How much does a website cost in Vancouver?

The three ways a quote gets built

Hourly. A rate times an estimate, and you pay the hours, not the rate. If the job runs long, the extra lands on your invoice. Hourly suits jobs nobody can scope in advance. On a new brochure site it moves the risk to the person who knows least about how long web work takes.

Fixed by pages. One number for a site of a stated size, and an overrun is the designer’s problem. In return, get a written limit: pages, the cost of an extra one, revision rounds, and the cost of the next. Without it, the limit turns up later as a change order.

Fixed by feature. A base figure for the pages, plus one for each thing that has to work: selling, booking, a login, a link to software you already run. The easiest to compare, because the feature list is the price list. It is also where quotes diverge: one designer counts a booking tool as included, the next as a project.

Mixed quotes are fine. A single total with no structure under it is not, because you cannot tell which part you could remove.

What actually moves the number

Five things, roughly in order of weight.

Page count. Ten pages is not twice the work of five, but it is more. A trades business with one service area rarely needs more than four or five pages. A clinic with six treatments and three neighbourhoods needs fifteen, and each can earn, because a page only ranks for what it is about.

Whether anything has to work. A page describing your prices is cheap. One that takes a payment, holds a calendar slot or writes into your existing software needs testing and failure cases. It is the largest jump in most quotes, so ask for it as its own line.

Words and photographs. Supply the copy and the price drops, but the timeline waits on your writing. If the designer writes it, that is real time in the quote. Your phone photos, prepared properly, cost nothing extra almost everywhere; a shoot is a separate bill.

Revisions. Two rounds included is normal. Unlimited revisions are priced in somewhere, usually as a bigger opening number or a project that never quite ends.

Who is answering the phone. An agency quote carries an office and managers, which buys cover when somebody is ill. A solo designer has neither the overhead nor the cover. The agency comparison weighs the two. A do-it-yourself builder removes the labour cost and charges you in time instead; the builder comparison covers that trade.

The part of the price that is not in the price

Three costs sit outside most build quotes, and they turn a cheap number into an expensive year.

• Hosting. Bundled, billed monthly, or left to you. Ask which, and what happens to the site if payment stops.
• Edits after launch. If the quote does not cover them, you learn to do it yourself or pay an hourly minimum for each typo.
• The domain. A few dollars a year, registered in whose name? That answer is worth more than the money.

Settle ownership in the same conversation: it costs nothing up front and a great deal afterwards. Who owns your website files has the wording to ask for before you sign.

A worked example, using prices I can vouch for

I cannot honestly publish anybody else’s numbers, so here are mine, priced on page count since September 2026. They match the pricing page and do not change with who is asking.

Anything the site has to do is added to the tier. A booking tool wired in and tested is included. A shop with cart, checkout, tax and shipping is $2,400. A spreadsheet you edit yourself for the parts that change often (prices, a menu, opening hours) is $1,800. Talking to software you already run, a CRM or an inventory system, is quoted in writing.

So a twelve page site with online booking is $1,999, and ten pages with a shop is $1,999 plus $2,400, so $4,399. Nobody had to sit through a call to get either figure.

After launch there is one monthly plan for the website. Care is $99 a month: hosting, backups, security patches, and two small edits a month back within 48 hours. Extra pages inside a tier are $250 each. Past fifteen pages, the site is quoted in writing with no published figure.

Not included: GST, and a domain, which is bought in your name.

How to compare two quotes without a spreadsheet

Ask both the same five questions and the gap usually explains itself.

1. How many pages, and what does page eleven cost?
2. How many revision rounds, and what does the next one cost?
3. Who writes the words, and who supplies the photographs?
4. What do I pay every month after launch, and what does it buy?
5. When we are finished, who holds the domain and who holds the files?

Two quotes that answer all five in writing can be compared. Otherwise the cheaper one is simply the one whose surprises have not arrived yet.