This is the most constrained website we build, and the constraint is the entire point. A CA in practice cannot market like a consultancy: ICAI's ethical standards restrict advertising and solicitation, and a firm site that borrows the language of a marketing agency creates a disciplinary exposure rather than a pipeline. It is not for you if you want testimonials, client logos and claims of being the best firm in your city — we will decline those.
The governing constraint
A website for chartered accountants is governed before it is designed. Practising CAs are bound by ICAI's Code of Ethics and Council guidelines, which restrict advertising and solicitation of professional work. A firm website is permitted, but it has historically been treated on a pull basis: a person seeking you finds it, rather than it being pushed at people who did not ask. That single principle explains most of the specific restrictions that follow.
What a website for chartered accountants may broadly carry, and what we build with: firm and member names, membership and firm registration numbers, office addresses and contact details, partner and staff details with qualifications, the services offered, and the areas in which the practice has experience. Factual, verifiable, informational.
Broadly restricted, and what we leave out: claims of superiority or comparison with other firms, client names and logos, testimonials, and anything resembling a solicitation such as unsolicited bulk announcements. The treatment of fee display and photographs has been narrower than most professionals expect and has changed across revisions of the guidance.
One honest caveat, because it matters more than a confident answer would. ICAI's ethical standards have been revised more than once, including a substantially restructured Code of Ethics, and the detail on specific items has shifted between versions. We build to the conservative reading and flag anything borderline in writing rather than deciding it for you — and for genuinely marginal items, the right step is a note to the Ethical Standards Board before publishing, not a designer's judgement.
What's included
A page per service — direct tax, GST, statutory audit, ROC and company law, transfer pricing — describing what the engagement involves. Informational rather than promotional, which is both the requirement and what a prospective client is actually reading for.
Names, membership numbers, qualifications and areas of specialisation. Firm registration number displayed. For a professional practice this factual disclosure is the credibility mechanism, and it is expressly the permitted kind.
A client area for exchanging documents rather than passing statements and PANs through WhatsApp and personal email. Access controlled, and no client identity exposed publicly anywhere on the site.
Statutory due dates published as a genuine reference — GST returns, TDS, advance tax, ROC filings, ITR. Useful to existing clients, and one of the few things a practice site can legitimately publish that also earns search visibility.
The specifics
| Element | Our position | Reasoning |
|---|---|---|
| Firm name, address, contact | Included | Plainly permitted informational detail |
| Membership & firm registration no. | Included | Factual disclosure, expected on a practice site |
| Services and practice areas | Included | Permitted description of work undertaken |
| Partner qualifications | Included | Factual, verifiable |
| Client names or logos | Excluded | Confidentiality and solicitation exposure |
| Testimonials | Excluded | Reads as advertising under the Code |
| "Leading" / "best" claims | Never | Comparative claims are clearly restricted |
| Fee schedules | Flagged, not published | Treatment has varied across revisions |
| Bulk announcement emails | Never | Push communication, not a pull website |
Outside the metros
A district-town practice is chosen on personal reputation and referral long before a website is opened, so the site's job is different: it confirms a decision rather than creating one. Someone has been given your name, and they are checking that the firm is real, registered, and reachable. Firm registration number, office address, a map and a working phone number do almost all of that work — which is convenient, because they are also the parts ICAI plainly permits.
The client base skews toward proprietors, traders and small manufacturers who need GST returns, TDS and ITR filed rather than transfer pricing advice. The practice area pages should reflect that reality in the order they appear, and describe the compliance in language a business owner recognises rather than in section references.
Language is a genuine consideration and an awkward one. Clients in smaller cities often discuss their affairs in Hindi, Marathi or Gujarati, and explanatory content in the regional language is valuable. But explanatory content is exactly where a practice can drift from informing into soliciting, so we keep it strictly factual — what a notice means and what the deadline is, not why you should engage this firm.
Document exchange is the practical differentiator here. Clients photograph documents on a phone and send them over WhatsApp, which is convenient and a poor place for financial records. A simple upload area they can use from the same phone, that does not demand a desktop or a password manager, gets adopted where a formal portal does not.
Transparent pricing
Fixed price, quoted before work begins. Smaller scope than a commercial site because the permitted content is narrower.
All prices in INR, exclusive of GST. We do not add testimonials, client logos or comparative claims to a CA practice site on any package.
Common questions
Yes. A practice website is permitted, and has historically been treated on a pull basis — someone seeking you finds it, rather than it being pushed to people who did not ask. What is restricted is the promotional layer: comparative claims, testimonials, client names, and unsolicited announcements. The informational core of a firm site is entirely acceptable.
This is one of the items whose treatment has been narrower than most professionals expect and has changed across revisions of the guidance, so we flag it rather than publish it by default. Our conservative position is to leave fee schedules off the site and handle them on enquiry. If you want them displayed, seek written confirmation from ICAI first — that call is yours, not ours.
Two reasons. Client identities raise a confidentiality question independent of any advertising rule, and testimonials read as promotional endorsement under the Code of Ethics. Both risks sit with you, not with us, and neither adds much for a practice chosen on referral. Membership number, firm registration number and clearly described practice areas do more.
A sole practitioner site with practice area pages and a compliance calendar starts at ₹19,999. A partnership firm with per-partner profiles and a secure client document area is typically ₹34,999. Multi-office firms are quoted at scoping. These are lower than comparable commercial sites, largely because the permitted content is narrower.
Fourteen working days for a sole practitioner and around twenty-one for a partnership. The step that takes longest is not design — it is agreeing the wording of practice area descriptions, because that is where informational drifts into promotional. We draft conservatively and mark anything we consider borderline for your decision.
Factual explanatory content — what a notification says, what the deadline is, what it means procedurally — is generally the safest and most useful thing a practice can publish, and it earns genuine search visibility. Where it becomes risky is the turn from explaining the change to positioning the firm as the one to engage. We keep that line explicit in the content structure.
Related
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