. The cheapest quote is usually missing several rows, and once they are filled the real difference is much smaller.
What should the RFP say about ownership?
State that you will own the domain, hosting accounts, source code, design files and all third-party accounts on completion, and ask each vendor to confirm what happens if you switch providers later. This single clause prevents the most common way Indian companies get locked in to an agency.
