A small business website in Canada costs as little as $170 a year, while a large, complex gaming or e-commerce site runs $30,000 or more in design and development, GoDaddy reports. Scope decides where you land. BDC found Canadian firms under $2 million in annual sales spent an average of $19,652 on their website over three years.
Website quotes for the same brief can land thousands of dollars apart, and nothing in the proposals explains why. One shop sends a two-page PDF with a single number at the bottom. Another sends twelve pages of line items. The owner is left guessing which one is normal and whether either number is fair.
This guide puts the published Canadian figures first, then the scope decisions that move a quote up or down. We have built websites since 2021 on Webflow, WordPress and Shopify for clients across Canada, including four New Brunswick law firms, restaurants, a Shopify marketplace and software startups. The patterns below come from those projects and from sources you can check yourself.
It is written for owners of small and mid-sized Canadian businesses who are about to request quotes: law firms, restaurants, trades, professional services and small online stores. By the end you will know what a build should cover, what year two costs, why three agencies price the same brief differently, and what to send so the numbers that come back are real.
A small business website can cost as little as $170 a year at the do-it-yourself end, while a large, complex gaming or e-commerce site runs $30,000 or more in design and development costs, according to GoDaddy's Canadian cost guide. The route you choose, and the amount of work inside it, decides where your project sits in that span.
GoDaddy breaks every website into five basic elements: a domain name, hosting, web design and build, website security and marketing. Its upfront figure for the design and build element alone is $0 to $10,000 and up, which covers everything from a template you assemble yourself to a site built for you by a developer.
| Route | What it usually includes | Published figure (CAD) | Time basis |
|---|---|---|---|
| DIY website builder | template, subscription, your own content | small business site from about $170, GoDaddy | per year |
| Freelancer or agency build | design and build of the site itself | $0 to $10,000 and up, GoDaddy | upfront |
| Custom development, large or complex e-commerce | bespoke functionality and systems | $30,000 or more, GoDaddy | design and development cost |
| Care plan after launch | hosting, security updates, backups, content edits | quoted per site | monthly |
DIY genuinely wins when you need a single landing page this week and you are the one who will maintain it. It stops winning when the site has to sell, rank and run bookings while you run the business. You can see real project examples to compare scope against outcome.
A reasonable price is the one that covers your real scope and the three years after launch, not the lowest number in the pile. Research cited by BDC found Canadian businesses with less than $2 million in annual sales spent an average of $19,652 on their website over three years.
Read that as a total cost of ownership rather than a quote. It wraps the original build together with the redesigns, new pages and fixes a business pays for as it grows. Judging a single proposal against it tells you very little; planning three years of spend against it tells you plenty.
Our own business website projects typically begin around $5,000 CAD, quoted as one fixed price after a free consultation, with no hourly billing. What pushes a project above that starting point is volume and custom work rather than any single feature.
The mistake we see most often is comparing a cheap template site to a custom build as if they were the same product. They are not. In our experience the template site is usually rebuilt within two years, which means the second invoice arrives before the first one has paid for itself. Our web design services page sets out what a full build covers.
What you pay to hire someone depends far more on the scope you hand over than on whether that person calls themselves a freelancer or an agency. The published design and build figure from GoDaddy runs from nothing to five figures upfront; content, integrations and bilingual requirements are what move a project through that range.
Here is how the scope differs by the business types we work with across New Brunswick and Atlantic Canada:
Platform choice shifts where money goes more than it shifts the total. We have built on WordPress, Webflow and Shopify since 2021, and the bigger cost lever is always content and integrations rather than the CMS badge on the footer.
| Platform | Suits | Who edits after launch | Billing note |
|---|---|---|---|
| WordPress | content-heavy sites, blogs, plugin-based functionality | staff, after training | hosting and premium plugins are billed separately |
| Webflow | design-led marketing sites with tight visual control | owners editing text and images | Webflow bills in USD |
| Shopify | product catalogues, checkout, shipping rules | owners managing products daily | Shopify shows Canadian merchants CAD pricing, while many Shopify apps bill in USD |
The currency detail matters when you budget. A plan that looks modest in USD lands differently on a Canadian statement once exchange is applied, and app subscriptions stack month after month.
Two questions decide the platform faster than any feature list. Who will edit the site next year, and does the business sell online? If the answer to the second is yes, the catalogue and the checkout rules drive the quote. If the answer is no, pick whatever your team will actually keep current.
Yearly costs are the line owners under-budget, and they start the month after launch. GoDaddy puts a domain at around $20 a year and lists web hosting at $65 to $700 and up, website security at $0 to $325 and up, and search engine optimisation at $1,700 to $5,000, all as upfront costs.
| Ongoing line item | Year one | Year two onward |
|---|---|---|
| Domain name (.ca or .com) | about $20 a year, GoDaddy | renews at the registry rate |
| Web hosting | $65 to $700 and up upfront, GoDaddy | passed through from a third-party host |
| Security and SSL | $0 to $325 and up upfront, GoDaddy | renews with the host or certificate provider |
| Care plan: updates, backups, edits | usually starts at launch | quoted per site |
| SEO | $1,700 to $5,000 upfront, GoDaddy | priced to your goals |
BDC's guidance on maintenance contracts notes that most web firms do not host client sites on their own servers, so hosting is bought from a third-party provider and transferred to the client monthly or yearly, and is rarely negotiable. Ask to see that provider's terms before you sign.
We offer monthly care plans covering hosting, security updates, backups and content edits, quoted per site. Local SEO setup is included in every build we do, and at many agencies it is a separate line item. Ongoing search work is a separate decision, and our local SEO services in Saint John page explains what that looks like.
Because they are not quoting the same project. Your brief leaves gaps, and each shop fills those gaps with its own assumptions before it writes a number.
BDC's advice on website budgets is blunt about this: there is no magic formula, and you should be skeptical of any developer who gives you a price without spending time understanding your business and building a feature list that matches your objectives.
Send the scope, not just the goal. Agencies price risk, and every unanswered question in your brief gets padded or quietly excluded.
Most of our small business builds take six to twelve weeks, and waiting on content and feedback is the usual bottleneck. Ask any agency how payments are staged and what each stage needs from you, so the schedule is a shared commitment rather than a hope.
Price follows scope. Decide your pages, your content, your integrations and who writes what, then ask every agency to quote that same written list, and the spread between the quotes narrows into something you can actually compare. Budget year two alongside the build, because the domain, hosting, security and care plan keep running long after launch day.
We have built websites since 2021 on Webflow, WordPress and Shopify for New Brunswick law firms, restaurants, a Shopify marketplace and software startups, and we were voted Community Votes Saint John Platinum for Web Design in 2023 and 2024. If you want one fixed number written against a clear scope, book a free consultation with our team in Saint John.
