Ask what a small-business website costs and you'll get a straight answer: somewhere between $0 and $35,000. Useless, right? That range is technically true and completely unhelpful when you're just trying to figure out what's fair to pay for your shop, trade, or clinic here in Alberta.
So let's make it useful. Here's what you actually pay by route, what drives the number up or down, and — the part nobody warns you about — where the money quietly leaks after launch.
What you'll pay, by route
There are really four ways to get a website, and they land at very different prices:
- Do it yourself on a builder (Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy): roughly $200 to $600 a year including hosting. Cheapest on paper. You supply all the time, the design, and the copy — and these platforms are often slow and hard to rank.
- Hire a freelancer: about $1,500 to $8,000 one-time for a custom small-business site. Quality swings wildly with the person.
- Hire an agency: $6,000 to $35,000+ for strategy, custom design, and development. Great work at the top end; a lot of markup and bloat at the low end.
- Managed monthly (design-build-host on a subscription): from around $97/month, which spreads the cost and rolls hosting, updates, and support into one predictable bill instead of a big upfront hit.
Most professional builds land somewhere between $3,000 and $15,000 if you're paying upfront — but the number swings hard based on what's actually in the site.
What actually drives the price
Two "five-page websites" can cost $2,000 or $12,000 depending on:
- Custom design vs. template. A tuned, on-brand design costs more than dropping your logo into a stock theme — and usually converts better.
- Number of pages. A five-page brochure site is a fraction of a 30-page site with a page for every service and town you serve (the kind that actually ranks and pulls leads).
- Functionality. Online booking, payments, a customer login, or e-commerce each add real build time.
- Copywriting and photos. Words that sell and real photos of your work are often the difference between a site that converts and one that just sits there — and they cost either your time or someone's fee.
- Speed and SEO done right. A site built to load fast and rank locally takes more skill than one thrown together in a page builder.
The costs nobody warns you about
Here's the part that ambushes owners: the sticker price isn't the real price. Ongoing costs most people overlook add $1,100 to $5,000 a year:
- Hosting: anywhere from a few dollars to $120+ a month.
- Domain and SSL: small, but recurring.
- Plugins and subscriptions: booking tools, security, backups — the "just $15/month" add-ons that stack up.
- Maintenance: updates, fixes, and the inevitable "can you change this" that a freelancer bills hourly for.
A "cheap" site with $3,000 a year of hidden upkeep isn't cheap. Always ask what the total looks like over two or three years, not just the build fee.
The trap at both ends
The two most expensive mistakes are at opposite ends of the price range:
- Too cheap. A $0 DIY site that's slow, generic, and never ranks doesn't save you money — it costs you every lead it fails to capture. The cheapest site is the most expensive one if it brings in nothing.
- Overpaying for bloat. On the other end, plenty of agencies charge $15,000 for a site built on the same heavy page-builder you could've rented for $30 a month — you're paying a premium for something that's slow by design.
The goal isn't the lowest price or the highest. It's the best return: a fast, clear, well-ranked site that brings in more work than it costs, without a five-figure bill or a pile of hidden fees.
What's fair for an Alberta small business
For most local businesses — a trade, a clinic, a shop — you don't need a $15,000 agency build or a slow DIY template. You need a fast, hand-coded site with real pages for your services and towns, built to convert and easy to keep current.
That's the whole idea behind our $97/month approach: a professionally built, fast, local-first website with hosting, updates, and the growth system rolled in — no five-figure upfront bill, and no page-builder tax dragging it down. You see a working preview before you pay anything, so you're never guessing what you're buying.