Web design pricing in Quebec: what a website really costs in 2026

In Quebec, a small business brochure site runs between $2,000 and $10,000, a bilingual corporate site between $8,000 and $25,000, and an online store between $6,000 and $50,000. An agency's hourly rate runs from $120 to $250. What really moves the invoice is not the number of pages. It is the content to produce, how custom the design is and the architecture chosen, which also determines what you will pay every year afterward.

Updated August 27, 2026

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What you get at each budget tier

Five tiers, and each one buys something specific. What changes from one tier to the next is almost never the number of pages: it is the amount of custom work and the amount of content someone has to produce from scratch.

Under $2,000

A purchased template, assembled by you or by a beginner freelancer, with your own copy and photos. It is a real segment and there is nothing shameful about it: for a business that needs an address, opening hours and a form, it is enough. What you will not get: copy written for you, a structure designed for search, and someone to call when things break. Plan on 15 to 30 hours of your own time.

$2,000 to $5,000

The most common tier among service businesses in Quebec. A template customized to the company's colours, 5 to 10 pages, a connected form, basic SEO. The content remains yours: if the vendor writes your copy at this price, it is generic, and that is the first thing that caps your visibility.

$5,000 to $12,000

A design made for you rather than adapted, 10 to 20 pages, an architecture built around what your customers search for, copywriting included for some of the pages, measurement connected. This is the first tier where the site becomes an acquisition tool rather than a business card.

$12,000 to $30,000

A corporate site, often bilingual, 20 to 50 pages, full copywriting, integrations with a CRM or a booking system, accessibility properly handled. It is also the tier for online stores with a mid-sized catalogue. Project management becomes a real item, not a token line.

$30,000 and up

This is no longer a site but an application: a configurator, a customer portal, a connection to a management system, a catalogue of several thousand items with pricing rules. At this level, the question of price becomes secondary to the question of specification: a vague specification costs more than any hourly rate.

Web design pricing by type of project

The same amounts, sorted by what you want to build rather than by available budget. The median column is the one to remember: it is the price where most projects of that type land in Quebec.

A vendor who gives you a price before seeing your existing content is selling a template. A vendor who asks how many pages you have, how many need rewriting and who will write them is pricing a project.

What is in a quote, line by line

This is the widest gap in everything published on this question: everyone publishes hourly rates, nobody publishes the number of hours. A rate of $145 an hour tells you nothing as long as you do not know whether a home page takes 8 hours or 40.

A real quote, anonymized, in hours and in dollars

Here is a complete quote, for a 14-page bilingual corporate site, at a rate of $145 an hour. The client's name has been removed; the hours and amounts are those of the project.

Three items are deliberately outside the quote, and that is normal: professional translation, billed by the word, about $2,500 for 9,000 words; photography; and hosting. A quote that mentions them nowhere has a surprise in store for you.

How many hours each element takes

The benchmarks below hold for careful work. Multiply by your rate to check any quote you receive.

Pricing by architecture, and what it will cost you every year

The technical choice made at the start decides half of your bill for the following five years. It is the part of the decision almost no quote explains, because it is paid after signing.

Wix or Squarespace

Quick and inexpensive to build, with a subscription of $25 to $60 a month that never stops. No technical upkeep on your side, which is a real advantage. Two limits: customization hits a ceiling quickly, and you cannot take the site elsewhere. The content can be recovered, the build cannot.

Classic WordPress

The most widespread solution in Quebec, and the most expensive one to keep running. Hosting from $20 to $100 a month, paid plugins and, above all, updates to watch: that is where the $50 to $500 a month maintenance plan you will be offered comes from. That plan is not an abuse, it is the consequence of the architecture.

WordPress rendered as static

You keep the WordPress interface for writing, but the published site is a set of fixed files. Hosting drops to almost nothing, the most common attacks no longer apply and speed goes up. The build costs a little more, and you need a vendor who knows the process.

Static site

The site is built in advance and served as files. There is no database to protect and no server to keep up to date, and the infrastructure costs a fraction of a WordPress site's. It is not free for all that: at Falia, it is part of the monthly plan for the AI-managed website, from $65 a month depending on the site, which also covers your content changes. Add the domain name, about $20 a year. This very site is built that way.

