The short answer: most small business websites in New Brunswick, Canada cost between $500 and $15,000 to build, plus somewhere between $200 and $1,000 a year to keep running. Local freelancers publish packages from $500 to $3,500, and established agencies in Saint John, NB typically start around $5,000. Doing it yourself on a website builder costs roughly $170 to $650 a year and your own time. Anything above $15,000 usually means an online store at scale or custom functionality.
That range is wide because "a website" covers very different things. Below are the four real ways to get one if you're in Saint John, NB or anywhere else in the province, what each costs, and who each one actually suits. We build websites for a living, so we'll also say what we charge and when you shouldn't hire anyone at all.
Key takeaways
DIY builder: roughly $170 to $650 a year, plus 20 to 40 hours of your own time.
Local freelancer or solo builder: roughly $500 to $3,500 one-time for most small sites.
Small agency: usually $5,000 to $15,000, and the extra money buys strategy, writing and what happens around the site.
Full custom: $15,000 and up, and most small businesses in New Brunswick, Canada don't need it.
Copywriting is the biggest hidden variable. Writing your own words is the fastest way to bring any quote down.
The four ways to get a website
*Prices checked October 2026. Published rates change - confirm before you budget.*
1. Build it yourself
Cost: roughly $170 to $650 CAD a year, depending on the exchange rate. Time: 20 to 40 hours of yours, spread over a few weekends.
Wix, Squarespace and Framer all let you build a decent site from a template. On annual billing, Wix's plans start at US$17 a month, Squarespace's at US$19 and Framer's at US$10, and the plan you'd realistically use for a business sits one tier up from the cheapest on Wix and Squarespace. All three bill in US dollars, so the Canadian cost moves with the exchange rate.
What you get: a clean, mobile-friendly site that looks like a template, because it is one. That's fine. Plenty of customers can't tell and don't care.
What you don't get: anyone thinking about what the site should say or whether it's working. The hardest part of a website is the words, and the builder won't write them for you.
Who it's for: brand new businesses with no budget and no customers yet, and anyone who enjoys this kind of thing. If you're still at the stage of registering a name and finding premises, our guide to the steps for starting a business in New Brunswick, Canada comes first. A DIY site is a perfectly good place to start.
2. A local freelancer or solo builder
Cost: roughly $500 to $3,500 one-time for most small sites. Time: one to four weeks once they have your content.
This is most of the market in New Brunswick, Canada: one person, or two, building sites for local businesses. Prices are lower than the national guides suggest. Ambrite Web Services, a Canadian WordPress builder that works remotely with Saint John, NB businesses, publishes three packages: $500 for up to five pages, $1,500 for up to ten pages with lead-capture forms, and $3,500 for an online store. Each includes the first year of hosting, and maintenance plans start at $49 a month after that. Genuinely local solo builders here mostly don’t publish prices at all, so expect to ask.
Some builders sell the same thing as a monthly plan instead: no upfront cost, a fixed monthly fee, and a minimum contract of a year or more. Do the arithmetic before signing. $250 a month for twelve months is $3,000.
What you get: a properly built site, usually designed around your business rather than straight from a template, at a fair price.
What you don't get, usually: copywriting, a plan for getting found, or anyone watching what happens after launch. Some include these. Most expect you to supply the words and photos.
Who it's for: most established small businesses that need a professional site and can write a few paragraphs about what they do.
3. A small agency
Cost: usually $5,000 to $15,000. Time: three to eight weeks.
The site itself isn't much better than a good freelancer's. What the extra money buys is everything around it: someone working out what the site needs to say and to whom, writing it, setting up your Google Business Profile, connecting booking or enquiry forms, and making sure the whole thing leads to the phone ringing.
Most local agencies don’t publish prices, but some numbers are findable. ICS Creative Agency in Saint John, NB lists a $5,000 minimum project and an hourly rate of $100 to $149 on Clutch. Magnolia Studio, also in Saint John, lists its Squarespace and Shopify builds from US$5,000 for five custom pages.
Who it's for: businesses that already get work and want the online side handled properly in one go, rather than a site now and the rest later.
4. Full custom
Cost: $15,000 and up, often well up. Time: two to four months, sometimes longer.
Custom design from scratch, custom code, and functionality a builder can't do: a large online store, a client portal, integration with your scheduling or inventory systems. Coderapper, a Fredericton agency that builds online stores, lists a $25,000 minimum project.
Who it's for: businesses with a specific technical need. If you can't name the thing you need that a cheaper option can't do, you don't need this.
What actually drives the price up
If a quote looks high, it's almost always one of these. Each one is also a lever you can pull to bring it down.
