Most articles answering this question quote a range of $500 to $50,000 and call it a day. That’s useless. It’s the price-comparison version of telling you a car costs somewhere between a bus pass and a house.
I’ll do it differently. Here’s what a Vancouver small business website actually costs in 2026 — the real ranges I quote, what moves the number up or down, and how to read a cheap quote without getting burned.
The honest answer up front.
Here are the ranges I see across the projects I build out of Vancouver in 2026. Real numbers, in Canadian dollars, for custom-coded sites — not template subscriptions.
- Single-page site (custom, mobile-first): $500 – $1,500
- Multi-page business site (3–5 pages): $1,800 – $3,500
- Premium site (8–12 pages, custom UX work): $4,000 – $7,500
- Brand + Website package (logo, identity, full site): $5,500 – $9,500
- Care plan (hosting, updates, security, edits): $99 – $249/month
Most Vancouver small businesses I work with land in the $1,800 – $3,500 range. That’s the band where you get a real homepage, a few service pages, a contact page, a working booking or lead form, and a site that loads in under two seconds on a phone.
If someone quotes you $400 for a “full business website,” that’s a template with your name dropped in. If someone quotes you $15,000 for a five-page service business site, you’re paying for an agency’s project manager, account executive, and the office lease on West Pender. Neither is wrong. Both are worth knowing about before you sign.
What actually drives the price.
The number on your quote isn’t random. Six things move it, and they move it a lot.
Page count. A four-page site is roughly twice the work of a two-page site — but a ten-page site isn’t twice a five-page site, because the design system gets reused. Most service businesses need 5–8 pages, not 15.
Custom features. A contact form is cheap. A multi-step intake form that emails the office and pushes to a CRM is not. A booking widget embed is cheap. A custom booking flow with availability logic is not. Be specific about what you actually need on day one versus what’s a “nice to have” for next year.
Content readiness. If you hand me finished copy and 20 real photos, I’m building. If you hand me a Google Doc with bullet points and ask me to “make it sound professional,” I’m now also a copywriter, and the quote reflects that. The same goes for stock photography research and basic logo cleanup.
Brand assets. Got a logo, a colour palette, and brand fonts already? Great — I plug them in. Need a logo and identity built from scratch? That’s a separate piece of work in the $1,500 – $3,000 range, which is why I bundle it as Brand + Website for clients starting clean.
Integrations. Jane, Cliniko, Noterro, Mailchimp, Stripe, Google Calendar, a custom CRM — each one is a half-day to two days of setup and testing depending on how clean the API is. Three integrations on one site can quietly add $800 to a quote.
Timeline pressure. A four-week build is standard. A two-week build means I’m rearranging other projects, and that’s a 20–30% rush fee. If you can give me six weeks, the price goes the other way.
What you’re not paying for when you hire a one-person studio.
I run a one-person studio out of Vancouver. That’s deliberate. Here’s what isn’t sitting inside your quote because of it.
You’re paying for the website. Not the office, the account exec, the project manager, and the agency’s coffee budget.
No project manager markup. No “creative director review” hours. No theme licensing fees, because there’s no theme — I write the code. No marketing markup baked into the rate. No reseller fees on hosting, because I’ll point you at a $5–$15/month host you own directly.
The trade-off is honest: I’m not an agency. If your project needs five people in a room and a six-month timeline, I’ll tell you and refer you out. If your project is a small business website that needs to load fast, rank locally, and convert visitors into bookings — that’s what I do, full-time, and the price reflects no overhead.
Squarespace, Wix, and the three-year spreadsheet.
A Squarespace Business plan runs around $276 CAD a year. Add a premium template, a few apps, and your time spent wrestling the editor, and most small businesses spend $400–$600 a year on the subscription, plus 15–30 hours of their own time annually maintaining it.
Over three years, that’s $1,200 – $1,800 in subscriptions, plus 45–90 hours of your time. At $60/hour for your time — which is conservative for a clinic owner or service business owner — that’s another $2,700 – $5,400 in opportunity cost.
A custom-coded site at $2,400 with $200 in hosting over three years comes in cheaper, ships faster, and doesn’t lock you to a platform. I’ve written about this in more detail in page builders aren’t free, and the WordPress version of the same math in why WordPress might be costing your small business more than a custom site.
This isn’t anti-Squarespace. If your site is a portfolio or a hobby, a template is fine. If your site has to earn its rent, look at the three-year total — not the monthly.
Red flags in a cheap quote.
A $600 quote for a multi-page business site isn’t a bargain — it’s a setup. Before you sign anything in Vancouver, ask:
- Who owns the code and the content when this is done? The answer should be: you do. If they say “we host it for you, you can’t take it elsewhere,” walk.
- Where is it hosted, and can I move it? You should own the hosting account. Your domain registrar should be in your name. Not theirs.
- How many revision rounds are included, and what counts as a revision? Vague answers mean every change is an extra invoice later.
- What happens if I find a bug after launch? A real builder includes a 14–30 day fix window for anything broken at handoff. If they don’t, you’ll pay $80 an hour to fix typos.
- Is the site mobile-tested on real devices, or just resized in a browser? They aren’t the same thing, and the difference shows up the first time a customer tries to book on an iPhone SE.
The cheap quote usually answers two of these well and dodges the rest. That’s the signal.
What I charge for a Vancouver small business website.
Direct numbers, no asterisks.
Custom-coded sites here start at $500 for a single-page build. Most projects land in the $1,800 – $3,500 range — a real multi-page site with mobile-first design, booking or lead forms, local SEO setup, and analytics on day one. Premium builds with deeper UX work run $4,000 – $7,500. A full Brand + Website package — logo, identity, and the full site together — lands around $5,500 – $9,500. Care plans for hosting, updates, and small edits start at $99/month.
You can see the full breakdown on the services page, and if you want a real quote with a real timeline, get in touch. I’ll come back with a number that doesn’t change after you sign.
The right Vancouver small business website cost in 2026 isn’t the cheapest one or the most expensive one. It’s the one where the three-year math works, the code is yours, and the site does the job you hired it to do.