What it actually costs to get a small business online in New Brunswick

Ask three companies what a website costs and you will get five hundred dollars, four thousand dollars, and "let's set up a call to discuss your needs."

None of them are lying. They are describing genuinely different things, and the reason it feels evasive is that almost nobody publishes numbers, so an owner trying to budget has nothing to anchor to.

Here are real ranges, what separates them, and the costs that do not appear on any quote.

Websites, by what you are actually buying

Do it yourself, $0 to $400 a year. Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy. The subscription is roughly twenty to forty dollars a month and includes hosting.

You are paying with time. Expect a weekend to get something respectable, and more than that if you have not done it before. The results are perfectly decent for a simple business, and the honest catch is that most people set it up, feel good about it, and never touch it again.

Genuinely the right answer if you are comfortable with software, have the weekend, and your needs are simple.

Offshore and freelance marketplaces, $200 to $800. You will get a website. What varies enormously is whether you can get changes made afterwards, whether it works properly on a phone, and whether anyone answers in six months.

The recurring problem we see is not build quality. It is that the relationship ends at delivery, and a year later there is nobody to call and often nobody who knows where the domain is registered.

Local independent studios, $700 to $2,500. One or two people, working with local businesses. You get someone who answers, copy written for your business rather than filled in from a template, and usually a relationship rather than a transaction.

Local agencies, $3,000 to $10,000. More people involved, a design process, sometimes photography and branding. Worth it if you need those things. Overkill for a five page site about a plumbing business.

Anything with booking, payments, logins or e-commerce, from $2,500 upward, and it varies far too much to give a useful range. That is genuinely custom work.

Google Business Profile work

Less familiar territory, so the numbers are less known.

Setup, $200 to $600 one time. Claiming, verifying, categories, services, hours, photos, and a review system. It is a half day of work done properly.

Ongoing management, $99 to $600 a month. The range here is enormous because the work is. At the lower end, replying to reviews, keeping hours current, occasional posts. At the upper end, full local search work including citation building, competitor tracking and detailed reporting.

We found one Fredericton company charging $599 a month for the fuller version. That is a legitimate price for a legitimate amount of work, and it is also more than a lot of small local businesses need.

Ongoing maintenance

$100 to $250 a month is the standard range for a basic plan on a simple site. Hosting, SSL, backups, security updates, monitoring, and minor content changes.

$250 to $500 adds performance work, reporting and more substantial content changes.

$500 and up for anything with e-commerce or a database doing real work.

Worth knowing: a static site with no database and no plugins genuinely needs less maintenance than a WordPress site. If you are being quoted the middle of that range for five static pages, it is fair to ask what specifically is being done each month.

The costs that never appear on a quote

This is the part that catches people.

Your domain, about $20 a year. Small, and the important thing is not the money. It is that it should be registered in your name, on your card. When it is registered in a developer's account, you do not really control your own address, and you find that out at the worst possible moment.

Content. Somebody has to write what goes on the pages and provide photos. If it is not in the quote, it is your evenings. This is the single most common reason website projects stall for months.

Photography. Real photos of your actual business are worth more than any design decision, and stock photos of other people's premises are worth less than nothing. A few hundred dollars with a local photographer, or a careful hour with a good phone on a bright day.

Changes. Every website needs changes. Either it is included in a monthly plan, or it is quoted each time, or you can do it yourself. Establish which before you sign, not the first time you need your hours updated.

Why cheap builds often cost more later

Not always. A cheap site from someone competent is a bargain and plenty of businesses run happily on one for years.

The pattern that goes wrong is specific. The domain gets registered in the builder's account. The site is built on something the owner cannot edit. There is no handover of logins. The relationship ends at delivery.

Two years later the business needs a change, nobody can be reached, and it turns into a recovery project. The build was six hundred dollars and sorting it out costs more than that.

The fix costs nothing at the time. Ask three questions before you hire anybody, and the answers matter more than the price.

Is the domain registered in my business name, on my card? Will I get every login when it launches? What does it cost to change something in a year, and who do I call?

Anyone reasonable answers all three easily. Anyone who gets vague has told you something useful.

Our numbers, for what it is worth

We publish ours because almost nobody does and it seems unhelpful.

Google Business Profile setup is $349. A website is $800. Both together is $999. Ongoing plans are $89 a month for the website, $99 for the profile, or $159 for both, and paying yearly gets you one month free. Custom work is quoted after a call.

Those are not the cheapest numbers on this page and they are nowhere near the highest. What they buy is a small local operation where the same person builds it, answers the phone, and is still here next year, and a domain that stays in your name whatever happens between us.

Whatever you decide and whoever you use, ask the three questions.

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Call +1 506-801-9970 or email info@qhike.ca. We serve Fredericton, Moncton, Saint John and all of New Brunswick.