What a custom WordPress website costs in Canada is usually the first thing a buyer asks, and the hardest to answer in one number. The same words describe a twelve-page site for a professional firm and a bilingual platform used by fifty thousand people. A useful answer names the kind of project you have and what drives its cost, so you can place your own project and read a quote with confidence.
The three kinds of project below describe custom WordPress development in Canada, meaning a site designed and built for you rather than a purchased theme dressed in your colours. Knowing which one you are buying is the first step to comparing quotes.
Three kinds of project and what separates them
A configured site
Here you buy a commercial theme or page builder set up with your brand and your content. For a small organization with simple needs, one language and no connections to other systems, that can be the right purchase.
Custom design is rarely part of it, and neither is an editing screen shaped around how your staff work. You also take on the builder’s speed and the plugins it depends on. Those limits stay with the site for as long as you keep it.
A custom build
Many associations, professional firms, established businesses and mid-sized institutions need this kind of project. The work covers discovery, site structure, custom design, custom editing blocks, accessibility to WCAG 2.2 Level AA, content migration, training and a launch plan you can roll back.
Within a custom build, page count matters less than you might expect. The price follows the number of distinct kinds of content and how much of it has to move from the old site.
Platform work
Public bodies, health and education, regulated industries and organizations running several sites usually need this kind of project. Projects usually become platform work because of their integrations with the systems that hold your records. Full English and French parity adds to it, and so do document libraries that run into the thousands. Formal accessibility conformance, security reviews and heavy traffic add more.
Seven things that move the cost
- Kinds of content. Forty pages built on three templates make a small project. Twelve pages that each need their own layout make a bigger one. Ask for quotes priced by template and content type.
- Migration. Moving 200 clean pages is routine. Moving 4,000 pages and a document library out of a system with no export is a project of its own, and quotes often underestimate it.
- Integrations. A connection to a CRM, payment processor, membership database or booking system costs more to keep running than to build. Someone has to handle its errors, and someone has to update it when the other system changes.
- Two languages. Full parity between English and French adds design, setup and testing time, though well short of double. The largest share of the extra effort is content work on your side.
- Accessibility. Building accessibly from the start adds little. Fixing an inaccessible design afterwards costs a great deal. Formal conformance, with documented testing and evidence, is a separate deliverable with its own price.
- Who writes the content. Projects often stall on text everyone assumed already existed. If you need writing, say so when you ask for the quote.
- Procurement. Tender responses, security questionnaires, insurance requirements and formal reporting take real hours. On public projects they are a visible share of the cost, and a quote that leaves them out will be revised.
What the quote usually leaves out
Ask about each of these by name. When one turns up after signing, it lands on a budget that was already spent.
- Hosting, backups, monitoring and the security work that goes with them.
- Yearly licences for commercial plugins, which you pay for the life of the site.
- Writing, translation, photography and video.
- Maintenance after launch: WordPress and plugin updates, testing, and someone to contact when something breaks.
- Training, and written documentation for the day the person who was trained leaves.
For ongoing maintenance and support, plan a yearly budget from the start, on its own line next to the build. Skipping it tends to cost more later, when the work arrives all at once and in a hurry.
Why the cheapest quote often costs more
Say one firm quotes twice as much as another for the same project. The lower figure usually leaves something out: migration, accessibility, training, testing, or the discovery work that would have found a requirement before it became a change order.
The expensive outcome is paying for the site twice. That happens when the first one can’t be maintained or extended, or fails an accessibility review you knew was coming.
How to compare quotes fairly
Send every firm the same brief and ask each one for the same five answers:
- How many templates and content types they priced.
- How many pages and documents they assumed for migration.
- Which accessibility standard and version they build to.
- What happens after launch, and what it costs.
- Who will do the work, by name.
Those answers explain most of the gap between two quotes, and they tell you far more than the total at the bottom of the page.
Budgeting a project now? Our page on WordPress development in Canada explains how we scope and estimate a project, and what you receive at the end.