Custom build

Justified when the site does something no tool on the market does: a product configurator, a customer portal tied to your management system, a particular pricing logic. Expensive to build and expensive to keep running, because you are the only one funding its evolution.

Total cost over five years: the five architectures compared

The table nobody publishes, and the only one that really answers the question. The cheapest site to build is almost never the cheapest to own.

Two readings stand out. The first: the static site costs $4,000 more to build than classic WordPress, and $5,550 less to own over five years. The second: for a very small need, Wix remains unbeatable, and that has to be said even when you sell something else.

Recurring costs, priced honestly

Three items, and only one cannot be reduced.

Domain name

From $15 to $25 a year for a .com or a .ca. It is the only truly mandatory cost. Make sure it is registered in your name and not your vendor's: it is the first thing to check in any contract, and the most expensive to recover later.

Hosting, and the case where it costs far less

For a WordPress site, count on $20 to $100 a month depending on traffic. For a static site, there is no server to rent, only files to serve: the infrastructure comes down to around $20 a month. It is still billed, and at Falia it is included in the AI-managed website plan along with your content changes. That line, missing from every Quebec guide, is worth several thousand dollars on its own over the life of a site.

Maintenance, and what it really pays for

From $50 to $500 a month depending on the vendor. Ask exactly what it covers, because the word spans two very different things: technical monitoring, which exists only because the architecture requires it, and content changes, which are real work. A plan that does not separate the two bills you for the consequence of a technical choice as if it were a service.

A good maintenance offer says how many hours of changes are included per month. A vague offer talks about “updates and monitoring” with no number.

Why two quotes for the same site differ by 300%

Because they do not describe the same site. In nearly every case we see, the gap comes down to four differences, and none of them is a question of margin.

Is your quote reasonable? The thresholds to check

Take your quote and do this calculation: divide the total amount by the stated hourly rate. If the result is under 40 hours for a 10-page site with copywriting, the quote is incomplete or the work will be rushed. If it is over 250 hours for the same site, ask to see the detail.

Warning signs of a price that is too low

• No line for copywriting, when you have no copy ready.
• No line for URL migration, when a site already exists. It is the mistake that costs the most after the fact: a site rebuilt without redirects loses its search rankings overnight.
• No line for measurement or for consent, both mandatory in Quebec.
• A fixed price given without seeing your existing content or asking a question about your integrations.
• Hosting and the domain name registered in the vendor's name.

Questions to ask before you sign

What bilingualism and Law 25 add to the invoice

An English version costs 30% to 50% of the price of the French version, never 100%. The design, the development and the structure are already paid for: what remains is translation, billed by the word at around $0.25 to $0.35, the layout of each translated page and the work of linking the two versions.

The Charter of the French Language requires the French version to be at least equivalent: an English version more complete than the French one is not a saving, it is a risk. Also plan for the French content to stay up to date at the same time, which doubles the cost of maintaining the content, not the cost of maintaining the site.

Law 25 adds an item almost no Quebec quote prices: the consent banner, the privacy policy, configuring measurement so that it fires only after consent, and the mechanism that lets a person request the deletion of their data. Count on 4 to 12 hours depending on complexity, and turn down the quote that does not mention it.

The cost of leaving and the cost of a redesign

The exit cost is what it will cost you to leave your vendor or your platform. It is zero on a static site or a standard WordPress site, because you take the files and the database with you. It is high on a closed platform: you recover your copy and your images, never the build, and the site has to be redone.

The cost of a redesign generally falls between 60% and 90% of the cost of a new build. That is not an anomaly: the design, copywriting and development work is redone in full, and URL migration is added, which a new build does not have. The only item truly saved is discovery, because the vendor redoing a site already knows its content.

Quebec grants that can apply

Several funding programs cover part of a digital project in Quebec. They change names, criteria and budgets regularly: always check the current status with the organization before building a budget on them.

Two rules that hold everywhere: a grant is applied for before the expense is committed, almost never after; and a project shaped to fit a funding stream rather than your need costs more than the grant brings in.

Frequently asked questions about web design pricing