How much does a website cost in Canada in 2026?

A professional small business website costs $2,000 to $8,000 from a freelancer and $8,000 to $25,000 from an agency. DIY template builders run $200 to $600 per year. Custom builds and e-commerce start around $15,000 and can exceed $75,000. On top of the build, budget $300 to $3,000 per year for hosting, domain, licences and maintenance.

How much does a small business website cost?

Most Canadian small businesses should budget $2,000 to $8,000 for a five-to-fifteen-page site built by a competent freelancer, including custom design, mobile-responsive build, basic on-page SEO and contact forms. Copywriting and photography are usually quoted separately, which is the most common reason a quote grows before invoicing.

What are the ongoing costs of a website?

Domain registration is $15 to $50 per year, hosting $120 to $1,200, SSL from free to $200, plugin or theme licences $100 to $600, and maintenance $600 to $3,000. Budget $300 to $600 per year for a simple site you maintain yourself, or $1,500 to $3,000 for a site on an agency care plan. A website is not a one-time purchase.

Is it cheaper to build my own website?

In cash, yes — $200 to $600 per year on a template builder. In real terms it is closer than it looks, because a DIY build takes most owners 20 to 40 hours. If your time is worth $75 an hour, that is a $2,000 to $3,500 project. DIY makes sense for validating a new business or when customers arrive by referral rather than search.

How long does it take to build a website?

A DIY template site takes one to four weeks. A freelance build runs three to eight weeks, an agency project six to fourteen weeks, and a custom or e-commerce build three to nine months. The most common cause of delay is not development but content — projects stall waiting on copy and photos from the client.

Do I need a new website or better marketing?

Rebuild if the site is not mobile-responsive, loads in more than four seconds, cannot be edited, runs unsupported software, or has content that is simply wrong. If the site looks dated but works and your real problem is that nobody visits it, the money is better spent on traffic. A beautiful site with no visitors produces the same number of leads as an ugly one with no visitors.

Why do website quotes vary so much?

Because you are not paying for pages, you are paying for decisions and hours. A cheap site is a template with your logo added. An expensive one involved research into what your customers search for, copy written to answer it, and a page structure built to convert. Page count can be identical while the underlying work differs by tens of thousands of dollars.

How Much Does a Website Cost in Canada? 2026 Guide

Real 2026 website costs in Canada: DIY builders, freelancers, agencies and custom builds — plus the ongoing fees most quotes leave out.

A professional small business website in Canada costs $2,000 to $8,000 from a freelancer and $8,000 to $25,000 from an agency in 2026. A DIY site built on a template platform costs $200 to $600 per year and nothing but your time. Custom builds and e-commerce start around $15,000 and run past $75,000 for anything genuinely complex.

By Arjun Sharma, Founder of AP Digital. Published 2026-08-21.