Blog · November 1 2026

How much does a small business website actually cost in Ontario in 2026?

Ask five people and you will get five answers, from free to the price of a used truck. The confusion is real, because a website is not one product. There are four common ways Ontario small businesses get one, and each prices a different thing. Here is what each route typically costs and what you actually get.

Route one: do it yourself with a website builder

Platforms like Wix, Squarespace and WordPress.com typically run from free to roughly $40 a month, plus about $20 to $30 a year for your domain. The cash cost is low. The real cost is your time: writing the pages, choosing photos, learning the tool, and keeping it updated, all valued at whatever your own hours are worth. DIY sites also tend to be thin on the details search and AI tools read, because the owner wrote what sounded good rather than what customers search for. For a hobby or a side project, that trade can make sense. For a business that needs the phone to ring, the hours usually cost more than the savings.

Route two: a freelancer

A freelancer typically charges a one time fee, commonly somewhere from several hundred dollars for something basic to a few thousand for a larger custom build. Quality varies enormously, because you are buying one person. The risks are the handover and the afterwards: who owns the domain, who updates the site when prices change, and what happens when that person gets busy, moves, or stops freelancing. Many Ontario businesses have a site they cannot edit, built by someone they can no longer reach.

Route three: an agency

Agencies typically start in the several thousand dollar range for a small business site and go up from there, often with a monthly retainer on top for hosting, maintenance and changes. You get a team, a process and usually a polished result, plus account managers between you and the people doing the work. For a business with a real marketing budget, that can be the right call. For a one or two person operation, the price is often out of proportion to what the site needs to do.

Route four: done for you, monthly

The newer model skips the big upfront bill. The site is designed, written, built and hosted for a flat monthly price, and updates are included up to a set number each month. There is no large cheque before you have seen anything, and no orphaned site when someone disappears, because the relationship is ongoing by design. The trade off is that you are renting the service rather than buying an asset outright, so it pays to check the terms: what happens to your domain, and can you cancel.

The costs nobody quotes you

• Your domain name, renewed every year, and it should always be registered in your name, not your builder's.
• Updates: prices, hours, staff and services change, and a stale site quietly costs you trust.
• The listings work around the site: Google profile, Bing, Apple and directories kept matching, which is where much of the being found actually happens.
• Your own hours, if you are the one doing any of the above at midnight.

What we charge, and why it is structured this way

AI Picked You Media works on route four. The Minimum is $199 a month: a complete website for your business, built first, before you pay anything, so you judge a finished site instead of a sales pitch. If you do not love it, it gets deleted and you owe nothing. There is no contract and you can cancel anytime. The growth packages are priced whole, website included: Get Named by AI is $1799 a month total and Get Found Everywhere is $1999.99 a month total, for businesses that want the full visibility work across search, AI tools and listings, and both are free for the first 3 days. The prices are published because we think small businesses should be able to compare numbers without sitting through a sales call first.