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If you are looking to develop a website for your business in Canada, you may have so many questions in your mind.
And the most common one that you may be wondering about is how much does it cost to make a business website in Canada?
Well, while working with an agency or freelancer can cost you an average of $500 to $80,000+ for web development, it will be $0 – $300+ per month when working with a website builder.
Obviously, the type and size of your website and the more features and functionality your website has, the pricier it will be.
However, that’s not all; there’s a lot more you need to know to gauge the overall cost of building a business website.
So, let’s get into this guide to learn the basics of website building.
What Type of Website Do You Want to Build?
The first thing that you need to decide is what type of website you need to build for your business.
This means you need to decide exactly what type of features and functionalities you need to add to your website. It is one of the major factors to determine the overall cost of your website design.
So, first, let’s find out how web development costing differs with different site types.
In general, there are five common types of websites that you need to pay for-
1. Brochure-Style Website
It is one of the most common and affordable website types, also known as informational websites. This type of site is mostly suitable for-
- Professional services,
- Musicians,
- Nonprofit organizations, and
- Businesses that don’t plan to sell online
Such websites usually include 10 to 15 pages displaying the basics information like what the business offers, its operation time, social media platforms, etc.
Thus compared to other websites, brochure websites cost less to design.
So, if you are looking to create a brochure website, you may need to pay between $400 and $1000 in Canada.
For startups, who don’t have a large amount of money to invest in web design, these websites are the best to start with.
2. E-Commerce Store
Ecommerce websites are those sites where customers can browse and purchase products. This means such sites are integrated with payment gateways.
Generally, a small to medium eCommerce store consists of 10 to 100 products with some blogs to help the customers to get information about the products.
And usually, the cost of building a small eCommerce website differs with the following variables-
- How many and what types of products/services do you want to put on your site?
- What features do you want to use?
- Shopping cart solution (custom versus third-party software)
- SSL Certificate provider and security level
- Hosting provider and the configuration of the hosting service.
Considering all of these and other requirements, you may need to pay around $1,000 – $6,000.
On the other side, the larger eCommerce sites include more than 100 pages, including tutorial videos of products and an active blog section, and also need to pay for –
- A domain name with a large hosting plan,
- Plugins for payments, and security,
- Recurring maintenance fees for product listings and regular updates.
In this case, the cost will vary between $5,715 – $50,000+ to build a larger eCommerce site.
Besides, if you want to build a huge online store like Amazon, you might have to spend a much larger amount.
3. Large Custom Website
These are the businesses that need a website with heavy content, custom features, and functions.
Usually, such websites are designed to handle hundreds of thousands of visitors daily, which is more difficult to code and complex to build.
This, in turn, requires more time as well as cost to build such websites.
In this case, you can expect to pay between $10,000 and $75,000, including higher hosting fees and more update fees for a large custom website.
4. Service or Corporate
As the name implies, such websites are built for companies or corporate agencies.
Depending on the company size and the information required to provide, such websites may include 25 to 75 pages.
And, based on the complexity of the site, you may need to pay between $10,000 and $40,000 to have a service or corporate website for your business.
5. Database Driven Website or Website Application
These websites are sources of information or resources from which other sites and individuals get benefits.
Such sites require good server resources and security as these sites are commonly used to collect, organize and deliver the data to other users. This is commonly seen on online banking sites.
Usually, data-driven websites include 20 to 2000 pages and require adding more records to the database regularly.
So, if you are looking to build such a website, it will cost you between $6,000 to $75,000.
What Affects the Cost of Web Design?
So, here goes the types of websites, but when it comes to creating a website, there are plenty of factors that can affect the cost. The size, scope, and the company’s location all play a role.
Amount of Work
The project size influences how much it costs. The larger the project, the more resources will be needed. This includes both technical and creative resources.
For example, if you need to create a custom WordPress theme, that will add to the project cost. On the other hand, if you are using an existing platform like Shopify or Website Builder, then some of the development work (i.e., creating custom code) may already be completed.
In this case, however, additional costs may be required to complete certain tasks such as wireframing or testing.
Complexity of Your Website’s Design
A website that is designed for an online store may require more programming than a website designed for a blog. Furthermore, websites that are more complex may require more time and effort to design and build from scratch.:
Amount of Features
It’s a fact that the features you include on your website will impact the total cost. For example, a professional and more customized 50-page business website with a lot more standard features and functionalities will cost you much higher than a 25-page website.
Number of Pages
The more pages you add to your site, the more your overall cost will be.
Let’s say, you have a basic blog website with only 5 pages, and it will cost you $1000+. On the other side, a website with more complicated 12 pages will cost you several thousands of dollars.
