How much a website costs a window and door company in Canada

The short answer

The build price is the smallest part of what a website costs a window and door company. Every site has four costs: building it, keeping it online and secure, changing it as your products and seasons change, and the hours you or your office spend on it. Two quotes that look far apart often cover different parts of that list, and the cheaper one on paper is regularly the dearer one by the end of the first year.

This guide explains each cost, the three common ways Canadian window companies pay for a site, and how to compare offers over 12 and 24 months instead of on the first invoice. We sell one of those options, a managed plan, so we use our own published price as the worked example and describe the others in general terms rather than quoting competitors. Our pricing page has the full detail.

Every website has four costs, whoever builds it

What you pay for, whoever builds it

Cost	What it covers	Often missed
Build	Design, page setup, forms, photos placed and sized	Writing the words
Running	Hosting, SSL certificate, security updates, backups	Renewals after year one
Changes	New products, photos, hours, seasonal notes	Billed per request
Your time	Gathering content, reviewing, making or requesting edits	Busy-season delays

The fourth line never appears on an invoice, but for a small installer it can be the largest. An evening spent fighting a page builder in October is an evening not spent quoting.

Option one: a one-off build

A web designer, freelancer or agency quotes a fixed price to design and build the site, and you pay most of it before or at launch. Prices vary widely with the size of the site and the provider, which is why we don’t quote a range here.

A one-off quote usually includes:

• A discovery conversation and a proposed page list
• Design and build of the agreed pages
• A contact or quote form
• A set number of revision rounds before launch

And it often doesn’t include:

• Hosting and the SSL certificate after the first year
• Security updates for the site’s software
• Changes after launch, which are billed by the hour or by the job
• Writing your content

A one-off build suits a company that needs something custom, such as a large product catalogue, and has someone in the business who will look after the site. The risk is the familiar one: a good site at launch that nobody updates, so two years later it lists discontinued products and last spring’s booking note.

Option two: a DIY website builder

Website builders charge a monthly or yearly subscription and give you templates to fill in. The cash cost is low, and you can change anything whenever you like.

The real cost is your time. To compare fairly, estimate the hours you would spend setting it up and the hours per month keeping it current, then multiply by what an hour of your time is worth to the business. For an owner who also measures and sells, that hour is rarely cheap, and the site work tends to slip in the busiest months.

Generic templates are the other catch. They are built for any business, so you have to work out the product pages, service area and quote questions yourself. None of that is hard, but it is the part that decides whether the site brings in quote requests.

Option three: a managed plan

A managed plan charges a setup fee and a monthly fee, and the provider builds, hosts and updates the site. You supply the content and ask for changes. The cost is spread out and predictable, but you keep paying for as long as the site runs, and there is usually a minimum term.

Our plan is CA$249 a month plus a CA$499 setup fee, plus applicable taxes, with a 12-month minimum term. It includes hosting, security updates, up to 5 content edits a month and a monthly inquiry report. Here is what that adds up to over time, before tax:

Chart data as a table

Item	Value
After 12 months	CA$3,487
After 24 months	CA$6,475
After 36 months	CA$9,463

Put the same periods next to any other quote. A one-off build plus hosting and a year of paid changes, or a builder subscription plus your hours, gives you a like-for-like comparison. The cheapest option at month one is not always the cheapest at month 24.

Read the terms of any managed plan, ours included, before comparing. Check how long the minimum term is and what you owe if you leave early, whether the price can rise and with how much notice, what counts as an edit, and what you get back when the plan ends. A plan that looks cheap monthly but keeps your domain or content when you leave costs more than it seems.

The costs that show up after launch

The domain name

Registering your domain is a small yearly fee paid to a registrar. Make sure the domain is registered in your business name, not the designer’s. If the relationship ends, a domain you don’t control is expensive to recover.

Photos

Install photos sell windows. If you don’t have good ones, budget time to take them on your next few jobs, with the homeowner’s permission. Stock photos of generic windows don’t show the work you do.

Words

Most providers expect you to supply the text, including ours. Writing a product page takes less time than people fear if you answer plain questions: what is it, who is it for, what options can they order.

The rebuild

Sites that nobody maintains age quickly. Budget for a rebuild every few years if you choose a one-off build, or check that a plan keeps the site current as part of the fee.

What a year of changes looks like

The “changes” line is easy to underestimate, because a window company site that is doing its job changes all the time. A typical year brings requests like these:

• Late winter: a note that spring install dates are booking, and new photos from winter jobs.
• Spring: a new product line from your supplier, and a discontinued series to remove.
• Summer: gallery updates from the busy season, a new town added to the service area.
• Fall: a note on booking before the cold, updated financing wording from your provider.
• Any time: new hours, a new staff photo, a correction to a product option.

That is easily a dozen or more small edits a year. On a one-off build each one may be a separate invoice or a wait for the designer’s schedule. On a DIY builder each one is your evening. On a managed plan they come out of the monthly allowance. Whichever you choose, count them in the comparison, because a site that doesn’t get these updates slowly stops matching what you sell.

How to compare website quotes fairly

Ask every provider the same questions and write the answers side by side:

1. What is the total before tax for the first 12 months, and for each year after?
2. Who pays for hosting and the SSL certificate after launch?
3. How are changes after launch charged?
4. Who registers the domain, and in whose name?
5. Is there a minimum term, and what happens if I leave early?
6. Do I approve the site before it goes live?
7. What happens to my content if I leave?

On tax: the Competition Bureau’s advertising guidance allows a price to leave out charges imposed by government, such as sales tax, but not other extra fees ¹ . A quote that adds a “platform fee” or “admin fee” on top of the headline price deserves a question.

Work out what your site really costs

• Write down what your current site costs you each year, including your own hours and any one-off fixes.
• Decide which parts you want to do yourself and which you want done for you.
• Get two or three quotes and compare them over 12 and 24 months using the questions above.
• Check each option has the pages a window company needs; our guide for window and door dealers lists them for dealers.

The bottom line: compare what you will pay, and what you will still have to do yourself, over the whole commitment. A quote that leaves every change, every seasonal update and every broken plugin to you is not the cheaper option. It just moves the cost onto your evenings.

If a managed plan sounds right, see what our plan includes and compare it with the other routes on the comparison page.