How Much Does a Website Cost for a Small Business in BC?
Ask five web designers what a website costs and you will get six answers. Here is the honest breakdown for a BC trade or small business in 2026 — what each tier really costs, and what you actually get.
DIY: $0–$500 (plus your weekends)
Wix, Squarespace, WordPress.com. The sticker price is low; the real price is 40–80 hours of your time learning, building, and fixing. At a $130/hour billable rate, that “free” website costs $5,000–$10,000 in lost revenue. And DIY sites rarely rank — thin content, slow templates, no SEO structure.
Template + freelancer: $500–$2,000
A premium theme plus a freelancer to customize it. Better than DIY, but you still own every future problem: updates, security, backups, and the SEO the freelancer did not do. Most of these sites quietly die within two years.
Agency: $3,000–$10,000+
Custom design, proper discovery, real copywriting. Great results — if you have the budget and the patience for a 6–12 week process. Many Victoria agencies start at $5k and the monthly “care plans” run $150–$400 on top.
Done-for-you, itemized: $499–$2,500 + $49–$129/mo
This is our model at Barkada Web Services: every line item spelled out like a trade quote. Design, copywriting, hosting, SSL, enterprise-grade security, daily backups, monitoring, updates — each listed, each priced. No “miscellaneous” line. The monthly is not rent on your own site; it is the live services (hosting, security, backups, updates) itemized so you can see exactly what you are buying.
The real question is not price — it is return
A website that brings one $350 job a month pays for the top tier in under two months. The plumbers and electricians ranking on page one in Victoria are not debating whether a website is worth it; they are collecting the calls from the ones still debating.
See the itemized breakdown: pricing · 2026 Victoria cost breakdown · DIY vs done-for-you
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