It is a fair question, and most answers to it are a range so wide it answers nothing. Ours is shorter: four packages, each with a fixed price in Canadian dollars before tax, stated before we start.
Our packages and prices
Lite
$1,490one-time
When people need to find you, see what you do and get in touch.
Standard
$2,690one-time
When every service you offer deserves its own page.
Business
$4,490one-time, domain and hosting for the first year
Everything in Standard, plus selling through the site.
Pro
from $7,490one-time, domain and hosting for the first year
When the site has to do exactly what you have in mind.
What each package includes is on Pricing. The rest of this page is the longer answer: what decides the price of a website, what others charge, when something cheaper is the right choice, and what you pay after launch.
The right price is the smallest package that does the job. Sometimes that is not a package at all.
What decides the price
A website is priced by the work it takes, and the work follows from a handful of decisions. Among them:
- how many pages it needs, usually one for each service you offer
- whether the design starts from a proven system or is drawn to your own brief
- whether it sells online, and how many products the store carries
- who writes the text, you or us
- how many languages it speaks
- whether it connects to something else, such as a booking calendar, a CRM, inventory or accounting
- and the rest of what the site has to do, which is why Pro is priced from a written specification
That is why our packages are fenced by what they include, not by hours. Lite covers up to five pages and one form, Standard up to twenty pages and two forms, Business any number of pages and an online store, and Pro whatever the specification says. The surcharges for writing the text and for extra languages are stated on each package page.
What others charge
Two Canadian sources give a sense of the market. BDC, the Business Development Bank of Canada, writes that for most of its clients the initial build of a website costs $10,000 to $30,000. CIRA, which runs the .ca registry, puts freelance developers at $40 to $100 an hour and agencies upwards of $75 to $200 an hour, or a set fee per project.
Our prices sit below those agency figures because the work is fenced. Lite and Standard start from our own design system, built for your business, so the hours go into your pages rather than into reinventing a menu. Business and Pro are designed to your brief, and their prices reflect it. A fixed price also puts the risk of the estimate on us: if the agreed work takes longer than we planned, the price stays the same.
Need someone who does this every day?
Consultations are free and commit you to nothing.
When a cheaper option is the right one
Sometimes the honest answer is not one of our packages. If you are starting out, work one trade in one town and get most of your work by referral, a complete Google Business Profile can carry the first months on its own. The page on websites and Google Business Profiles explains when.
If you enjoy building things yourself and have the evenings for it, a website builder such as Wix or Squarespace gets a simple site online for a monthly subscription. You trade money for your time, and the site stays on that platform. When you want a site built around how your customers search and decide, and one you own outright, that is where we come in.
If one of these is the right answer for you, we say so at the free estimate.
What you pay after launch
The build is paid once. What continues is the domain and the hosting, for as long as the site exists. Business and Pro include both for the first year. After that, and from the start on Lite and Standard, hosting on our Canadian server is $290 a year with SSL, daily backups and business email, and the domain is charged at cost. The page on domain and hosting explains the two.
Everything else is optional. You update the content yourself with the guide we write for your site, or website maintenance takes care of updates, security and backups from $79 a month, with hosting included. SEO, if you want the site found for more than your name, is a monthly service of its own, on SEO services.
The quickest way to a number for your own site is to describe it. Ask for a free estimate: we reply within one business day with the package that fits and its price, and the estimate commits you to nothing.