Somewhere between $200 and $50,000, which is a useless answer. Here is the honest breakdown of where the money goes.
Website quotes vary by a factor of ten for what sounds like the same job, and it is rarely because anyone is lying. It is because 'a website' can mean a template filled in over a weekend or a custom build with copywriting, photography, search work and a store attached. The price follows what is actually inside.
Rough 2026 market shape: DIY builders run $200–500 a year in subscriptions and your own evenings. Freelancers land anywhere from $500 to $3,000 depending on experience. Small studios like us run roughly $600 to $5,000 fixed. Traditional agencies open the conversation at $5,000 and climb quickly, because their overhead is in the invoice.
Page count, whether the copy is written for you, e-commerce, custom features and photography. Design polish is rarely the expensive part.
Domain, hosting, SSL, and someone to make changes after launch. A cheap build with $100/month of patched-together subscriptions is not cheap.
A fixed quote before work starts is the only honest way to buy this. Hourly web work has a way of discovering extra hours.
The DIY builder number on the pricing page is not the real number. Add the domain, remove-the-ads tier, email, a stock photo subscription, a form tool and a booking plugin and you are at $60–100 a month — forever — for a site you built yourself and maintain yourself. Three years of that buys a professional build outright.
The freelancer risk is different: the price is fine, the site is fine, and then they vanish. The business ends up unable to change its own phone number. Whoever you hire, make sure the domain is in your name and you know exactly who makes edits and what they cost.
Copywriting is the quiet one. Most quotes assume you will supply the words; most businesses cannot, and the project stalls for a month before launching with placeholder text. A build that includes writing is worth a real premium.
The other is search fundamentals — titles, descriptions, schema, a sitemap, proper headings and speed. It is a few hours of work when done during the build and a four-figure retrofit later. If a quote cannot tell you what it includes for search, it includes nothing.
Straight answers. If yours is not here, call and ask.
Because the scope hiding under the word 'website' varies. Copywriting, e-commerce, photography, search work and post-launch support are each real line items. Compare what is included, not the bottom number.
Ours is a real custom build — designed around your business, written for you, fast on mobile, with search fundamentals done. What it is not is a twenty-page platform with a store. Scope is the difference, not quality.
After the build: domain around $15–20 a year, hosting from a few dollars to $50 a month, and someone to make changes. Our care plans bundle hosting, security, backups and edits from $49/month so there is one number instead of five. Canadian businesses: same bands, invoiced in CAD or USD.
If the business is brand new and cash is zero, honestly — maybe, for now. The moment real customers are checking you before calling, the template look and the load speed start costing more than the build would.
Tell us about the business and we'll come back with a fixed price and a timeline. No obligation, no sales pitch.