Cheapest Ecommerce Platform in IndiaWhat each one really costs

On headline subscription price, Dukaan (free plan, or ₹2,500/year — ₹208/month) and StoreMaker (₹222/month) are the lowest in India. On what you actually pay once you are selling, HOD Media is ₹299/month flat with 0% platform commission — free for the first 3 months, no credit card. At ₹50,000/month in sales HOD Media stays ₹299, while a platform taking 10% of sales reaches roughly ₹999 and Shopify Basic reaches about ₹1,994 plus a ~2% third-party gateway fee. HOD Media is the cheapest Indian ecommerce platform that combines 0% platform commission, native UPI and COD, and built-in GST invoicing.

HOD Media charges 0% platform commission and includes GST-compliant invoicing (CGST/SGST/IGST) on every plan, with native UPI and COD. WooCommerce also takes 0% commission but is self-hosted, so GST invoicing needs a paid plugin and you handle updates, security and backups yourself. Shopify does not charge a platform fee if you use Shopify Payments, but Shopify Payments is unavailable in India, so a third-party gateway triggers Shopify's own fee of about 2% on the Basic plan, and GST invoicing requires a paid app. Note that 0% platform commission is separate from payment-gateway processing (about 2% on UPI and cards), which every platform pays to Razorpay, Cashfree or PayU.

Free tiers exist — Dukaan and Instamojo both have one — but they are generally funded by per-transaction or per-order fees, which overtake a flat monthly fee once sales are steady. A free tier taking 2% of sales costs ₹1,000/month at ₹50,000/month in sales, more than three times HOD Media's ₹299 flat fee. WooCommerce is genuinely free as software, but you pay for hosting (₹300–₹2,000/month), paid plugins for GST and India payments, and your own time as system administrator. Free is usually cheapest below roughly ₹15,000/month in sales, and rarely above it.

A realistic all-in monthly budget for a small Indian store in August 2026 is roughly ₹300–₹2,500. That covers the platform subscription (₹99–₹1,994 depending on the platform), a domain (about ₹700–₹1,500 per year, so roughly ₹60–₹125/month), and payment-gateway processing at about 2% of sales, which every platform pays regardless of who you build with. On HOD Media the platform portion is ₹299/month with the domain and SSL included, so at ₹50,000/month in sales the total is about ₹299 plus roughly ₹1,000 in gateway fees.

Shopify Basic is ₹1,994/month (₹1,499/month billed annually), verified on Shopify's India pricing page in August 2026, and it is the most capable platform in this comparison with by far the largest app ecosystem. The India-specific catch is that Shopify Payments is not available here, so using Razorpay, Cashfree or PayU triggers Shopify's own transaction fee of about 2% on Basic on top of what the gateway charges, and India essentials like GST invoicing typically need paid apps. Shopify earns its price if you need its ecosystem or plan to sell internationally at scale; if you need UPI, COD and GST invoicing for the Indian market, India-built platforms include those natively for a fraction of the cost.

No. HOD Media is free for the first 3 months with no credit card, then ₹299/month, a price that stays locked while you are subscribed. (Store + AI, which adds the HOD-AI assistant and 200 AI credits a month, is ₹499/month.) The plan includes unlimited products, custom domain connection, SSL, Razorpay/PayU/Cashfree integration, COD, UPI and GST invoicing. HOD Media takes 0% commission; you pay only your payment gateway's standard processing fee, which is charged by the gateway and not by HOD Media. The annual plan is ₹2,499/year — ₹208 effective per month, saving ₹1,089 versus monthly billing.