What a small business website actually costs in Ontario

There are two numbers, and you need both

The build is design, writing, structure, forms, and getting it live. It happens once. The monthly is hosting, the SSL certificate, software updates, backups, security, and somebody actually changing things when your business changes. That second part is the one people forget they are buying, and it is the one that decides whether the site is still worth having in year three.

I have seen plenty of sites that were paid for properly and then abandoned. The phone number is two numbers old. The hours are the pandemic hours. There is a service listed that the owner stopped offering in 2023. None of that is a design problem. It is what happens when nobody owns the site after launch.

A useful way to compare quotes: add the build to twelve months of the monthly, then to thirty-six months of it. A build that looks expensive against one that looks affordable often swaps places by month eighteen. Do the arithmetic before you sign, not after.

What the published guides say

These are the ranges I can point at a document for. They are guides, not quotes, and a range is not a price — the bottom of any of these is a simpler job than the top. Every one was checked on 2026-08-18, and every one links out so you can read it yourself rather than take my word for it.

Two things to notice. The build ranges overlap but do not agree, because “a website” describes a five-page brochure and a booking system with equal accuracy. And the ongoing figures are the ones that compound: a monthly at the top of the care range is more money over three years than most of the build ranges above it.

What I could not find is a local number. Two independent searches for what Niagara agencies charge returned quote forms and “contact us” rather than prices. That is a description of what I found, not an accusation about anyone — but it does mean you are going to have to collect two or three real quotes yourself if you want a local comparison.

What the monthly is actually paying for

When a monthly line is vague, it is usually vague on purpose. Here is what a real one covers, in the order that matters if something goes wrong at 9pm on a Friday:

• Hosting and the certificate. The site is online and the padlock is valid. An expired certificate makes a browser warn people away from your business, and it expires on a schedule whether anyone is watching or not.
• Updates and backups. Every platform ships security patches. Unpatched sites are not targeted personally — they are found by scanners that do not know or care what trade you are in.
• Changes. Prices move, staff change, you drop a service and add another. If every edit is a separate invoice, you will stop asking, and the site will quietly go stale.
• Somebody to call. The forms stop arriving, the domain is up for renewal, Google flags something. Knowing who to phone is a real part of what you are buying.

Ask a prospective supplier to tell you which of those four they include. The answer, more than the number beside it, tells you what you are actually signing up for.

Why the same site can cost two very different amounts

Most of the spread comes from four things, and none of them is how pretty the design is.

How much content already exists

If you have photos of your own work and can describe your services in your own words, that is hours nobody has to spend inventing them. If everything has to be written and shot from scratch, that is real work and it belongs on the quote.

How many pages carry a job

A page per service you actually want calls about is worth building. Fifteen pages nobody searches for is a bigger invoice and a slower site.

Whether anything has to talk to anything else

Booking, payments, inventory, a CRM. Each connection is a thing that can break and therefore a thing somebody has to maintain.

Who owns it afterwards

A site you cannot move, on a platform you do not control, with a domain registered in somebody else's name, is cheaper right up until the day you want to leave.

What we charge

Our prices are published on the pricing section of our homepage — the build fee and the monthly, per package, with what is in each one. I am not going to retype them here, because the page is the source and a blog post that drifts out of date is how people end up quoting you a number that no longer exists.

Two things worth knowing before you look. Our monthly includes a set number of content changes, so a price update does not generate an invoice. And there is a side-by-side comparison page that puts our numbers against the published ranges in the table above, including the places where we do not come out ahead.

Five questions to ask before you pay anybody

1. What is the total for the first twelve months, build and monthly together?
2. Who owns the domain, the hosting account and the site files if we part ways?
3. How many changes are included each month, and what does a change beyond that cost?
4. What happens to the site if I stop paying the monthly — does it come down, or does it just stop being maintained?
5. Is search work included, or quoted separately? If it is included, what specifically is being done?

Any supplier worth hiring can answer all five in one call without checking with anyone. If you would rather just ask us, book a callback — it is two fields and we will tell you what your situation costs, including when the answer is that you do not need us yet.