Quick answer: A cheap web designer sells you a build — one payment, one delivery, and then the site is yours to host, renew and fix. A website subscription sells you a running website — the build, hosting, domain and updates for one monthly figure, with someone still responsible for it in year two. The quote for the first is lower. The total for the second is usually lower. Which one is right depends on whether you want to own a project or a result.
If you are in Canada and typing "cheap web designer" into Google, you are probably looking at quotes somewhere between CA$400 and CA$1,500. Here is what that money actually buys, and what it doesn't.
What a cheap quote includes
Usually: a template, customised with your logo, colours and text. Four or five pages. A contact form. Delivered in a week or two, then handed over.
That is a real product and for some businesses it is enough. The problem is not what is in the quote — it is what is missing from it, and the fact that nobody mentions the missing parts until after you have paid.
What it leaves out
Five things, almost every time:
- Hosting. The site has to live somewhere. That is a monthly or annual bill, in your name or theirs.
- The domain. Registered once, renewed every year. Miss the renewal and the site disappears.
- Updates. Templates, plugins and platforms change. A site that is never updated eventually breaks or gets compromised.
- Fixes. The form stops sending. A page loads wrong on the new iPhone. Someone has to look at it, and the cheap quote did not include that someone.
- Anything after handover. Adding a service, changing prices, swapping a photo. Billed by the hour — if the designer is still around.
None of these are hidden fees. They are simply not part of a build. But a small business owner comparing "CA$700 once" against "CA$139 a month" is comparing a build against a running website, and the two numbers are not measuring the same thing.
The year-two bill
Add up what a cheap build actually costs over two years and it stops looking cheap:
| Cheap one-off build | Managed subscription | |
|---|---|---|
| Build | CA$400–1,500 once | Included |
| Hosting + domain | CA$150–500 a year, ongoing | Included |
| Updates and fixes | Your time, or hourly | Included |
| Changes after launch | Hourly | Included |
| Someone responsible in year two | Usually nobody | Yes |
The right-hand column is what we do, and you can see the monthly price in Canadian dollars. But the point of the table is not the price — it is the last row.
Who holds the keys
The quietest problem with the cheapest quotes: the hosting account, the domain, and the site-builder login are often set up under the designer's name because it is faster. You own a design. You do not own the website.
When you want to move it — new designer, new platform, the old one stopped replying — you need those logins. Before you pay anyone anything, ask one question: "Will the domain and hosting be registered in my name?" If the answer is anything other than yes, that is the real cost of the quote.
(With a subscription this should be equally clear. Ours: the domain is yours, and you keep it if you cancel.)
When the cheap designer is the right call
Honestly — sometimes. If you need a simple site once, you are comfortable managing hosting and a domain yourself, you know how to update a template, and you will not need changes for a year or two, a one-off build from a competent freelancer is a perfectly good decision. Pay it, own it, move on.
When the subscription is
If any of the following is true, the build is the wrong thing to be buying:
- You do not want to think about hosting, renewals or updates, ever.
- You will change services, prices or photos more than once a year.
- You want to see the finished site before you commit money to it.
- You want a named person to message when something breaks.
That describes most of the Canadian trades and service businesses we build for — detailers, cleaners, barbers, salons — and it is why our Canadian pages lead with "see it live before you pay" rather than with a price.
The question that decides it
Not "which is cheaper?" — that depends on the year you measure. Ask instead: in 18 months, when the site needs something, who is going to do it? If the answer is "me, happily," buy the build. If the answer is "I have no idea," that is what the subscription is for.
Book a call if you would rather talk it through. You will speak to the person who would actually build the site.