33 answers, including the awkward ones

There is no single number, because "a website" covers everything from a five-page brochure site to a booking platform. As a rough guide: a small business site with custom design usually lands in the low-to-mid four figures, an online store starts higher because of the checkout and product work, and anything with logins, bookings or integrations is quoted on the specifics. What you will always get is a single fixed figure before any work begins, and a written scope saying what is and is not included in it.

Usually because they are not quoting the same thing. One quote assumes a pre-built template with your logo dropped in; another assumes custom design, content structuring, speed work and testing across real devices. Neither is dishonest, but they are not comparable. When you compare quotes, ask each one what happens after launch, who owns the site, and whether the price includes content and revisions. The gaps show up quickly.

A deposit up front, the balance at launch, and larger projects split across agreed milestones instead. You will know the schedule before you commit, and nothing is invoiced that was not in the original scope without you agreeing to it in writing first.

Hosting and your domain renewal, always — those are yours and typically modest. Beyond that it is optional. Some businesses take a care plan for updates, backups and monitoring; others handle it in-house or leave a stable site alone. Premium plugin licences, if your build needs any, are the other recurring item, and they are listed in the quote rather than appearing later.

Sometimes, genuinely. If you need a presence online this month, have almost no budget, and the site is mostly a business card, a good template is a reasonable place to start. It becomes the wrong choice when the site has to actually generate enquiries, when you need it to rank, or when you will outgrow it in a year and pay twice. We will say which situation you are in.

Four to six weeks is typical for a small business site, measured from the point where the scope is agreed. Larger builds run eight to twelve. That assumes feedback comes back within a few days at each checkpoint — the build time itself is rarely what determines the finish date.

Content, almost every time. Design and development can be scheduled; waiting on copy, photography, product data or a decision from three people cannot. The second most common cause is scope growing mid-project. Both are manageable if we name them at the start, which is why the discovery stage exists.

Yes, if it is realistic and you tell us about it before we scope rather than after. A fixed launch date usually means agreeing what ships in phase one and what follows later. We would rather launch a smaller site on time than a bigger one late.

Four stages. Discovery works out what the site has to achieve and produces a written scope, timeline and price. Design produces wireframes and then full layouts you sign off. Build happens on a staging site with weekly checkpoints. Launch covers testing, migration, redirects and go-live, followed by thirty days of support. You see working output at the end of every stage — there is no period where the project disappears.

Less than most people expect, but it is not zero. Budget a couple of hours for the initial conversation, then roughly an hour a week for reviewing checkpoints and answering questions. The heaviest demand is content — if you are writing it yourself, that is the part to start early.

Then we change it, and that is what the design stage is for. Revisions are expected and built into the schedule; you are signing off layouts before anything is built, which is precisely so that disagreements happen while they are cheap. What we will push back on is a change we think will cost you enquiries — but it is your business, and your call.

Either. Most clients write a first draft of what they want to say and we edit and structure it for the web, which is usually the fastest route and keeps it in your voice. If you would rather hand it over entirely, that is a separate line in the quote rather than something we quietly absorb.

Yes. It lives on a staging URL from early on, and you get the link. It is password protected so search engines and customers cannot find it, and it is where every checkpoint happens.

WordPress suits most small businesses because you can edit it without a developer, the hiring pool is enormous, and you are never locked to one agency. It is the wrong choice when the project is really an application rather than a website, when you need something extremely lightweight, or when a specialist platform simply does the job better. Shopify beats WordPress for a lot of pure retail, for example, and we will tell you that rather than sell you a build.

You are not locked in, but be realistic: a site built with a page builder is easier for you to edit and harder to lift wholesale onto a different system later. The content and images always move; the layouts would need rebuilding. If that trade-off matters to you, say so at the start and we can build it differently.

Yes, on WooCommerce or Shopify depending on what you are selling and how you want to run it. The important work in e-commerce is not the product pages, it is the checkout, the shipping and tax rules, and what happens when an order goes wrong. That is where the time goes and where most cheap stores fall down.

