There’s no standard price for a website in Vancouver. The cost depends on scope: how many pages you need, who writes the words and supplies the photos, what the site has to do (take bookings, feed a CRM, sell products) and how much is custom-designed rather than adapted from a template. At the low end, paid website builder plans start at $21 a month billed annually on Squarespace and Wix. A site designed and built for you is a project, priced from a written scope.
For a benchmark, BDC (the Business Development Bank of Canada) says that for most of its clients, website development has typically cost $10,000 to $30,000 for the initial build, with outliers as high as $60,000 to $100,000, and that hosting typically runs $20 to $60 a month. BDC doesn’t say what those builds included, so treat any single figure with caution. This guide explains the cost tiers, what moves the price, the ongoing costs to budget for and how to compare quotes.
Website cost tiers by scope
Most small-business websites fall into one of five tiers. Where a tier is a platform plan, the table shows the regular list price in Canadian dollars from the vendor’s pricing page in September 2026, before introductory discounts. Build costs for the other tiers depend on scope, so they’re described by relative cost.
| Tier | What you get | What you pay for | Relative cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| DIY website builder | You build the site yourself from a template on a hosted platform | A plan: Squarespace from $21 a month billed annually ($30 monthly), Wix from $21 a month billed yearly (Wix’s free plan shows Wix branding and has no custom domain), plus your time | Lowest cash cost, highest time cost |
| Template-based small-business site | A designer adapts a template or theme, adds your content and sets up forms, analytics and basic SEO | Setup and content time, plus a builder plan or hosting | Low to moderate |
| Custom-designed site | A design made for your brand, with pages planned around how your customers search | Discovery, design, development, content and testing, plus hosting | Moderate to high |
| E-commerce site | An online store with products, payments, shipping and tax settings | Store setup and product loading, plus a commerce plan such as Shopify Basic ($37 a month billed yearly, $49 monthly) and card processing fees | Moderate to high, rising with product count and integrations |
| Web application | Customer logins, portals, quoting tools or booking systems built around your process | A software project: specification, development, testing, hosting and support | Highest |
What is the average cost of a 5-page website?
There’s no reliable average, because five pages can mean very different amounts of work. Five pages you build yourself cost the plan price plus your time. Five pages built for you depend mostly on who writes the copy, whether you need photography and what the pages have to do. A booking system or product catalogue can add more work than several extra pages.
What drives the price of a website
Anything that adds design, writing, setup or testing time adds cost. These factors move quotes the most, so decide on them before you ask for prices.
| Factor | Why it changes the price | Decide before you ask |
|---|---|---|
| Pages and page types | Each distinct layout needs design and testing; repeated layouts, such as service pages, go faster | A page list, grouped by type |
| Copywriting | Writing and editing clear, specific copy takes time | Who writes each page, and who approves it |
| Photography | A photo shoot means booking and editing time; stock images need licences | Whether you have usable photos of your team, work and premises |
| Integrations | Booking, CRM, payment and email-marketing connections need setup and testing | The tools you already use and what should connect |
| E-commerce | Products, variants, shipping rules, taxes and payments add work that grows with the catalogue | Product count, how you ship and how you take payment |
| Multilingual pages | Each language needs translation, review and its own pages to maintain | Which languages, and for which pages |
| Accessibility | Meeting the W3C’s Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) adds design and testing effort | The WCAG version and level you want to meet |
| SEO setup | Titles, descriptions, structured data, site structure and Search Console take time to do properly | The services and areas you want to be found for |
| Migration and redirects | Replacing a site means mapping every old URL to a new one | Access to your current site, domain and analytics |
| Forms and privacy | Forms that collect personal information need spam protection and a privacy policy | What each form collects and who receives it |
Language is a real consideration here. In the 2021 Census, more than four in ten people in the Vancouver census metropolitan area spoke a language other than English or French at home at least regularly, most commonly Mandarin, Punjabi and Cantonese.
If you’re replacing an existing site, budget for redirects. Google recommends server-side permanent redirects, such as 301s, from old URLs to their new equivalents, kept in place generally for at least a year. Forms need thought too: B.C.’s Personal Information Protection Act requires organizations to develop and follow policies and practices for the personal information they collect, and the provincial privacy commissioner publishes guidance on writing a privacy policy.
How much should you pay a website designer?
There’s no regulated or standard rate. Wage data gives useful context: Job Bank lists a median wage of $32.69 an hour for web designers in B.C.’s Lower Mainland–Southwest region, with low and high figures of $19.23 and $55.29 (2023–2024 data). That’s what employees earn. A freelancer’s or agency’s billed rate also has to cover software, equipment, insurance, time spent on sales and admin, and profit, so it’s usually well above a wage figure.
