Is a .com.np domain free in Nepal?

Yes. The .com.np domain is provided free of charge by Mercantile Communications, which administers the .np registry, provided you submit the required documentation such as a business registration certificate or citizenship document. There is no annual renewal fee. This surprises many business owners, who have been quietly billed an annual domain fee by a vendor for a domain that costs nothing. A .com international domain does carry a normal annual registration fee, and is worth choosing if you sell outside Nepal.

What are the recurring costs of running a website in Nepal?

Three or four, and they are frequently left out of the initial quote. Hosting is annual and varies widely between cheap local shared hosting and international hosting behind a content delivery network. A domain is free if you use .com.np, or an annual fee for a .com. An SSL certificate is free through Let's Encrypt and should never be charged as a line item. Maintenance covers updates, backups, security patching and small changes, and is usually the largest recurring cost that nobody budgets for. Content updates are separate again.

Why are website quotes in Kathmandu so different from each other?

Because they are quoting different things while using the same words. One quote may mean installing a purchased theme and replacing the placeholder text, another may mean original design, custom development, performance optimisation, structured data and analytics setup. Neither is dishonest, but they are not comparable. The way to compare is to ask each vendor the same specific questions: is the design original or a purchased template, who writes the content, is analytics and conversion tracking included, what happens after launch, and who owns the code and the accounts.

Should I use WordPress or a custom-built website in Nepal?

WordPress is the right default for most Nepali small businesses. It is inexpensive, widely supported locally so you are not dependent on one developer, and perfectly capable of ranking well when it is built carefully. Custom development becomes worth it when you need functionality a plugin cannot provide, when performance is a genuine competitive factor, or when you are building a product rather than a brochure. The common failure is not choosing wrongly between them, but choosing WordPress and then loading it with twenty plugins and an unoptimised theme until it takes eight seconds to load on a phone.

Why is a cheap website often more expensive in the end?

Because the cost usually reappears later in a worse form. Very cheap builds tend to use unoptimised purchased themes, ship multi-megabyte images, carry no analytics or conversion tracking, and are frequently handed over with a noindex tag still in place from development. The site looks acceptable and produces nothing, so the owner then pays for SEO on a foundation that cannot support it, and often pays again to rebuild within two years. The genuinely expensive outcome is not a low invoice; it is two years of a website that never generated an enquiry.

Website Development Cost in Nepal: 2026 Price Guide

Q: How much does a website cost in Nepal?

Website prices in Nepal vary enormously because the term covers wildly different products. A small template-based brochure site of five to eight pages typically sits at the low end of the market. A custom-designed marketing website with original layouts, proper performance work and content structure costs several times that. An ecommerce store with payment integration, inventory and delivery logic costs several times again. A custom web application is priced by developer time, not by page count. The single most important thing to understand is that a quote is meaningless without a scope, because a five-page site and a five-page site can differ by a factor of ten in the work involved.

Short answer: a template-based brochure site is the cheapest tier and is genuinely adequate for many small businesses. A custom marketing site costs several times more. An ecommerce store costs several times more again. A web application is priced by developer time, not pages. Your domain is probably free if it is .com.np, and the cost nobody budgets for is maintenance.

A note on the numbers below. I am not going to invent precise figures and present them as market data. The ranges here are indicative, drawn from publicly published Nepali agency pricing and quotes I have seen clients receive. Prices move, vendors differ enormously, and you should get three quotes. What will not change is the structure of the cost, which is the genuinely useful part.

What actually drives the price

Page count is what everyone asks about and it is one of the weaker predictors. These matter more:

Original design versus a purchased theme. The single biggest fork. A theme costs a few thousand rupees and a few days of adaptation. Original design is weeks of work.
Functionality. A contact form is trivial. Payments, bookings, user accounts, inventory or dashboards are software, and software is priced by time.
Integrations. Payment gateways, delivery partners, a CRM or accounting system each add real work and real testing.
Who writes the content. Most quotes assume you supply it. Most clients assume the vendor writes it. This is the most common dispute in Nepali web projects.
Performance and SEO groundwork. Image optimisation, structured data, analytics, clean URL structure. Cheap builds omit all of it, which is precisely why they are cheap.
Who is building it. A student, a freelancer, a local agency and a senior developer are four different price points for the same brief.

Website design and development price in Nepal: the four tiers

1. Template site, five to ten pages

A purchased WordPress theme, your logo and colours, your text dropped in. Cheapest tier by a wide margin.

Right for: a small local business that needs to exist online credibly, show services, and be contactable. There is no shame in this tier and for many Kathmandu businesses it is the correct decision.

Watch for: themes loaded with page builders and plugins that produce a site taking many seconds to load on a mid-range Android phone. Ask for a PageSpeed Insights score on mobile before final payment.

2. Custom marketing website

Original design, built around your actual services and buyer questions, with performance work, structured data, analytics and conversion tracking included.

