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The short answer
A small business website from me costs $2,500, $6,000, or $9,000, in Canadian dollars, paid once. Those are my three sizes. The rest of this guide is about which one a Kingston business actually needs, and how to tell when somebody else's quote is being fitted to your wallet instead of your work.
Want this handled instead of DIY'd? See the three fixed-price website sizes.
Here is where each size sits and what pushes a business from one to the next.
| Size | Price | Suits | What moves the price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $2,500 | A business that needs to be found, believed, and phoned: a few pages, your services, your service area, your contact details, built to load fast on a phone | Page count: fewer pages means less to write, build, and check |
| Grow | $6,000 | Room to breathe, more pages, separate pages for the things you actually want to be found for, and the structure to keep adding as you go | Page count, and content: if someone has to write your services from scratch, that's real hours |
| Complete | $9,000 | A business with a lot to say or a lot to sell, where the site has real work to do every day | Selling online: a store takes money, tracks stock, calculates tax and shipping |
One fee, one time. There is no monthly retainer and no licence that quietly renews. Two things do renew every year, your domain name and your hosting, and you pay those to the registrar (the company that holds your web address) and the hosting company, not to me. Any honest quote will tell you both figures in writing before you pay a deposit.
Every size is yours. The domain is registered in your business name, the hosting account is in your name, and the logins are handed to you. If you ever move the site to somebody else, you can, and I'll help you pack it up.
What actually moves the price
Four things move a web design quote, and none of them are mysterious.
Page count is the obvious one. A five page site is less work than a twenty page site because someone has to write, build, and check every one of those pages.
Selling online is the big jump. A brochure site tells people what you do and how to reach you. A store takes money, tracks stock, calculates tax and shipping, and has to keep working when it's busy. That's a different machine, and it costs more to build and more to keep running.
Custom design versus a starting template moves the price less than the other three. A well chosen template that's properly set up for your business beats a custom design that nobody maintained. I use a strong starting point and shape it around your business, which is how the fixed prices stay fixed.
And then there's your content. If your photos and your words are ready, the build moves. If someone has to write your services from scratch and photograph your shop, that's real hours, and it belongs in the quote instead of appearing later as an awkward conversation.
If it's waiting on a sense of your budget, you have your answer.
Which size the shop needs, and which size the truck needs
The same city produces very different sites, and the size follows the business rather than the budget. Two made-up businesses show where the line falls.
Take a shop on Princess Street. Its customers are on foot. The site has one job: confirm that you're open, say what you sell, show what the place looks like, and make the phone number and the map one tap away. Every September a fresh crowd of students arrives who have never heard of you, and they find you on a phone. That's a Starter site. A few pages, done properly, and the money left over goes into good photos.
Now take an electrician working out of a truck from Kingston across to Amherstview and up to Napanee. Nobody walks past. Every customer typed a problem and a town into a search box, and the site has to answer a different question for each one. Panel upgrades in Kingston is one page. Service calls in Napanee is another. Each service and each area you actually cover wants a page of its own, and that is the shape of Grow.
Complete is for the business where the site does work every day, not just introductions. A studio that takes class bookings online, a shop that ships what's on the shelf, a club with a members' area. If money changes hands or a calendar fills up on the site, that is the size, and it's worth every dollar there and worth nothing anywhere else.
When "it depends" is really a stall
Movers price by bedrooms. Nobody has ever moved two identical houses, stairs and driveways and pianos differ every time, and yet an honest moving company will still tell you on the phone what a three bedroom move generally runs. They have done enough of them to know the shape of it.
Web design is the same. Anyone who has built a hundred small business sites knows what a ten page site for a trades company costs. When a quote can't arrive until after a discovery call, a strategy session, and a proposal document, ask what the number is waiting on. If it's waiting on a sense of your budget, you have your answer.
Here is what I would ask any web designer in Kingston, including me.
- What's the price, and what's in it?
- What happens if I need one more page?
- Who owns the site when we are done?
- What do I pay every month and to whom?
If those four answers are vague, the invoice will be too.
What to have ready before you ask anyone for a price
You'll get a better number faster if you turn up with a few things sorted.
- Write down the pages you think you need, even roughly.
- Decide whether you're selling or booking online now, later, or never. Guessing wrong there is the one mistake that costs real money.
- Gather the photos you already have, even the ones you're not sure about.
- Know your service area, because a company serving all of Frontenac County needs a different site than one serving four streets downtown.
- Know what the site is for. A site that has to make the phone ring is built differently than a site that exists so people can check you're real before they walk in.
- Check whose name your current domain is registered in, if you have one.
That last one surprises people. If your web address was registered by whoever built the old site, the first job is getting it into your name, before a single page is built.
Common questions
Can I spread the cost instead of paying it all at once?
Yes. Financing is available on every size, at 0% interest over 24 months for qualified clients. Say so when we talk and we'll set up a plan that fits your business, and the plan goes in the written quote.
What if I outgrow Starter?
You move up a size, and nothing you paid for the first time gets thrown away. The pages, the writing, and the photos carry forward into the bigger build.
I already own a domain name. Does that change the price?
No. You keep it, it stays in your name, and it gets pointed at the new site when it launches. If it turns out to be registered in someone else's name, getting it back is the first thing we sort out.
Can I get a number without a meeting?
Yes, that's the point of three fixed sizes. Read the table, pick the size closest to your business, and tell me what you sell and where. If the honest answer is that you don't need me yet, I'll say that too.
Once you know the number, the next question is what has to be ready before launch, and the website launch checklist walks through it. If you're still weighing whether you need a site at all, a Facebook page or a website is the honest place to start. When you're ready to talk about your own site, the Kingston page is where I lay out how I work and what each size includes.
Related guides
- What pages does a small Kingston business site actually need?
- A small business website checklist before you launch
- Do you need a custom website or is a Facebook page enough?
Building for another town? Kingston, Amherstview, Gananoque and Napanee each have a page of their own.
Once you've picked a size from the table, the quote is one phone call: what you sell, where, and whether money changes hands on the site. If the smallest size is the right one, that is the one I'll quote. Call 613.480.1345 or email hello@kingstonwebdesigner.com.