Disclosure: I work at ZoopCoder, an Indian development agency that builds e-commerce stores. So I sell the thing this post is about. Every number below is either our own published price or a third-party rate you can verify yourself, and I have flagged which is which. There is a section near the end on when you should not build a store at all.

If you are picking a platform for an Indian store and you have been reading cost comparisons written for a US audience, one line item is missing from all of them, and it is large enough to change the answer.

Shopify Payments does not operate in India

Shopify has its own in-house payment processor, Shopify Payments. In markets where it operates, using it means Shopify charges you no transaction fee — you pay the card rate and nothing else.

It is not available in India. So an Indian merchant has to connect a third-party gateway — Razorpay, PayU, Cashfree. And when you process through a third-party gateway, Shopify charges an additional transaction fee on every order: