What does a website actually cost in Kingston?

The short answer

Most small business websites in Kingston land between about $1,800 and $5,500, paid once.

Want this handled instead of DIY'd? See pricing and get a fixed-price quote.

That's a wide range, so here is exactly where my own work sits inside it.

One fee, one time. No monthly retainer, no licence that quietly renews, no surprise in month seven. You'll pay for hosting and your domain name, which together run most small businesses somewhere in the range of a decent phone plan a year, and you pay that to the hosting company, not to me.

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 matters less than most people expect. 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.

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 won't arrive until after a discovery call, a strategy session, and a proposal document, the number is often being fitted to how much you look like you can pay.

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 online now or thinking about it later, because guessing wrong there is the one mistake that costs real money.
• Gather the photos you already have.
• 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.

Tell me about your business and what you want the site to do, and I'll tell you honestly which of the three sizes fits, including when the answer is the smallest one. If it turns out you need less than you thought, I would rather say so now than after you've paid for it.

Once you know the number, the next question is what has to be ready before launch, and the website launch checklist walks through it. When you are ready to talk about your own site, the Kingston page is where I lay out how I work and what each size includes.