Mostly, this is how the web developers scale the prices according to the web pages-
Pages | Prices |
1 to 10 pages | $1,000 to $2,000 |
10 to 50 pages | $2,000 to $3,000 |
50 to 150 pages | $3,000 to $6,500 |
150 to 250 pages | $6,500 to $10,000 |
Method of Developing Website
The cost of web design can also vary depending on who designs the website.
Basically, there are three most common ways that you can use to build your business website. For example-
1. Use Website Builder
There are many website builders available, and the price varies depending on the features and functionality of the builder.
However, a basic website builder can typically cost around $0 to $300 per month, including annual maintenance costs.
If you need more features or customization, the price may increase. However, there are also many free or low-cost options available too.
To get an idea of the range in prices, here are some popular website builders-
- Wix charges $17 per month with free hosting, SSL certificate, and domain for the first year.
- WordPress starts at $5, including a custom domain name for one year.
- Weebly comes free with free SSL security and a free domain with Weebly branding. However, the paid package starts at $5 per month for its basic plan.
- Squarespace starts at $23 per month for its basic plan.
- Jimdo starts at $15 per month including the domain for the business website.
- GoDaddy starts at $11.99 per month with hosting and SSL for the first year. You need to purchase the domain separately and may need to pay $12 to $15 per year for this.
Most website builders offer the domain, hosting, and SSL free for the first year only. That means additional costs will be added to your website building process with annual maintenance costs.
2. Hire Freelance Web Designer
If you are looking to spend less, freelancer web developers offer the easiest solution to updating and maintaining your website. With freelancers, you will get a more personalized approach.
3. Work With A Web Development Company
Best option for businesses wants an ongoing solution, unique functionalities that require complex code, and the most custom site design for building and maintaining a website.
Hiring a professional Web Design Agency is highly recommended, especially for businesses. Agencies are professional website builders that have years of experience as well as optimum expertise, resources, and tools to conduct your project more successfully.
However, each option has its own advantages and disadvantages as well as different pricing ranges. Most business owners go either with a freelance web designer or an agency to build their business website.
The main reason behind this is that if you go with a website builder, you need to have some web design experience.
However, if you choose to hire a freelancer, then costs may be lower.
Conversely, if you opt to have your website designed in-house, then costs will be higher because you are going to work with a team of industry experts like graphic designers, developers, copywriters, and other specialists.
Methods / Costs | Costs |
Website Builder | $0 – $300 |
Freelancer | $500 – $5,000 |
Web Design Agency | $3,000 – $1,00,000 |
These are the factors of your basic website design, but there are other key factors involved in a website development process that greatly affect your costing.
So, here are the essential cost factors of your business website design and development.
Domain
To start with your website building, you should search for a domain name that will ultimately serve your web address.
Your business website will be hosted on the domain name, so choose a name that accurately reflects the business you’re promoting.
In order to get the rights to your domain name, you must purchase the domain name and register it every year. This means it includes an annual cost.
Usually, a brand-new domain name costs about $0.95 to $12, whereas depending on the age and history, the pre-owned domain names may also cost thousands of dollars.
SSL Certificate
SSL refers to the secure socket layer that safeguards the transfer of your website’s sensitive data.
It is commonly used to protect your business as well as your website’s visitors.
In this digital age, users have become more online-centric, and because of this, they share almost everything from email addresses to personal information, even credit card information.
Thus, an SSL certificate demonstrates your website’s credibility and safety. And, to get the SSL certificate, you may need to pay between $0 to $1500 per year.
Website Hosting
Your website’s hosting allows Internet users to access your website.
Based on the hosting providers, your cost will range from $24 to $24,000 per year. Huge difference, right?
This is because there are several hosting categories, for example-
- Shared Host ($24 to $120 per year): Here your website will be hosted on a server shared by several other websites.
- Virtual Private Server ($240 to $600 per year): A shared server, but you will have full server resource access.
- Dedicated Server ($1200 to $24,000 per year): Here, you will get your own server, including the entire use of that server’s resources. A website that has more than 100,000 visitors per month must need a dedicated server.
So, what’s the best wordpress hosting provider how they cost?
Here are some of the hosting provider names, and see how the pricing range differs-
Web host |
Cost for 12 months | ||
Shared | VPS | Dedicated | |
Namecheap | $2.18/mo | $6.88/mo | $765.88 |
Hostinger | $2.75/mo, | $23.95/mo | $89.98/mo |
Bluehost | $2.95/mo, | $18.99/mo, | $79.99/mo |
A2 Hosting | $6.99 | $49.99 | $110.00 |
DreamHost | $2.95/mo | $13.75/mo | $149.00/mo |
Content Management System
CMS helps you to manage your website from the backend to ensure an engaging experience to your site visitors.