That is a web application rather than a website, and it is quoted differently — on the functionality rather than the page count. Booking, scheduling, customer portals and internal dashboards are all things we build. The first conversation is usually about whether an off-the-shelf tool would do the job for a fraction of the cost, because sometimes it will.

Both. A good proportion of our work is fixing, speeding up or partially rebuilding sites that are structurally fine and do not deserve to be thrown away. We will look at what you have and tell you honestly whether it is worth building on — that answer is free, and sometimes it saves you the whole project.

A new site ships with everything that makes ranking possible: clean markup, correct heading structure, schema, fast loading, a sitemap, and Search Console connected so you can see what is happening. That makes you eligible. Whether you then rank for competitive Toronto terms depends on content, links and time — no honest developer can promise a position, and anyone who does is guessing.

Not if the migration is done properly. Every existing URL is mapped to its replacement, redirects are tested before the switch, and the old structure is preserved wherever it makes sense to. Rankings can wobble for a week or two while Google recrawls — that is normal and it recovers. Rankings are lost when nobody bothers with the redirect map.

Fast enough that it is not the reason someone leaves. In practice that means the main content appearing in around two and a half seconds on a mid-range phone over mobile data — not on your office fibre connection, which is how most people accidentally convince themselves their site is fine. We test on throttled connections and show you the numbers.

No, and you should be suspicious of anyone who says otherwise. The technical groundwork is done once and stays done. Ongoing SEO is really ongoing content and outreach — worth paying for if you are in a competitive market and want to keep gaining ground, easy to pause if you are already getting the enquiries you can handle.

Analytics and Search Console are part of every build. Google Business Profile matters enormously for local searches and we will set it up or clean up an existing one, but it needs you for verification and for the photos and reviews that make it work.

Yes, and you get shown how before handover — a walkthrough recorded or in person, plus written notes for the things you will actually do: adding a page, changing text, swapping an image, publishing a post. Nothing routine should require calling us.

For the first thirty days after launch, you message us and we fix it, included. After that it depends whether you are on a care plan; if you are not, it is handled as a one-off job. Either way we do not disappear, and we do not hold your site hostage to a support contract.

You need someone doing updates, backups and security monitoring. Whether that someone is us is genuinely up to you. WordPress sites that go two years without an update are how most hacks happen, so the risk of ignoring it entirely is real — but plenty of clients handle it in-house perfectly well.

You do, all three, in your own accounts wherever possible. We would rather set up hosting in your name and be given access than own it on your behalf. If you ever want to leave, you change the password and everything is already yours.

Yes, and without a fight. The code is standard, the site is documented, and we will hand over access and answer the new developer's questions. Building sites that are difficult to leave is a business model we would rather not have.

Yes. Most of our work is across the GTA — North York, Scarborough, Etobicoke, Mississauga, Vaughan, Markham, Brampton and further out — and plenty of it is elsewhere in Ontario or beyond. The work happens remotely regardless, so your location rarely changes anything except which local searches we care about.

Not usually. A call and a shared screen covers almost everything, and it keeps the project moving faster than scheduling meetings. If you would rather sit down properly, especially for the first conversation, that is easy enough to arrange around Toronto.

A small team, and the person you brief is the person doing or directing the work. You are not handed to an account manager once the contract is signed, and nothing is quietly passed to someone junior afterwards. Where a project genuinely needs a specialist we bring one in and tell you that is what is happening rather than presenting it as in-house. The trade-off is that we take on a limited number of projects at once.

A conversation about what the business does and who you are trying to reach, plus whatever assets already exist — logo, photos, any copy, access to the current site and domain. If several of those are missing, that is completely normal and we work out how to fill the gaps as part of the project.

We will say so, early, and point you somewhere better if we can. Taking on work we are not right for wastes your money and our time. That happens most often when a project really needs a large team, or when the budget and the ambition are too far apart to close honestly.