If you run a small business in Victoria and you’ve started asking what a website costs, you’ve probably noticed the answers are useless. “It depends” from the agencies, “$16 a month” from the platform ads, and quotes that range from $99 to $20,000 for what sounds like the same thing.
I build websites for businesses across Victoria and Vancouver Island, so here are the actual numbers — including my own — and, more usefully, what makes the price move.
The short answer
| Option | Typical cost | What you actually get |
|---|---|---|
| DIY builder (Squarespace, Wix) | $250–$500 per year, forever | A template you build and maintain yourself |
| Freelance designer | $750–$5,000 one-time | A site built for you, quality varies wildly |
| Agency | $5,000–$15,000+ | A team, a process, and a timeline to match |
All three can be the right answer for different businesses. The trap is paying for one while expecting another.
Why the range is so wide
Website pricing looks random until you see what’s underneath it. Five things move the number more than anything else:
- Custom design versus a template. A template is cheap because it was designed once for everyone. Custom design costs more because someone sat down and designed it for your business specifically — and it’s the single biggest reason two sites at the same page count can be $750 apart.
- Page count and content. A one-page site and a six-page site are different amounts of work, but not six times different. What costs real money is content nobody has written yet.
- Who updates it later. A site only you can pay someone to update has a hidden subscription attached. A site with a proper editing system costs a bit more up front and nothing after.
- E-commerce and bookings. The moment a site takes money or appointments, the scope roughly doubles.
- Who’s doing the work. Victoria agency rates carry offices and project managers. Freelancers carry neither, which is most of the price difference — the code doesn’t know who wrote it.
What I charge
My pricing is public, fixed, and on my services page, so I’ll just use it as the worked example:
- Landing page — $750. One polished custom page: your services, reviews, contact, done properly. This is the right size for more Victoria businesses than the industry likes to admit.
- Business website — $1,500. The full site, with as many pages as the business needs — booking, galleries, menus, a blog. I price by what the site does, not by page count, because pages are the cheap part.
- Custom web application — from $2,500, scoped per project. Booking systems, online ordering, customer portals, internal tools. Agency pricing for this category typically starts around $20,000.
Every one of those is custom-coded, comes with an editor so you can change text, photos, and prices yourself, includes a 30-day warranty, and hosting is free on my account — no monthly fee. Payment is a 25% deposit and the rest at launch. You can see what those numbers actually buy on the work page — every site there is one of these packages.
The costs nobody mentions
The advertised price is rarely the real price. Three things to check before comparing quotes:
Monthly fees compound. A $30-a-month builder plan is $360 a year, every year. Five years in, the “cheap” option has cost more than a custom landing page — and you did all the work.
Cheap sites get built twice. The most expensive website is the $500 one that never brought in a customer and got rebuilt eighteen months later. I’ve replaced a few of these; the second build always costs more than doing it once would have.
Ownership matters at the exit. Ask any developer two questions before hiring them: “Do I own this?” and “What happens if we stop working together?” If the answers are vague, the real price shows up when you try to leave.
If your budget is tight
Start smaller than you think. A genuinely good one-page site beats a mediocre five-page site every time — visitors don’t count your pages, they decide in seconds whether you look legitimate. Launch the landing page, let it earn, and grow it into a full site when the business justifies it. That’s the exact path several of my clients took.
And if you’re not sure which bucket you’re in, ask me. I’ll tell you honestly if a $750 page is all you need — it’s a strange sales tactic, but it’s why Victoria businesses refer me to their neighbours.