A professional website costs $2,500 to $8,000 CAD to build, and roughly $600 to $3,000 CAD a year to keep running. That is the whole answer for most small businesses in Alberta. Simple sites land at the bottom of both ranges, e-commerce sits well above them, and everything else falls somewhere in between depending on how much of it is custom.
The reason nobody gives you a straight number is that "website" covers a two-page landing site and a 500-product store with equal accuracy. So this article does the thing most pricing pages avoid: it splits the cost into the money you pay once, the money you pay every year, and the money you pay every month — and shows what changes each one.
The three numbers you actually need
| Cost type | What it covers | Typical range (CAD) |
|---|---|---|
| Up front (one time) | Design, build, copywriting, launch | $2,500 – $8,000 |
| Per year | Hosting, domain, updates, backups, support | $600 – $3,000 |
| Per month | The same, divided up | $50 – $250 |
| Marketing (optional, monthly) | SEO, ads, content, social | $500 – $5,000+ |
That last row is the one that surprises people. Marketing is not part of the website cost, but it is usually the difference between a site that pays for itself and a site that sits there. Budget for it separately and honestly.
How much does a website cost to build?
Build cost is driven by complexity, not page count. Here is the ladder.
Under $500 — do it yourself
A website builder subscription and your own weekends. Legitimate if you are testing an idea or your business genuinely runs on word of mouth. The real cost is your time, and the usual outcome is a site that stays 80% finished for two years.
$1,500 to $3,000 — template, professionally set up
Someone else's design, configured properly with your content, your photos and a working contact form. Fast, credible, and enough for a lot of new businesses. You are paying for execution, not for design thinking.
$3,000 to $8,000 — custom small business site
Where most established businesses belong. The layout is built around your services and the action you want a visitor to take, the copy is written rather than filled in, and the technical structure supports being found in search. This is the tier where a website starts behaving like a salesperson instead of a brochure.
$10,000 to $25,000 — complex custom design
Multiple locations, large service catalogues, booking systems, member areas, integrations with the software you already run. More design, far more testing.
$20,000 and up — e-commerce
Payments, inventory, shipping rules, tax handling, and a checkout that has to work perfectly on the worst phone your customer owns. Stores are software projects that happen to look like websites.
The right question is not what a website costs. It is what it costs you to not have a good one.
How much does a website cost per year?
Once it is live, a small business site typically costs $600 to $3,000 CAD a year. That breaks down roughly like this:
- Domain renewal — typically $15 to $30 a year for a .com or .ca. Set it to auto-renew.
- Hosting — shared hosting typically runs $5 to $20 a month; managed WordPress hosting typically runs $30 to $60.
- SSL certificate — free and automatic on most modern hosts. If it is a line item on your invoice, ask why.
- Plugin and software licences — anywhere from nothing to several hundred dollars a year, depending on what the site was built with.
- Updates, backups and support — the human part. Free if you do it yourself and are disciplined about it, otherwise the largest recurring line.
We went through this in detail in our guide to what it costs to maintain a website. The short version: the non-negotiable technical costs are small. The cost is having someone accountable for them.
How much does a website cost per month?
Divide the annual figure and you get $50 to $250 CAD a month for a typical small business site. Under $50 means you are doing the maintenance yourself. Over $250 usually means you have bought growth — content, SEO, ad management — rather than upkeep.
Be careful with monthly website offers that bundle the build into the subscription. Some are good value. Others are a lease: stop paying and the site disappears, because you never owned it. Ask who holds the domain and the hosting account, and ask what you keep if you leave.
What makes one quote $2,500 and another $12,000
Five things, most of the time.
- Who writes the copy. If the quote assumes you supply finished text, and you have not written any, the project stalls. Professional copywriting typically adds $1,000 to $3,000.
- Custom design versus template. A template is a starting point someone else designed. Custom means somebody thinks specifically about your business.
- Functionality. Contact forms are standard. Booking, logins, calculators, inventory feeds and CRM integrations are each a real build with real testing behind them.
- SEO built in or bolted on. Structure, speed and local search set up from day one cost a little more and save a lot later. Our SEO service exists largely to repair sites that skipped this.
- Photography. Stock photos of a generic office are free and look it. Real photos of your shop, your crew and your work are the single cheapest upgrade to a small business site.
What Grizzly Agency charges
We are a web design and digital marketing agency in Sylvan Lake, Alberta, working with businesses here, in Red Deer and in Calgary. Our pricing is published rather than negotiated, and every quote is fixed up front — the number you agree to is the number you pay.
- Fast fixed-price build — from $2,500, usually live in about two weeks
- Fully custom site — typically $3,000 to $8,000
- More complex designs — $10,000 to $25,000
- E-commerce — from around $20,000
You can see the work in our portfolio, and the process on our web design page. If you are comparing us against hiring a freelancer directly, we broke down those rates in what website designers charge per hour.
When a cheaper website is the right call
We would rather tell you this than sell you something you do not need.
If you are pre-revenue and still testing whether anyone wants what you sell, spend a few hundred dollars on a builder and put your energy into customers. If your work comes entirely through referrals and you just need somewhere to send people, a well-configured template site is enough. If your total marketing budget for the year is $3,000, do not spend all of it on a website and nothing on getting anyone to see it — that is a common and expensive mistake.
Cheap becomes expensive at one specific point: when the site is supposed to bring in work and does not. A $1,200 site that produces nothing costs more than a $6,000 site that produces two jobs a month. That comparison, not the invoice, is the one that matters.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a website cost for a small business?
Most small businesses should budget $2,500 to $8,000 CAD up front and $50 to $250 a month afterwards. Below that range you are buying a template setup, which suits plenty of businesses. Above it, you are usually paying for complexity — a store, multiple locations, custom functionality — rather than better design.
Why is there such a big range in website prices?
Because quotes include wildly different things. One may cover copywriting, photography, SEO setup and a year of hosting; another is design and build only, with everything else billed later. Compare what is included and what happens after launch, not the headline figure.
How much does a website cost per month to run?
Typically $50 to $250 CAD a month for a small business site, covering hosting, domain, updates, backups and support. Watch out for monthly plans that bundle the build itself — check whether you own the site if you stop paying.
Is a free website builder good enough?
For testing an idea, yes. For a business that depends on being found and contacted, usually not — free tiers often mean platform branding, limited SEO control and a domain you do not own. It is a fine first step and a poor permanent home.
How long does it take to build a website?
A fixed-price build can be live in about two weeks. A fully custom site is typically three to six weeks, and e-commerce runs longer. The most common cause of delay is not design work — it is waiting on content, photos and approvals from the client.
Do I pay for a website all at once?
Most agencies, us included, split the project into a deposit and a balance on launch. What matters more than the schedule is whether the total is fixed. An estimate that can move is not a price.
The bottom line
Plan for $2,500 to $8,000 CAD to build and $600 to $3,000 a year to run. Add a marketing budget on top if you want the site to actually bring in work, because a website nobody finds is expensive at any price.
And insist on a fixed number before you start. Estimates that drift are how a $4,000 project becomes a $9,000 argument.
Want a real number for your project instead of a range? Tell us what you need and we will quote it fixed, up front. If you would rather start with what is wrong with the site you already have, run a free SEO audit first.