Quick answer: in 2026, most Ottawa small businesses pay somewhere between $3,000 and $20,000 CAD for a professionally built website, with simple template sites at the low end and custom, bilingual or e-commerce builds running $20,000 to $50,000 and up. Published Ottawa agency prices start around $10,000 for a project and $20,000 for a 10-page WordPress or Shopify build. These are typical market ranges, not 1 Club prices.
If you have asked three Ottawa firms for a quote and got $4,000, $14,000 and $38,000 back, you are not alone. Each one is quoting a different amount of work, and most quotes do not say so clearly. This guide shows what sits behind each number so you can compare like with like.
Typical website price tiers in Ottawa (2026, CAD)
- DIY builder (Wix, Squarespace, Shopify basic): about $20 to $60 a month plus your own time. Fine for a side business. You write, design and fix everything yourself.
- Template site by a freelancer: roughly $2,500 to $7,500. Five to eight pages on a ready-made theme, your text dropped in, basic contact form.
- Small business site with real strategy: roughly $7,500 to $20,000. Custom design on a proven platform, 8 to 15 pages, copywriting help, local SEO set-up, tracking and a lead form that goes somewhere useful.
- Established agency custom build: roughly $20,000 to $50,000. Discovery workshops, a full design system, more pages, testing and a launch checklist. Published Ottawa agency rates for custom work sit around $200 an hour.
- E-commerce, bilingual or app-like sites: $25,000 to $100,000+. Product catalogues, payments, French and English versions, integrations with booking, inventory or a CRM.
- Ongoing care: from about $50 a month for hosting and updates to $300 to $700 a month for maintenance plans with a few hours of changes. Published Ottawa maintenance rates run near $85 an hour.
What actually drives the cost
- Number of unique page designs. Ten pages that share two layouts cost far less than ten pages each designed from scratch.
- Who writes the words. Copywriting is often the hidden line. If you hand over finished text, the price drops; if the agency interviews you and writes every service page, it goes up, and the site usually performs better.
- French and English. Ottawa and Gatineau buyers often expect both. A proper bilingual site is close to two sites of content, not a plug-in that machine-translates.
- Accessibility. Ontario organisations with 50 or more employees must meet WCAG 2.0 AA under AODA. Building to WCAG 2.1 AA from day one costs less than fixing it later, and federal-government buyers often ask for it.
- Integrations. Booking calendars, CRMs, payment forms, quote tools and ad tracking each add set-up and testing time.
- Photos and video. Real photos of your crew in Kanata or your clinic in the Glebe beat stock images, but a shoot is its own budget line.
- Search and AI-search readiness. Schema markup, fast hosting, an llms.txt file and service pages written for real questions are part of a good build, not an extra. Our free website checkup shows what your current site is missing.
Red flags in a website quote
- No list of pages or features. If the quote is one number with no scope, you cannot compare it, and you will pay for "extras" later.
- You do not own the domain or the site. Your domain should be registered in your name, and you should be able to take the site with you if you leave.
- Locked into the agency's hosting for life. Hosting through them is fine; being unable to move is not.
- "SEO included" with no detail. Ask what that means: titles and descriptions only, or service pages, schema and a Google Business Profile?
- No mention of accessibility, privacy or forms. A site that collects names and phone numbers needs a privacy policy and secure forms under PIPEDA.
- Very low price plus a long contract. A $99-a-month site with a 36-month term is often a $3,600 template you never own.
How to get a fair website quote
Before you call anyone, write down three things: what a good enquiry looks like for you, which pages you need, and which tools the site must connect to. Our design brief guide turns that into one page you can send to every firm, so the quotes line up. Then ask each firm for a line-by-line scope, who owns what at the end, and what happens after launch.
If you are weighing a DIY builder against hiring someone, read Wix vs WordPress vs hiring a web designer. For a Canada-wide view of what drives price, see how much a small business website costs in Canada.
Three ways to start
- Do it yourself, free: run the website checkup on your current site and use the service page guide to fix your most important page.
- Done with you: we plan the pages, the lead flow and the wording with you on a call, and you or your developer build it.
- Done for you: we design, write, build and launch the site, connect it to your CRM and tracking, and send you weekly numbers. You get a fixed quote after a short free call, and you own the domain and the site.