— Web design / Cost guide
Web quotes range from CA $500 to CA $100,000 for what sounds like "a website." The difference is almost entirely scope and engineering depth. Here is how to read a quote — and what to push back on.
— Market context
These are observed Canadian-market rates, not our prices. Every engagement is scoped individually and quoted before anything starts.
Small business brochure site
CA $1,000 – $5,000
A designed, built, and launched website: 5–10 pages, contact form, mobile-responsive, written for SEO. Page builders and templates sit at the low end; custom design and proper front-end engineering sit higher.
Mid-range custom site
CA $5,000 – $15,000
A fully custom design — not a theme — with a CMS for content editing, performance tuning, structured data, and proper deployment setup. Typical for established businesses that need their site to work hard.
E-commerce
CA $5,000 – $30,000+
Shopify setup at the low end; fully custom storefronts with custom checkout, integrations, and inventory systems at the high end. Complexity of product catalogue, payment flows, and shipping logic drives cost.
Web application
CA $15,000 – $100,000+
A product with accounts, data, business logic — not a marketing site. Includes back-end engineering, API design, auth, database, and infrastructure. Quoted by scope, not by hour.
Ongoing maintenance
CA $100 – $1,500 / month
Security updates, content changes, performance monitoring, hosting management. Varies by how often the site changes and what infrastructure it runs on.
— What moves the price
More pages is more work — but not linearly. A 20-page marketing site built on a consistent design system costs less per page than a 5-page site where every page is unique. Content strategy and copywriting (if out-of-scope) add to the project cost or timeline.
A template means you share a visual identity with thousands of other sites. A custom design is designed for your brand, your content, and your users. Custom design takes more time — that is the cost, and it is usually worth it for businesses that compete on credibility.
Every integration — payment processing, inventory, shipping, CRM, booking — adds scoping, testing, and ongoing maintenance. Shopify handles a lot of this in a box; custom storefronts give you full control at higher build cost.
A fast site with correct structured data, semantic HTML, and honest metadata is an engineering decision — not a toggle. The sites that rank and convert are built by people who know what they are doing. Template shops skip this; it shows up in Lighthouse scores.
You should own your domain, your hosting account, and your code. If a provider hosts your site in their own account or won’t hand over a codebase, you are renting — not owning. This matters enormously when you want to switch providers or migrate.
— What you should expect
Your domain, your repository, your hosting account. Access to everything — credentials in a password manager you control — documented and handed over at project close.
Sub-2-second page loads, Core Web Vitals in the green, Lighthouse performance above 90. Fast sites rank better and convert better. Speed is not an afterthought.
Semantic HTML, structured data (JSON-LD), clean meta titles and descriptions, an honest sitemap, and correct canonical tags. Not keyword stuffing — the engineering that search engines actually reward.
Proper responsive design is not "it shrinks on mobile." It means the layout, typography, and interaction model are designed for each context.
Dependency updates, security patches, hosting monitoring. A maintained site costs a fraction of an emergency rebuild.
— What to watch for
— How we do it
SetKernel Digital Inc. builds websites the way production software is built — proper engineering, edge-deployed, you own the code. We work from a written brief: you describe your audience, goals, and constraints; we come back with a fixed price. No hourly billing, no surprises. After launch, we maintain what we ship — on a retainer or as standalone updates. The site is yours from day one.
— Keep reading
— Common questions
For a professional small-business site in Halifax, expect CA $1,500–$8,000 depending on page count, custom design requirements, and whether you need a CMS for content editing. E-commerce adds cost — typically CA $5,000–$15,000 for a Shopify-based storefront, more for fully custom checkout and inventory integrations. If a quote is significantly below these ranges, ask exactly what is included.
Wix and Squarespace are suitable for very simple sites where speed to launch matters more than SEO performance, custom design, or long-term ownership. For a business that competes on credibility — professional services, agencies, SaaS, healthcare — a custom-built site performs better in search, loads faster, and you own the codebase. The cost difference is real, but so is the performance difference.
SetKernel Digital Inc. scopes every project individually. A typical engagement includes: discovery and site architecture, custom design (not a theme), front-end engineering, CMS setup if needed, performance tuning, structured data, and deployment to edge infrastructure. The quote is fixed — what we scope is what you pay. Ongoing maintenance is quoted separately on request.
A small-to-mid-range site — 5–15 pages, custom design, CMS — typically takes 4–8 weeks from brief to launch. Web applications with user accounts, databases, and custom logic take longer, often 8–16 weeks or more depending on scope. Timeline is part of the engagement memo we provide before you commit.
No. SetKernel Digital Inc. provides a fixed price in writing after reviewing a brief — not a rate card. The right scope for a 5-page service site is materially different from a 40-page e-commerce store with CRM integration. Write us a brief and we respond within one business day.
— Engage
Describe your audience, your goals, and any constraints. We respond within one business day with a fixed price and a clear scope.