In short
- The price follows the scope: pages, who writes the French, custom design, e-commerce, integrations and compliance.
- A real fixed-price quote spells out the domain, hosting, account ownership, revision rounds and a timeline.
- The hidden costs are the recurring ones: plugin licences, hosting, maintenance and French for every future page.
- Every site and store we build comes with a written fixed price, agreed before any work starts.
Why "it depends" is true, and also not an answer
Ask ten studios what a website costs and you will get ten versions of "it depends." That is true. It is also useless until someone tells you what it depends on.
A website price is mostly an estimate of time: planning, writing, design, development, testing and the back-and-forth in between. Once you know which levers move that time, you can compare quotes properly. One note: the only prices in this article are ours. As a general rule, templates cost less up front and custom work costs more. Neither is automatically the better deal.
What actually drives the price
Pages, and page types. Ten pages sharing one layout cost less than six pages that each need their own. Home, services, a few service details and contact is a small site. Add a team directory, a project gallery and a resource library and you have just ordered three new templates.
Bilingual content, and who writes the French. Under the Charter of the French Language, as amended by Bill 96, French has to be at least as available as any other language on a commercial site in Quebec. (Our Bill 96 website checklist covers the details.) If you supply final, proofread copy in both languages, the work is mostly layout. If you supply English and expect French to appear, someone has to write it. Good Quebec French is a skill, not a plugin setting.
Custom design versus a template. A template is cheaper, but your site looks like many others and carries code you never asked for. Custom design costs more because someone is making decisions for your business specifically. The sensible middle, and what most small businesses need, is a clean, well-built base theme with your brand applied carefully.
E-commerce. A store adds products, payment gateways, shipping rules, transactional emails in two languages and a lot of testing. GST and QST have to be calculated correctly, and the order confirmation a customer in Laval receives should be in French.
Integrations. Booking systems, CRMs, newsletter tools, accounting software. Some connect in minutes. Others need custom code and a patient afternoon with the API documentation. Ask for each integration to be priced separately.
Compliance. Law 25 changed how Quebec businesses handle personal information, cookies and analytics included. A proper consent banner, a privacy policy that matches what the site actually does, and forms that collect only what they need all take time. Our Law 25 cookie consent guide explains what is involved.
What a fixed-price quote should include
A fixed price is only fixed if the scope is written down. "Website, five pages, $X" is not a quote. It is the opening position in a future argument. A useful quote names:
- Pages and templates. A list, in both languages, not just a count.
- Content responsibilities. Who writes the copy, who writes or reviews the French, who supplies photos.
- Domain. Registered in your name, on your account, with you holding the login.
- Hosting. Where the site lives and what it costs after launch.
- Access and ownership. Admin access to WordPress, hosting, domain, analytics and your Google Business Profile, all in your name. You should be able to fire your web studio without losing your website.
- Revisions. How many rounds on design and content, and what happens after that.
- Timeline. Dated milestones, and what you need to deliver for each.
- Payments and taxes. Deposit, milestones and final payment, with GST and QST shown separately.
The costs that are not on page one
The build is paid once. A website, unfortunately, is not a one-time object.
- Plugin and theme licences. Many premium WordPress plugins are yearly subscriptions. Ask which ones your site uses and whose name each licence is in.
- Hosting. Bargain hosting is cheap for a reason. Speed and security start at the server.
- Maintenance. WordPress, themes and plugins need regular updates. Skipping them is how small sites get hacked.
- French for future content. Every new post or promotion needs both languages. "We'll do the French later" rarely happens, and the site drifts out of compliance.
- Your own time. Gathering content and approving designs is real work. Projects stall on missing content far more often than on code.
Red flags in a quote
- No list of pages, just a number.
- The domain will be registered "for you," on the agency's account.
- French described as "automatic" or "included with the plugin," with no human review.
- Unlimited revisions. It sounds generous. In practice nobody has defined what done looks like.
- Nothing about hosting, maintenance or life after launch.
- Nothing about privacy, consent or Quebec language rules, for a site aimed at Quebec customers.
Practical tip: before you sign, ask for a list of every account the project will create and whose name each one will be in. If the answer is vague, so is your ownership.
How we quote
We send a written fixed price after a short video call about your project, in Canadian dollars, with GST (5%) and QST (9.975%) shown separately. Each line of the quote says what it covers:
- Bilingual website: a fixed price for the pages, languages and features agreed on
- Online store: a fixed price that includes the catalogue setup, taxes and checkout
- Custom web application: a written plan first, then a fixed price
- Local SEO: a fixed monthly fee
- Maintenance and hosting: a fixed monthly fee that includes small edits each month
- Bill 96 and Law 25 audit: a fixed price for the review and the written fix list
A straightforward project costs less than one with more page types, more integrations or a lot of French copy to write, and the quote says why. We are a Canadian studio based in Toronto, working with Montreal businesses remotely, in the same time zone, over video calls. French is written first, not bolted on at the end.
Questions to ask any agency
- Who writes the French, and who reviews it?
- Will the domain, hosting and every licence be in my name?
- How many revision rounds are included, and what does an extra one cost?
- What will I pay each year after launch, all in?
- How do you handle Bill 96 and Law 25 on the sites you build?
- What happens to my site if we stop working together?
A good provider answers all of these without getting defensive. If one question makes the conversation awkward, that is useful information too. And since a site is only worth paying for if people find it, read our piece on bilingual SEO in Montreal before you finalize the scope.
Want a number you can actually hold us to? Tell us what you need at info@webdevelopmentmontreal.ca, or get a fixed-price quote.
Written by the Web Development Montréal team
A Canadian studio based in Toronto that builds fast, bilingual WordPress sites for Montreal businesses, French written first, to Bill 96 and Law 25.