With CMS, you don’t need to apply any code and in fact, you don’t have to have any coding skills to modify your website. Whenever your website requires minor updates, your CMS will help you to do it hassle-free, even without requiring any help from experts or developers.
Some most popular CMS platforms are-
- WordPress
- Magento
- Joomla
- Drupal
So, if you incorporate a standard or custom CMS into your web design package, it will cost you on average $2000 to $25,000. It doesn’t matter if the CMS comes in free; your web design agency or freelance web designer will charge for adding it.
Website Design
By website layout, we mean to say the website theme or style that works together to create the entire website. Your website layout not only focuses on the visuals but also takes care of the usability of the site.
A good website design with user-friendly navigation is one that can capture more user attention and also keep them engaged with the site.
Though the simpler you keep the design, the lower the cost, that doesn’t mean you forcefully choose the simple designs. For example, if you are working with luxurious products, you must portray this throughout your website.
This means you need to pay much higher for designing your website than choosing a domain name or buying hosting.
You need to ensure your website design is optimum and perfectly suits your business as it has a direct impact on your website’s performance.
Marketing
Building your website is not enough; proper marketing is essential to make the most out of your website.
According to studies, “Average investment with less than $2 million in annual sales in websites is $19,652, and online marketing is $14,301in Canada.”
Depending on the digital marketing strategies, this range will vary. So, let’s find out the cost of the most common and popular digital marketing tactic-
Categories | Website Marketing Costs |
SEO | $1,500 – $5,000 / month |
PPC | $9,000 – $10,000 / month |
Professional Copywriting | $50 – $500 / page |
Content Marketing | $2000 – $10,000 / month |
Social Media Marketing & Advertising | $4,000 – $7,000 / month |
Email Marketing | $9 – $1,000 / month |
1. SEO
When it comes to marketing your website online, SEO is the most effective and highly-preferred way for businesses.
SEO can greatly help to improve your website’s visibility and reach your business to more potential organic traffic.
Since 80% of consumers begin their product research online, it is imperative that your website appears on the search results page for relevant searches. And SEO can do this at a much lower cost than other marketing aspects like PPC.
So, to optimize your website with SEO, you can expect to spend anything about $1500 to $5000 per month.
2. PPC
It is an advertising strategy that works as a pay-per-click pricing model. Here you need to pay for the clicks your ad gets. Just like SEO, PPC also directs the traffic to the relevant pager on your website.
To invest in PPC, you may need to spend $9000 to $10,000 per month. This usually includes your ad spend along with the ad management.
3. Copywriting
This means creating professional on-brand content for your website. It may also include content optimized for SEO.
It can be done on your own, or if you don’t go through the process of researching, formatting, writing, and editing, you can consider hiring a professional copywriter or agency that has a team of professional native and experienced writers.
However, this may cost you anywhere between $20 to $500 per page based on the quality and quantity of content.
4. Content Marketing
With content marketing, you are going to publish regular blogs on your site concentrating on top-of-the-funnel and bottom-of-the-funnel customers.
Compared to any other traditional marketing tactics, content marketing generates 3X more leads, and doubles conversion rates, sales, sign-ups, and improves the all in all company performance.
However, content marketing may cost you approximately $2000 to $10,000 per month.
5. Social Media Marketing
SMM helps in improving the company’s brand awareness and engages with new followers to drive visits.
As per studies, 74% of people use social media while making a purchase decision.
So, if you are looking to hire a social media manager, you may need to spend $2000 to $7000 per month.
6. Email Marketing
It is the cheapest option that can help you to generate and nurture valuable leads to your website. This process requires developing relevant content or newsletters for readers to advertise your website.
Email marketing is also able to generate 50% more leads than any other lead generation tactic. Usually, the monthly cost of email marketing ranges from $9 to $1000
Maintenance
Now, you may be thinking that all your work is done.
Actually, NO!!!
Once you are done with your website building and marketing, now it’s time to keep maintaining it over the long term.
This helps to keep the website functional, and your visitors engaged, avoiding downtime as much as possible. In general, website maintenance includes-
- Updating CMS,
- Managing customer support tickets,
- Resolving any website-related issues,
- Acquiring new server resources as your traffic spikes
- Performing regular debugging or security updates,
- Renewing domain name, hosting, SSL, Paid plugins and themes, etc.
So, on average, depending on the server needs and website size, these could cost anywhere between $200 to $1500 per year.
Note: The maintenance cost may exceed if the site requires emergency support, switch servers for hosting providers, or the website needs immediate repairs due to a cyberattack.
How Much Does It Cost to Make a Business Website in Canada?
