What a Small-Business Website Really Costs in Ontario (2026)

If you've started asking what a website costs, you've probably already noticed the strangest thing about the answer: it ranges from $25 a month to $12,000 up front, and everyone insists their number is the honest one. Here's the whole market, laid out fairly.

The four ways Ontario businesses buy websites

DIY builders ($25–60/month). Wix, Squarespace and friends. Cheap to start, and genuinely fine if you have the evenings and the patience. The catch isn't the tool — it's that the site is a job, and it's yours. Most owner-built sites go up once and quietly fossilize, because the owner has an actual business to run.

Freelancers ($600–3,000 one-time). Often talented, sometimes a steal. The structural problem comes later: the build is a project, not a relationship. When the freelancer moves on, so does everyone who knew how your site works. "Unmaintained since launch" is the default fate.

Agencies ($3,500–12,000 builds). You get process, polish and accountability — and you pay for every hour of it, because an agency sells labour. Every site is billable time, so every site must carry those hours in its price. That's not greed; it's their cost structure.

Managed subscriptions ($200–700/month). The site plus its upkeep as a service. Quality varies enormously — some are agencies in subscription clothing, some are template mills.

So why are we $150–250 a month with more included?

Fair question — a skeptic should ask it. The answer is cost structure, not corners.

An agency's marginal cost for your site is high because someone rebuilds the wheel each time. We built the wheel once: a platform where hosting, the CRM, quoting, invoicing, the AI chat assistant and review tools already exist and every new site rides them. The marginal cost of your site is close to zero, so the price can follow. It's the same reason a factory beats a workshop on price at the same quality — not by cutting material, but by not paying to reinvent the product per customer.

What's actually included at each price

Let the table argue. If a $5,000 build plus retainers fits your budget and you value a bespoke process, agencies are a legitimate choice. If you want the outcomes in that right-hand column without the agency cost structure, that's precisely the gap we built for.

See exactly what each plan includes — current pricing and add-ons →