A small-business website in Canada costs C$1,500 to C$4,000 for a starter site of three to five pages, C$4,000 to C$10,000 for a standard six-to-twelve-page build, and C$10,000 to C$25,000 and beyond once it is feature-rich in 2026. Toronto and Vancouver studios run 15–20% above regional rates for the same work. Our own Canadian business websites land between C$3,500 and C$6,500, and this post explains what a freelancer, an agency and an offshore team each actually sell for those numbers, so you can choose on something better than the total.
The choice is usually framed as freelancer versus agency, and that framing hides the real variable, which is process. A freelancer sells hours and skill. An agency sells a process — discovery, design, build, testing, support — and the hours that process takes. An offshore team sells the same process at a different hourly rate, and how well it works depends almost entirely on communication. Price follows from which of those you are buying.
Canadian website pricing, 2026
Indicative figures in Canadian dollars, dated to August 2026, from published Canadian pricing guides. Most are written by agencies; read them as market consensus rather than audited data.
| What you are buying | Typical range (CAD) | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Starter site, 3–5 pages | C$1,500 – C$4,000 | Usually a template adapted to your brand; freelancer territory |
| Standard small-business site, 6–12 pages | C$4,000 – C$10,000 | Custom design, a CMS, the technical basics done properly |
| Feature-rich site | C$10,000 – C$25,000+ | Integrations, bookings, members' areas, bilingual content |
| Shopify store, basic | C$3,000 – C$15,000 | Theme-based, small catalogue |
| Shopify store, growing brand | C$15,000 – C$50,000 | Custom sections, integrations, larger catalogues |
| Custom or headless ecommerce | C$20,000 – C$60,000+ | Runs to C$100,000+ at enterprise scale |
| Hosting and maintenance | C$70 – C$200 a month | Recurring, on top of the build |
Freelancer, agency or offshore: what each actually sells
A skilled Canadian freelancer can deliver excellent value on a small project, and at C$1,500 to C$4,000 that is where most freelancer work sits. The risks are the ones every guide names: recycled templates, slow communication once the invoice is paid, and the freelancer who is unavailable when you need an update a year later. None of those are inevitable, but they are why you should ask a freelancer about documentation and handover before you ask about price.
An agency at C$4,000 to C$10,000 sells you a process, and the process is the value: a discovery phase that finds out what the site has to do, design built for your brand, testing before launch, and someone to call afterwards. The cost of that process is agency hourly rates of up to C$250, which is also why a quote from a Toronto studio comes back higher than one from Halifax for the same brief.
An offshore team sells the same process at C$25 to C$75 an hour instead of C$100 to C$200, and Canadian sources themselves use that comparison. What the lower rate does not buy is a team in your time zone all day, so the engagement has to be designed around written communication — a weekly clickable build, a daily written update, calls booked into the overlap. Where that is in place the offshore route works; where it is missing, the saving is spent on chasing.
The hourly rates behind the quote
Every fixed quote is an hourly rate multiplied by an estimate of hours. Canadian freelance designers charge about C$105 an hour on average, across a range of C$42 to C$200 and up. Freelance developers sit at a median near C$85 an hour — C$40 to C$65 for juniors, C$110 to C$175 for seniors — and agencies bill up to C$250. A C$5,000 site from a mid-level freelancer is roughly sixty hours; the same site from an agency at C$150 an hour is about thirty-three hours, which tells you the agency is either faster or, more often, quoting a smaller scope. Ask for the hours; the total alone hides which it is.
Quebec, French and the cost nobody puts in the brochure
If you sell into Quebec, commercial web content has to be available in French on terms at least as favourable as English, whatever the size of your business. First-offence fines run C$3,000 to C$30,000, and each day can count as a separate offence. Budget-tier packages typically leave bilingual content and Quebec privacy requirements out, which is why a C$2,000 site can turn into a C$6,000 one the moment Montreal customers appear. Price the French version as a line item from the start — content, layout and privacy notices — and ask any vendor to show it in the quote rather than assume it is free.
Where a build from India sits in the Canadian market
Our Canadian business websites land between C$3,500 and C$6,500 depending on page count and complexity — inside the standard small-business band, at its lower half — against a market that typically runs C$4,000 to C$10,000. Shopify builds run C$4,500 to C$9,000 against C$8,000 to C$25,000 locally, and custom software C$15,000 to C$35,000 against C$20,000 to C$75,000. All of it is published on our pricing page before you speak to anyone. English and French builds are quoted on the same basis, with Quebec's language and privacy requirements handled deliberately rather than discovered late.
Every build ships with a full handover — code, hosting account, domain and analytics in your name from day one — a CMS walkthrough recording, and documentation another developer could pick up. Timelines are three to five weeks from kickoff for a straightforward business site and six to twelve for larger builds. We also do a good deal of white-label work for Canadian agencies who need delivery capacity without hiring; how that margin works is written up separately for agency owners.
Paying a supplier outside Canada
The question Canadian finance teams ask first is whether they can pay a Canadian account. Yes: we hold Canadian dollar account details through a licensed cross-border payment provider, so your accounts team makes an ordinary domestic transfer. Invoices are in CAD as a zero-rated export of services from India, with no Indian GST added. As a non-resident supplier we do not charge GST or HST, and for business purchases the reverse charge applies on your side; your accountant will recognise the treatment. If you ask us to build anything that sends messages — email, WhatsApp, outreach — it is built to CASL's consent rules from the start, because getting that wrong is your liability as much as ours.
On time zones, India is nine and a half to ten and a half hours ahead of Eastern time and twelve and a half to thirteen and a half ahead of Pacific, which in practice means our evening covers your morning across both coasts. Work briefed at the end of your day is done during ours and waiting when you start. Calls are booked into that window rather than assumed. The full working arrangement is on our Canada page.
The build is the beginning of the cost. Hosting and maintenance run C$70 to C$200 a month across the Canadian market, and if you want the site found, SEO is a separate monthly budget with six months as the honest minimum. If you already have a site and want to know whether to repair or replace it, run it through our free website grader first — it checks speed, structure and search readiness in about a minute, and the result is yours whatever you decide.
Before you choose
Ask a freelancer about documentation and handover. Ask an agency for the hours behind the quote. Ask an offshore team what a weekly update looks like and who does the work. Ask everyone who owns the code, the hosting and the domain when it is finished — and if you sell into Quebec, ask where French is in the quote.