Right for: a business where the website is a real acquisition channel rather than a business card, and where you intend to invest in SEO or ads afterwards.

Why it costs more: because someone is making decisions about your specific buyers rather than filling in a layout. This is the tier where the website starts paying for itself, and it is the tier most Nepali businesses skip and then regret.

3. Ecommerce store

Product catalogue, cart, checkout, payment gateway, delivery charge logic, order management. Nepali stores usually also need cash on delivery handling, which is more work than it sounds because it changes order flow, confirmation and returns.

Cost drivers: number of products and variants, payment gateway integrations such as eSewa or Khalti, delivery zone rules for inside and outside the valley, and whether you need inventory sync. Once live, ongoing ecommerce SEO matters more than the build.

4. Web application or custom software

Dashboards, portals, booking systems, internal tools, anything with user accounts and business logic. Not a website in any meaningful sense and it should never be quoted by page count. Priced by developer time against a specification. See software development in Nepal.

The recurring costs, including the one that is free

Domain: probably free, and you may be being billed for it

This is the most useful thing on this page for a lot of readers. The .com.np domain is issued free of charge by Mercantile Communications, which administers the .np registry, provided you submit documentation such as a business registration certificate or citizenship document. There is no annual renewal fee.

A number of Nepali business owners are paying a vendor an annual fee for a domain that costs nothing. Check what you are being billed for. A .com international domain does carry a genuine annual registration fee and is the better choice if you sell abroad.

Hosting

Annual, and the range is wide. Cheap local shared hosting sits at the bottom; international hosting behind a content delivery network costs more and frequently performs better, including for Nepali visitors. Server location is a weak ranking signal, so choose on measured response time rather than on where the machine sits. More on this on the technical SEO page.

SSL certificate

Free, via Let's Encrypt, and it renews automatically. If SSL appears as a paid annual line item on your invoice without a specific reason, ask what you are buying.

Maintenance

The cost nobody budgets for and the one that bites. Updates, backups, security patching, plugin conflicts and small content changes. WordPress sites left unpatched for two years get compromised, and cleaning up an infected site costs more than a year of maintenance would have.

Six things usually missing from the quote

Content. Text for every page and every service. Assume you are writing it unless the quote says otherwise in writing.
Photography. Real photos of your premises, team and products. Stock images of foreign offices convince nobody.
Analytics and conversion tracking. Frequently omitted, which makes every later marketing decision guesswork.
Post-launch fixes. Ask what the support window is and what counts as a bug rather than a change.
Maintenance. Ask for the annual figure at quote stage, not at renewal.
SEO beyond the basics. A well-built site is eligible to rank. It does not rank by itself.

Who owns what, which matters more than the price

Before you pay a deposit, establish in writing that the domain is registered in your name or your company's, the hosting account is yours with your own login, you receive the source code and database on completion, and Google Analytics and Search Console are created under your account with the vendor added as a user.

Every one of these gets held hostage in this market often enough to be worth stating plainly. A vendor holding your domain can end your business's online presence during a billing dispute. This is the same principle that applies to marketing accounts, covered in hiring an SEO consultant.

Comparing website development company quotes in Kathmandu

Send all three vendors the same six questions and compare the answers rather than the totals:

Is the design original or based on a purchased theme? Which one?
Who writes the content, and how many pages does that cover?
Are analytics and conversion tracking configured before launch?
What mobile PageSpeed score will you deliver, and will you fix it if it is below that?
What is included after launch, for how long, and what does maintenance cost annually?
Do I receive the code, and are the domain and hosting in my name?

A vendor who answers these clearly and charges more is usually cheaper over three years than one who answers vaguely and charges less.

Why the cheapest quote often costs the most

The cheap build is not cheap because someone is being generous. It is cheap because the omitted work is real work: performance, tracking, content structure, indexation.

The pattern I see repeatedly is a business paying very little for a site, waiting a year for enquiries that never come, then paying for SEO on a foundation that cannot support it, then rebuilding within two years. The expensive part was never the invoice. It was two years of a website that never generated a customer.

That does not mean expensive is automatically better. It means asking what the price includes, and being suspicious when the answer is everything.

Common questions

How much does a website cost in Nepal?

It depends entirely on which of the four tiers you need. A quote without a scope is meaningless, because two five-page sites can differ tenfold in the work involved.

Is a .com.np domain free?

Yes, through Mercantile with the required documentation, and there is no renewal fee. Check whether you are being billed for one anyway.

What are the recurring costs?

Hosting annually, domain if you use a .com, and maintenance. SSL is free. Maintenance is the one people forget.

WordPress or custom?

WordPress is the right default for most small Nepali businesses. Custom when you need real functionality or performance as a competitive edge.

Why are the quotes so different?

Because they describe different products in the same words. Compare scope and ownership, not totals.

Send me the quotes you have received

If you have two or three proposals and cannot tell them apart, send them over. I will tell you what each one is actually offering and what is missing, whether or not you end up working with me.

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