What a small business website should cost in Canada.

Straight answer first: it depends on what you need. But "it depends" is how people get overcharged, so here are the honest ranges and what actually moves the price.

The honest ranges

In Canada, a small business website usually lands in one of three places:

• Do-it-yourself builders (Wix, Squarespace, and the like): roughly $15 to $40 a month, plus a weekend of your time. Fine as a placeholder, but rarely built to actually bring in work.
• A freelancer: somewhere between $800 and $3,000 for a small site. Quality swings hard depending on who you get.
• An agency: $6,000 to $25,000 and up. You're often paying for process and account managers a local shop doesn't need.

What actually drives the price

Two sites can cost wildly different amounts for good reasons. The big ones:

• How many pages, and whether the design is custom or a template.
• Who writes the words and sorts the photos, you or them.
• Extra features like online booking or quote forms.
• Whether anyone looks after it once it's live.

What a local business actually needs

Most local businesses need a handful of pages that load fast on a phone, say clearly what you do, and make it easy to call or ask for a quote. That's it. You do not need a $20,000 build to book more jobs.

What to watch out for

• "Free" websites that quietly rent you pages you never actually own.
• Rock-bottom offshore mills that vanish the moment something breaks.
• Monthly fees with no clear answer on whether the site is ever handed over to you.

The fix is simple: ask for one flat price, and ask whether you own everything at the end. That's how we do it, and we're happy to tell you the number before you commit.