What a small-business website really costs in Canada

Website pricing is foggier than custom software pricing, which is saying something, because the same word covers a $30-a-month DIY builder and a $50,000 agency production. Both are “a website.” So instead of one number, here’s the menu, with market-general Canadian ranges and what each tier buys.

The three tiers

DIY builders (Squarespace, Wix, Shopify for a simple store) run tens of dollars a month, plus your evenings. That last part is the real price. If you enjoy the work and your needs are simple, this is a legitimate answer and I’ll happily say so. The catch shows up later: builder sites tend to accumulate slowness and workarounds, and you can’t take the site with you when you leave.

Template-based builds, where a freelancer or small shop fits your content into an existing theme, typically land in the low thousands. Fine value when the template fits. The trap in this tier is paying custom-tier prices for template-tier work; if the quote is five figures, you should not be looking at a theme someone bought for $60.

Designed-and-built sites mean custom design, custom build, and copy that’s written rather than filled in. They generally run mid four figures into five, depending on size and how much of the writing, photography, and integration work is included. This is the tier I work in, and the real question before buying it is whether your business needs it. I’ve written a whole post on when you don’t.

What moves the number inside a tier

Page count matters less than people think. What matters: whether the copy exists or must be written; whether you need a CMS so your team can edit; integrations (booking, payments, CRM); and how much design is custom versus adapted. A five-page site with finished copy is a small project. A five-page site where “we’ll figure out the wording together” is not.

Performance is the invisible line item. A site that loads in under two seconds isn’t a luxury add-on. It’s the difference between ranking and not, converting and not. Slow has a measurable cost, and it’s usually more per year than the build.

Ongoing costs

Hosting for a well-built small-business site is cheap: often single-digit dollars a month, sometimes free on modern platforms. A domain is ~$20 a year. Care (updates, small changes, keeping things secure) varies by arrangement.

What ongoing costs should never be: hundreds a month of unexplained “maintenance” on a site nobody is touching. And watch for the trap in some agency deals where the monthly fee is a rental in disguise. Stop paying and the site vanishes, because you never owned it. Whoever builds yours, ask one question: if we part ways, do I keep the site? The answer tells you most of what you need to know about the company.

How to buy well

Decide the job first. Is the site a brochure, a lead machine, or a store? Then buy the cheapest tier that does that job, from someone who lets you own the result. If you’re not sure which tier that is, send me what you’ve got. Sometimes the right answer is “stay on Squarespace,” and I’ll say so.