The rate matters less than the total for a defined scope. Quotes usually come as a fixed project price or an hourly estimate, and some providers offer a monthly subscription that bundles the build with hosting and care. A fixed price is easier to budget, but only if the scope is in writing. BDC advises being skeptical of any developer who gives you a price without taking time to understand your business.
Ongoing costs: what a website costs per month and per year
A website is never a one-time cost. Budget for these every year, whether you build it yourself or hire help.
| Cost | What it covers | Reference prices |
|---|---|---|
| Domain name | Your address, such as yourbusiness.ca, registered for one to ten years at a time | CIRA says a .ca costs around $10 to $20 a year. Squarespace’s annual plans and most Wix premium plans include a free domain for the first year. |
| Hosting or builder plan | Keeping the site online; builder plans bundle hosting with the editing tools | BDC: hosting typically $20 to $60 a month. Billed annually: Squarespace $21 to $109 a month, Wix $21 to $165, and Shopify from $37. |
| SSL certificate | HTTPS encryption and the padlock in the browser | Free from Let’s Encrypt, a certificate authority run for the public’s benefit, and included with Shopify plans |
| Business email | Email addresses at your own domain | Microsoft 365 Business Basic: $9.50 per user per month, paid yearly. Google Workspace Business Starter: $9.20 per user per month with a one-year commitment, or $11 on a flexible plan. |
| Maintenance and security | Software and plugin updates, backups, monitoring, security fixes and small content changes | No standard price; usually a monthly plan or hourly. Hosted builders include hosting, but your content, settings and add-ons still need looking after. |
| Payment processing | Card fees on each online sale, if you sell | Shopify Basic: 2.8% + 30¢ per online card sale through Shopify Payments. Squarespace Basic: card rates from 2.9% + $0.30, plus a 2% online store transaction fee. |
Example: a simple DIY site for a two-person business
Using list prices, Squarespace Basic billed annually (about $252 a year), a .ca domain renewal (around $10 to $20 a year, per CIRA) and Microsoft 365 Business Basic for two people ($228 a year) come to roughly $490 to $500 a year plus tax. That doesn’t count your own time, and a professionally maintained site adds a care plan or hourly support on top.
DIY website builder or hire a professional?
BDC notes that website builders let you create a professional-looking site with no programming knowledge and no investment other than time. Doing it yourself makes sense when:
- You need a few straightforward pages and a contact form
- You’re comfortable writing your own copy and have decent photos
- You have the hours to build the site and keep it up to date
Hiring usually pays off when the site has to win enquiries from local search, connect to booking or CRM tools, replace an existing site without losing rankings, sell a large catalogue or meet an accessibility target. A middle path is a professional setup on a builder you can edit yourself afterwards. Either way, count your own time as a cost, and ask how you would move your content if you ever change platforms.
Questions to ask before you sign
Settle ownership and access before any work starts. CIRA’s advice is to always register your domain name yourself, because a registration made on your behalf can become a problem if you part ways.
Get these answers in writing
- Is the domain registered to our business, with us as the registrant?
- Is the hosting or builder account in our name, and will we hold the admin logins? BDC suggests confirming who hosts your site and making sure you have the passwords and access codes.
- Who owns the design, code, copy and photos, and are stock images, fonts and premium plugins licensed to us?
- Will our business be an Administrator in Google Analytics and a verified owner in Google Search Console? Google says that if all verified owners are removed, everyone else loses access after a grace period.
- What does maintenance include: updates, backups and test restores, monitoring, security fixes and how many content changes?
- What’s in the fixed price, how many rounds of revisions are included and what counts as a change?
- What will we pay each year after launch, and what is the payment schedule?
- What do we receive at handover: logins, documentation and training?
- If we’re replacing a site, who maps the old URLs and sets up the redirects?
- Is multi-factor authentication turned on for the domain, hosting and email accounts?
How to compare website quotes
Quotes only compare fairly when every provider prices the same work. Send each one the same short brief:
- Your goals, such as calls, bookings or online sales
- A page list, grouped by page type
- Who supplies the copy and photos
- Features and integrations: forms, booking, CRM, payments and languages
- Any existing site to migrate, with its address
- Your accessibility target and timeline
Ask for itemized quotes that separate one-time build costs from recurring costs, and compare the total over three years rather than the launch price alone. Look closely at any quote far below the rest: it may assume a template, leave out copywriting or redirects, or put the domain and hosting in the provider’s name.
For a written quote on a defined scope, see our website design and development service, including web design in Vancouver, Surrey and Abbotsford, or contact us. For the security side, see our small business cybersecurity checklist.