What it costs
Keeping a website running costs the same every month. Building one never does.
So the monthly plans have printed prices, and a build gets a real number in writing after we have scoped it. Both are explained here, and neither is behind a form.
After launch
Three ways we look after a site.
First, the boundary. Everything on this page is about websites — the kind on the work page. If what you need is closer to wearpoint or RealEasy, meaning software with accounts, records, and a workflow a business runs on, none of these numbers apply. That work is quoted on its own.
A site does not sit still once it launches. Certificates expire. Dependencies age out. A framework release changes something underneath you. The contact form quietly stops delivering, and nobody notices for three weeks because nothing looks broken. Somebody has to be watching, and this is what that costs.
Essentials
$125* /month
The site stays up and stays patched. Uptime monitoring, SSL and domain renewals, dependency and security updates, and half an hour a month for small changes — a price that moved, a photo that needs swapping, a paragraph that is no longer true. If something breaks, we find out before you do.
Plus
$250* /month
Everything in Essentials, with two hours a month of real changes in total. A new page. A seasonal menu. A staff member who joined, or left. Once a quarter we check how you are showing up in search, fix what is technically holding you back, and send a short note on what the analytics actually show — written in plain language rather than a dashboard export. We reply within three business days.
Partner
$650* /month
Everything in Plus, with five hours a month in total. This is for businesses where the site is doing real work — taking bookings, taking orders, bringing in the phone calls — and is worth improving on purpose rather than only when something breaks. When you want to work out where those hours should go, you tell us — a call booked that week, or an email you can write at eleven at night. There is no standing meeting to sit through, and no question that gets told it is out of scope. We reply within one business day.
Side by side
Most of this is invisible when it is working. That is rather the point of paying somebody for it.
Essentials
$125/month
Every plan
- Hosting, domain, and security certificate
- Kept updated and secure
- We watch it around the clock, so a problem usually reaches us before it reaches you
- If a change goes wrong, we put it back
- Your contact form and email tested, so messages reach you
- We tell you what you used, with every invoice
Where they differ
- Changes included each month
- 30 minutes
- Anything past that
- Our hourly rate
- Changes shown to you before they go live
- —
- We reply within, for requests
- 5 business days
- If something is actually broken
- Urgent
- Search problems found and fixed
- —
- A plain-language note on how the site is doing
- —
- Working out what to do next
- —
Plus
$250/month
Every plan
- Hosting, domain, and security certificate
- Kept updated and secure
- We watch it around the clock, so a problem usually reaches us before it reaches you
- If a change goes wrong, we put it back
- Your contact form and email tested, so messages reach you
- We tell you what you used, with every invoice
Where they differ
- Changes included each month
- 2 hours
- Anything past that
- 5% off our hourly rate
- Changes shown to you before they go live
- ✓
- We reply within, for requests
- 3 business days
- If something is actually broken
- Urgent
- Search problems found and fixed
- Quarterly
- A plain-language note on how the site is doing
- Quarterly
- Working out what to do next
- —
Partner
$650/month
Every plan
- Hosting, domain, and security certificate
- Kept updated and secure
- We watch it around the clock, so a problem usually reaches us before it reaches you
- If a change goes wrong, we put it back
- Your contact form and email tested, so messages reach you
- We tell you what you used, with every invoice
Where they differ
- Changes included each month
- 5 hours
- Anything past that
- 15% off our hourly rate
- Changes shown to you before they go live
- ✓
- We reply within, for requests
- 1 business day
- If something is actually broken
- Urgent
- Search problems found and fixed
- Monthly
- A plain-language note on how the site is doing
- Monthly
- Working out what to do next
- Whenever you ask, call or email
Some websites have moving parts behind them — a booking system, a members-only page, a newsletter that goes out on a schedule. Where that is the case, there is an infrastructure cost on top of the plan, and we tell you what it is before you sign rather than after. That is still a website.
Reply times are for requests — a change you want made, a question you want answered. If the site is down, or the contact form has stopped delivering, that is not a request. We treat it as urgent on every plan, including Essentials, and you do not have to be on the expensive one to have something broken taken seriously.
Move up or down a plan whenever you like, effective the following month. Moving down is not a conversation, it is a form.
All prices in Canadian dollars. Tax is added at the rate for where your business is — for Alberta clients that is GST alone.
None of these plans cover custom software. If people sign in, keep accounts, and put records into it — the kind of thing a business runs on rather than markets itself with — that is a different build and a different kind of looking after. It is scoped and quoted on its own, and no number on this page applies to it.
Before launch
The build has no price on this page, and that is on purpose.
Look at the client sites on the work page. One had to get the difference between two roasts across in writing. One had to explain a treatment philosophy well enough that a stranger books a first visit. One had to go on publishing without us. Same craft. Not the same job, and not the same number.
Three things move a build price more than anything else: how much site there is, who writes the words, and whether usable photographs of the business already exist. A price list would have to guess at all three, and it would guess wrong for most of the people reading it — and a figure that is wrong for you is worse than no figure, because you will remember it and we will spend the first conversation walking it back.
