Web Development
2026-10-26 · 7 min read
Sapun Lamichhane
Founder & CEO of Arcetis
Most website projects in Nepal go wrong at the scoping stage, before any code is written. A business owner asks three companies for "a website" and gets three wildly different quotes, because each company assumed a different project. One assumed five static pages. Another assumed a CMS with a blog. A third assumed online ordering. None of those assumptions were wrong - they just were not asked for.
Before you contact anyone, write down what the site actually needs to do: show information, collect leads, sell products, take bookings, let you edit content yourself, or integrate with a payment gateway like eSewa or Khalti. A vague brief gets you a vague quote, and a vague quote is the single biggest source of disputes once development starts.
A simple way to firm this up: write one paragraph describing your business and what you want the website to achieve, then list the three or four actions you want a visitor to take. Hand that same paragraph to every company you contact. You will quickly notice which quotes are actually responding to your brief and which are copy-pasted from a template.
“The cheapest quote and the most expensive quote are both telling you something about the company - neither is telling you whether they can actually finish the job.”
A basic brochure-style website - five to ten static pages, no database, no login - typically runs NPR 30,000 to 1,20,000 depending on design complexity and page count. A custom dynamic site with a content management system, where you can log in and edit pages or write blog posts yourself, usually runs NPR 1,50,000 to 5,00,000 or more. E-commerce sites, with product catalogs, cart, payment gateway integration and inventory, land in a similar 1,00,000 to 5,00,000-plus range, pushed up by the number of products, custom features, and integrations.
What is often left out of the headline price: domain registration (roughly NPR 1,500-2,500 a year), hosting (NPR 2,500-6,000 a year for a small site), and ongoing maintenance (NPR 5,000-20,000 a year for updates, backups, and small fixes). Ask explicitly whether these are included in the quote or billed separately - a quote that looks cheap on paper sometimes excludes hosting and domain entirely, and you find out only when the invoice for "activation" arrives.
Pricing also moves with design complexity, not just page count - a template-based layout with light customization sits at the lower end of each range, while a fully custom design with original photography, animation, or multilingual content pushes toward the upper end. If a quote comes in dramatically below these ranges, ask specifically what is excluded, because a workable business website in Nepal rarely gets built profitably for much less.
Ask who will own the domain name, the hosting account, and the source code once the project is finished. The correct answer is you - the domain should be registered in your name or your business's name, not the developer's personal account, and you should receive full admin access. This single question eliminates a large share of the horror stories Nepali business owners share about agencies that hold a website hostage over unrelated disputes.
Ask whether the CMS is something you can actually use without calling the developer every time you want to change a phone number or add a photo. Ask what happens after launch - is there a maintenance agreement, and what does it cover? Ask if the work is done in-house or subcontracted, since subcontracted projects often have longer timelines and less accountability when something breaks.
It is also worth asking directly how many similar projects they have delivered in your specific industry, since a company that has built several clinic websites will ask sharper questions about appointment booking and patient privacy than one building its first. Their questions back to you are often a better signal of competence than their answers to yours.
Do not just look at portfolio screenshots - open the actual live sites on your phone. Check how fast they load on a normal mobile connection, not office wifi. Check whether the site looks right on a small screen, since most of your future visitors will be on mobile. A portfolio full of good-looking screenshots but slow, broken-on-mobile live sites tells you more than the screenshots do.
Where possible, ask a previous client - not just the ones listed as references - whether the company delivered on time, whether support after launch was responsive, and whether there were costs they were not told about upfront. A company confident in its work will not mind you asking.
Run the live site through a free page-speed checking tool and look specifically at the mobile score, not just desktop - a two-minute check that often reveals more than a long conversation about "cutting-edge technology." If a company cannot point you to two or three live sites they built in the last year, be cautious.
A written scope of work should specify what is being built, the number of revision rounds included, the timeline, the payment schedule, and what "done" means. Payment schedules in Nepal commonly run 40-50% upfront, with the remainder on delivery or in two further milestones - be wary of anyone asking for 100% upfront on a project of any real size.
At handover, you should receive domain and hosting login credentials, a copy of the source code or confirmed access to the live CMS, and basic documentation on how to update content. If a company is reluctant to commit any of this to writing, treat that reluctance as the answer to your question about reliability.
If a company proposes an unusually long payment schedule stretched over many small installments, or resists putting a firm delivery date in writing, treat that as a signal to slow down rather than proceed on good faith. A clear, dated scope of work protects both sides, not just you.
Weigh three things together rather than any one in isolation: the clarity of their process - did they ask good questions about your business, or just quote off a template - the quality of their live work, not just screenshots, and whether the commercial terms around ownership, maintenance, and payment schedule are written down and fair.
Arcetis builds dynamic business websites and Shopify stores in Nepal as a Google Partner and Shopify Partner agency, and we tell clients this same thing upfront - you keep ownership of your domain, hosting, and code, with no lock-in. Whoever you choose, insist on that same clarity before you sign.
None of this needs to take weeks - a focused week of outreach, live-site checks, and three or four direct questions is usually enough to separate a serious option from a risky one, and it costs nothing but time before you commit real money.
For a simple five-to-ten-page brochure site, expect NPR 30,000 to 1,20,000. A dynamic site with a CMS and blog typically runs NPR 1,50,000 to 5,00,000, and e-commerce sites land in a similar or slightly higher range depending on the number of products and integrations. These are development costs only - domain, hosting, and maintenance are usually separate.
A freelancer can be cheaper and faster for a small, simple site, but there is more risk if they become unavailable mid-project or after launch. An agency usually costs more but offers more continuity, a documented process, and a team to fall back on if one person leaves. For anything beyond a basic brochure site, or anything business-critical, an agency with a track record is usually the safer choice.
This is exactly why ownership matters at handover. If the domain is registered in your name, hosting is in your account, and you have a copy of the source code, you can simply hire someone else to take over. If any of those three are controlled by the original developer, you may be stuck negotiating from a weak position - which is why these points belong in the contract before work begins, not after.