Web design

How much does a website cost in Canada? (2026)

Published June 1, 2026 · 5 min read

Here are the real ranges, then the part that decides whether any of it was worth it. We rebuild a lot of the cheap ones, so the second part is where we earn our keep.

What it costs, by tier (Canada, 2026, typical)

• Do it yourself on Squarespace, Wix, or Shopify: about 20 to 50 dollars a month plus your time. A real option for a brand-new business.
• Freelancer or small shop: roughly 1,500 to 5,000 dollars for a standard small business site.
• Agency build: roughly 5,000 to 15,000 dollars, more when it includes copywriting, original photography, custom features, and proper tracking.
• Custom or multi-location with tools and integrations: above that, quoted by scope.

Those are typical, not a quote. Your number moves with what the site has to do, not how many pages it has.

The one question that exposes a bad cheap quote

Ask where the site will be hosted and whose name the domain is registered in. The cheap builds that land on our desk are almost always hosted inside the last provider's account, with the domain in their name. The owner cannot leave, cannot get a backup, and cannot even prove they own their own website. That is the true price of the lowest quote, and it never appears on the invoice. You should own the domain, the hosting, and the code, full stop.

The cost that is not on the invoice

A year of a site that gets visitors and books nothing. Put a rough number on it: if a working site brings in even two extra jobs a month at 1,500 dollars each, that is 36,000 dollars a year. A site that does not do that is not cheap at any price. Most do not, because they were built to look finished, not to convert. That is the gap between a 6,000 dollar site that earns and a 600 dollar site that just sits there. Some DIY sites do book work, to be fair, but almost none of the ones we are asked to replace did.

Where the money should go

Into the parts that convert: a clear offer, copy that sells, a fast mobile page, and one page built to rank for the thing people actually search. We shoot the photos and video ourselves through our studio, Arc Creative, so you are not staring at stock images of someone else's office, and you own everything when we are done.

Common questions