So you get a real number, in writing, before anything starts.
Getting to that number is work, and we do not charge for it.
A few conversations about how the business actually runs. A sitemap. The technical decisions written down — what needs a content system and what does not, where a hosted checkout goes, what has to be built and what should simply be bought. Then a fixed price, and a decision that is yours to make with the reasoning explained rather than hidden behind it.
We do not charge for this because a quote given without it is a guess, and a guess is either padded against you or it quietly eats us alive. Doing the work first is the only way the number means anything.
Who ends up with it
Two ways this ends, and they cost different amounts.
We used to answer “who owns the code?” by saying it gets settled in writing before work starts. That was true and not very useful. Here is the actual answer.
Managed
We host it, you are on one of the monthly plans above, and the code stays with us. This is the lower build price.
It is what most businesses should pick, and not because it locks you in. A custom site is a live thing. It needs a hand on it — someone who notices the certificate, takes the framework upgrade, reads the error before the customer does. Most businesses do not have that person, and hiring one costs more than the plan.
Standalone
You get the repository, in an account you own. Your own hosting, your own database, your own email service, all migrated across to accounts in your name and on your card. A written handover — how to build it, how to deploy it, what every setting is for. Thirty days of questions answered. Then we are finished, and there is no warranty after that.
Standalone costs more to build.
That is not a fee for leaving. The build costs less when we know we will be the ones living with the decisions, and more when this is the only time we will ever touch the code — because then it has to be built to be understood by somebody we have never met.
You pick before we start, and it goes in the agreement either way. If you start managed and later want out, the buy-out is that same difference, so nothing about this changes shape on you later.
What the monthly plan does not cover.
Saying this upfront on a public page is more transparent than an awkward invoice in month seven.
- Hours do not roll over. Unused time in a month is gone at the end of it. We would rather include a little and actually be available than bank six months of your time and then owe you a redesign in March.
- Bigger work is quoted on its own. Anything past the included hours is charged at our hourly rate at the time, and that rate can change. What does not change is that you get the cost of the work before it starts, never after.
- Unusual traffic gets billed through. The plans assume the kind of traffic a normal business gets. If a site starts costing meaningfully more than that to serve — a campaign that lands harder than expected, a page that travels, a bot that will not stop — we bill the difference at what it costs us, and we tell you when it starts rather than at the end of the month. This has never happened. We are telling you because it could.
- We do not promise rankings. On Plus and Partner we fix what is technically holding a site back — how it is structured, how quickly it loads, whether search engines can read it properly at all. The check itself, and the small fixes it turns up, are part of the plan — they do not come out of your included hours. Anything that is really a rebuild — reorganising how the whole site is put together, new pages, rewritten content — is quoted first, like any other build. What nobody can honestly promise is a position, and how you rank depends enormously on the words on the page, which are yours. Anyone quoting you a spot on page one is guessing.
- We do not write your copy. Changes are made from words you send us. If you want something written, we can quote it separately — but we would rather you tell us what to say than have us guess at what the business sounds like.
- We do not run your marketing. The ads, the social accounts, the newsletter sends. We keep the site working. The campaigns are somebody else's job, and we will happily tell you who is good at it.
The questions we always get
Do I have to be on a plan?
No, but the build costs more if you are not, and that is the whole of the managed-versus-standalone decision above. There is no third option where we host it and nobody maintains it — that arrangement fails quietly and then it is a fight about whose fault it was.
I already have a site. Can you just look after it?
Sometimes. If it is built on something we know and it is in reasonable condition, we will look at it and quote a monthly rate. If it is a WordPress install carrying forty plugins, we will say no rather than take the money and dread the ticket. Ask, and you will get a straight answer quickly.
Is the monthly plan a contract?
Month to month, cancel with thirty days' notice. There is no annual subscription option, and no penalty for stopping.
What happens to my domain if we part ways?
It leaves with you, and so do the analytics history and the mailing list. We will do the transfers rather than send you instructions.
Does this cover an app, or just a website?
Just a website. A website can have moving parts — a booking form, a members-only page, a storefront wired to Shopify — and still be a website as far as these plans go.
What it is not is software: customer accounts, records that people put data into, a workflow the business actually runs on. wearpoint and RealEasy are that, and neither of them could be looked after for $650 a month — and that is the most expensive plan on this page. If you are not sure which one you have, ask. We would rather tell you plainly than sell you a plan that does not fit what you built.Is this a quote?
No. It is what things cost in general, which is not the same as what yours costs. Tell us about the business and you will get a real number in writing.
Tell us what the business does.
What it does, what the site has to do for it, and whether one exists today. That is enough for a first reply worth reading — and enough for us to tell you which of the numbers on this page actually apply to you.
Start a projectPrices are current as of August 2026 and are not an offer. They apply to websites only, and not to custom software or web applications, which are scoped and quoted separately. Every engagement, including the monthly plans, is governed by a written agreement signed by both parties before work begins.