What actually matters when picking a website builder in Nepal
Sooner or later every shopkeeper hears it. From a regular customer, from a nephew home for Dashain, from the supplier's rep with the new price list: you should have a website. Fair enough. But search for one and the whole first page of results is written for shops in America. Prices in dollars, payments through Stripe, address forms that demand a ZIP code. None of it maps onto a bakery in Baneshwor or an electronics shop on New Road.
So before comparing platforms, agree on the actual job. For most Nepali shops it is simple: a customer hears about you, opens your name on a mid-range Android over mobile data, sees real products with real prices in rupees, and then orders, books, or walks in. Everything else is decoration.
The checklist that actually matters
Whatever you look at, hold it against five questions:
- Is it priced in NPR, and can you start without an international card? If the subscription itself needs a dollar card, you are stuck on day one.
- Can customers pay the way they already pay? eSewa, Khalti, cash at the counter, "I will pay when I collect". Not PayPal.
- Does it load on the phones your customers own? Nobody in your galli is browsing on fibre from a laptop. If a page crawls on mobile data, it may as well not exist.
- Does it understand Nepali shop life? Nepali beside English, addresses like "opposite the Ganesh mandir", and a printed bill with your PAN number on it, because that is what a proper shop hands over.
- Can you run it yourself? Set up in an evening, changed from your own phone when the milk price moves. Not a NPR 40,000 developer project where every small edit means another phone call.
Hold each option against that list and the comparison mostly makes itself.
Global builders: Wix and Squarespace
Credit where due: these are polished, mature tools with lovely templates, and millions of businesses abroad run on them happily. The trouble is where those businesses are.
The bill comes in dollars, say 17 US dollars a month, which is roughly NPR 2,300 and drifts with the exchange rate. Paying it needs an international card, which already rules out many shopkeepers. Then the bigger wall: taking money online through them assumes Stripe or PayPal, and neither serves Nepali merchants, so even a beautifully built checkout cannot actually collect from a customer in Kirtipur. The address forms ask for states and ZIP codes. Nobody on their support team has ever heard of a PAN bill.
There is one case where they fit well: customers abroad. A Patan handicraft workshop shipping singing bowls to Germany earns in dollars and can sensibly pay in dollars. But for a shop whose customers cross the road to reach it, you are paying foreign prices for plumbing that points the wrong way.
Daraz: a stall in someone else's bazaar
A marketplace is a different shape altogether. Daraz brings you buyers who are already there, and that is genuinely worth something, especially for moving stock.
But you are one listing among thousands, sorted by price against every other seller of the same kettle. A commission comes off every sale. And the customer never becomes yours: they searched for a product, not for your shop, and next month they will buy from whoever is NPR 50 cheaper. There is no shop identity to build and no regulars to keep.
It also only fits things that go in a box. A salon in Jawalakhel cannot list a haircut on Daraz, and a cafe cannot list a table.
The Facebook page you already run
For many shops the Facebook page is the website today, and it is not nothing: it is free, and everyone is on it.
The problems appear as you grow. Orders arrive as Messenger chats that you retype by hand at nine at night. Prices live in old posts, so a customer argues from a photo you uploaded two years ago. The algorithm decides whether your Tihar offer reaches even the people who already follow you. And there is no structure: no menu a customer can order from, no booking slots, no bill at the end.
Keep the page. It is your loudspeaker. But a loudspeaker needs somewhere to point.
A platform built here: where Pasal fits
Pasal is a Nepali platform built for exactly the shops above: cafes, restaurants, bakeries, grocery, clothing, salons, electronics, event venues, handicraft, furniture, jewellery, skincare. Run it through the same five questions.
Pricing is in NPR, and you can get started without an international card. The site works in Nepali and English. There are ten designed templates, drawn for real trades rather than one generic storefront, and you can connect a custom domain so the address on your signboard is your own name, not a subfolder of someone else's.
Then the trade-specific parts, which is where a local platform earns its keep. A cafe in Thamel gets QR ordering at the table, so the tourist orders without flagging anyone down. A salon takes bookings. A venue sells event tickets with QR check-in at the door. A kirana shop gets a digital khata, the credit book, on a phone instead of in a copybook only one person can read. At the counter there is a till, printed PAN and VAT invoices, counter discounts, and promo codes and loyalty points for the Dashain rush. When an order comes in, the customer gets an email confirming it.
And the honest part: eSewa and Khalti support is coming but is not live yet. Today an order arrives with the customer's details and you take payment the way you already do, at the counter, on delivery, or in the khata. If online wallet payment is the one thing you need this week, plan around that. That is the straight answer.
The trade-offs, said plainly
No option is free of them, including the local one.
A global builder gives more design freedom than any template system; if you want pixel-level control and have dollar income, it is a fine tool. Daraz will hand you strangers ready to buy in a way your own website never will on day one; plenty of shops sensibly run both, Daraz for volume and their own site for margin and regulars. Facebook remains the best free megaphone in the country, and you should keep shouting through it.
What a platform like Pasal gives up in blank-canvas freedom, it returns in fit: rupee pricing, Nepali language, PAN bills, khata, and the small daily machinery of an actual Nepali counter. You choose a template and make it yours in an evening, rather than designing from nothing over a month.
So which one should you pick?
Match the tool to the shop:
- Customers abroad, paid in dollars: a global builder is reasonable.
- Boxed stock to shift at volume: list on Daraz, with your margins in mind.
- No time and no money this month: keep the Facebook page alive, but treat it as the signboard, not the shop.
- A real counter in Nepal serving Nepali customers: pick something built for that, priced in rupees, speaking your customer's language, printing a proper bill.
That last one is the gap Pasal was made for. When you have a quiet evening and your price list to hand, https://pasal.studio/start will take you from empty page to live shop in about five minutes.