So far, we have seen all the factors in detail that affect your total website building cost. To have a distinct idea, you just need to find out the following questions’ answers-
- Do you want to use a CMS (content management system) or do you prefer to write HTML code yourself?
- What kind of hosting plan will work best for you?
- Will you be using a domain name or just a subdomain?
- Are you planning to sell products online?
- Do you want a blog?
- Do you need an eCommerce store?
- Do you require mobile apps?
- Do you have any special requirements?
Now, let’s have a glimpse of how much does it cost to make a business website in Canada?
Categories | Web Design | Annual Web Maintenance |
Domain | $0.95 – $12 | $2 – $20 |
SSL Certificate | $0.95 – $12 | $0 – $1,500 |
Hosting | $24 – $10,000 | $0 – $1,500 |
CMS | $2,000 – $25,000 | $0 – $40,000 |
Agency, Freelancer, or Website Builder | $0 to $100,000 | $0 to $5,500 |
Brochure-style website | $400 – $1,000 | $225+ |
e-Commerce store | $1,000 – $50,000+ | $680 – $715 |
Large custom website | $10,000 – $75,000 | $3,000+ |
Service / Corporate | $10,000 – $40,000 | $2,000+ |
Data-Driven / Website App | $5,000 – $50,000 | $10,000-$60,000+ |
Note: These estimations are approximate and may vary based on web design agency, your website type, and location.
How Long Does It Take to Build a Website?
Building a website can be done in a variety of time frames, depending on the level of customization and functionality desired.
Generally, the time required to build a website will depend on the complexity of the project, the number, and type of pages involved, as well as the skill level of the builder.
- The type of website being built: A basic website will mostly require less time to build than a more complex website.
- The amount of customization and/or functionality desired: More complex websites may require more time to build, as there may be more pages involved and more customizations required.
- The skill level of the builder: A skilled builder may be able to build a website in less time than a less skilled builder.
- The availability of necessary tools and resources: Some resources, such as graphics or software, may need to be purchased in advance in order to build a website.
On the other hand, the entire process of building a website typically involves the following steps-
1. Research and Developer Selection
Depending on your business goal and requirements, this process can take one week or even more.
In this phase, you need to consider so many things and then determine the most suitable firm that can match your vision and deliver the best service on your budget.
2. Initial Communication and Goal Setting
Once you select the development agency or web developer, now you can start planning the basic design goals.
Here, either you can share the basic idea of how you want your website to be (which will take less time) or let the developer come up with the plan based on information shared by you (which takes more time).
3. Creating an Action Plan
At this phase, developers will come up with a basic website plan, and you need to review these action plans. If any revision is needed, this will prompt another round of plans.
So, you can expect one or two weeks to determine the best course of action for your business website.
4. Design Mockups and Feedback
When mockups are shown to you, it is the ideal time to provide detailed feedback.
If you want to change where an element or image should be or any other things, it’s best to let the developers know at this phase. Since no real development has taken place yet, it will be easy to change them.
You can expect two to three weeks to design mockups and implement feedback before settling on an approved design.
5. In-Depth Development
Next, the developers will turn the mockups into a fully functional website. This phase will take the longest time, maybe one or two months or even more, depending on the size and complexity of your website.
Developers will keep in touch with you and share the updates and changes with you throughout the entire process of web development. In that case, if you need any modification, it will add some more time.
6. Review And Revision
Now, it’s time to evaluate the website and its performance. If all the previous things are done according to your plan, then this phase will not take much time. You can expect one to two weeks for some minor changes before the site goes live.
Generally, it is recommended that any website be built through professional web development agencies.
But, if you don’t have the budget, also you know the web design basics and are planning to do it yourself; you might be able to set up and maintain your website in much less time.
In this case, both your website design cost and launching time will be cut down significantly.
Here, all you need is to find a web hosting company, domain name, an SSL certificate, and finally, you need to create your website’s content.
This can be done using a CMS (content management system) like WordPress or Joomla or by writing your own code. Once all of this is done, you can start promoting your website.
Summing Up
As you can see, the cost of building a website varies depending on the type of site you’re creating. Some sites require only a few hours of work, while others can take weeks or even months to complete depending on the quality of the website, the help you hire, and the total time required to design, plan, and code.
So, this is all for how much does it cost to make a business website in Canada. You can take this post and all the above amounts as a guideline.
Don’t take the estimates as a hard and fast rule, as all of them are approximate and may vary based on the situation.
Giant Marketers Inc. is one of the fastest-growing SEO & Digital Marketing Agency In Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. With a team of 50 individuals, we provide SEO, Web Design & Development, Online Business Consultancy for those who are looking for quality Services & support. We've helped many individuals; small & large business owners take their Business growth to the next level.
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