Copywriting. Writing the words for your site is real work, and it's where quotes differ most. A builder who writes your copy is charging for it, whether or not it's itemised. Write your own first draft, even a rough one, and most quotes drop.
Page count. Five pages and fifteen pages are different jobs. Most service businesses need a home page, a page per main service, an about page and a contact page. Start there and add later.
Custom design versus a template. A designer working from a blank page costs more than one adapting a good template. For most local businesses a well-adapted template is enough. The customer cares whether the site is clear and current, not whether the layout is original.
E-commerce. Selling online adds products, payments, shipping and tax rules, and each product has to be set up. That's why store packages start several times higher than brochure sites.
Integrations. Online booking, a CRM, automated follow-up, connecting to your scheduling software. Each one adds setup and testing.
Revisions and content you don't have yet. Unlimited rounds of changes and missing photos or text both stretch a project. Have your content ready before the build starts and you'll pay for less time.
The costs nobody quotes you
A build quote is a one-time number. These are the ones that come every year, or come up when you realise you need them.
Cost | Typical amount | How often |
|---|---|---|
Domain name (.ca or .com) | $10 to $20 | Every year |
Hosting or builder plan | $170 to $650 | Every year |
Maintenance plan | $0, or about $590 on a $49-a-month plan | Every year, if you have one |
Business email | About US$84 per person on Google Workspace's starter plan | Every year |
Copywriting, if not included | About $80 to $500 per page | Once, then for updates |
Photography | $200 to $600 for a session with an independent photographer | Once, then occasionally |
Two things are worth checking. First, many builders include the first year of hosting free, so year two is the real number to ask about. Second, whether you need a maintenance plan depends on what the site is built on. A WordPress site needs updates and backups that someone has to do. A site on a hosted builder like Framer, Wix or Squarespace mostly looks after itself, and the plan you're paying for is the hosting.
Photography gets skipped more than anything else on this list, and it shows. Stock photos of smiling strangers are the fastest way to make a local business look like it isn't one.
What's different about buying locally
Every national pricing guide compares freelancers with mid-sized studios and big agencies. That's not the choice in Saint John, NB. In a city of about 70,000, the real options are a handful of local builders, a few solo operators, some who work out of Fredericton or Moncton, and the template services. There's no mid-market studio down the street with a team of twelve.
That has downsides. There's less choice, and the good local builders are often booked up. Some specialties, like complex e-commerce or custom software, may mean looking outside the province.
But it has real advantages too.
You can check their work in person. Ask a local builder for sites they've made for businesses you've heard of. Then call one of those businesses. In a small market, reputations travel and they're easy to verify.
You can meet them. Not every project needs it, but sitting across a table from the person building your site makes it much easier to explain what your business actually does.
Prices are lower than the national figures. Most of the national guides quote ranges built on Toronto and Vancouver rates. Local builders in New Brunswick, Canada often charge noticeably less for comparable work.
They know the market. Someone who has built sites for other businesses in Saint John, NB knows what people here search for, and that "Saint John" on its own gets confused with St. John's in Newfoundland.
You’ll have to ask for a number. Most builders here quote per project rather than publishing packages. That’s not evasiveness. It’s a small market where every job is different. But it does mean comparing options takes a few phone calls.
How to tell whether a quote is fair
Two quotes for "a five-page website" can be $800 and $5,000 and both be fair, because they describe different jobs. These four questions tell you which job you're being quoted for.
1. Who writes the words? If the answer is "you do," the quote is for building, not writing. Budget your own time accordingly, or ask what it costs to add.
2. What will I pay every year after launch? Hosting, the builder plan, maintenance, the domain. Get a single annual number in writing. A low build price with a $100 monthly fee costs more over three years than a higher price with none.
3. Who owns the site and the domain, and can I take it with me? The domain should be registered in your name, not the builder's. Ask what happens if you stop paying them: do you keep the site, can you move it, or does it go offline? Some monthly plans and proprietary platforms make leaving hard.
4. Can I change my own hours and phone number? Out-of-date details cost more customers than a dated design. If every small change means an email and an invoice, the site will drift out of date, and that's a cost too.
A builder who answers all four clearly and without hedging is usually one worth hiring, whatever the price.
What we charge
A build with us is $5,500. That's more than a local freelancer charges and at the low end of what agencies in Saint John, NB charge, because it isn't only a website. We build the site, set up and run the Google Business Profile, and automate the follow-up for service businesses in Saint John, NB, including online booking, a text back to anyone whose call you miss, and a campaign to customers you haven't heard from in a while. We build on Framer, so you can change your own hours without emailing anyone, and payments can be split.
If what you need is just a website, that's the wrong price for you. One of the cheaper options above is the right answer, and there are people in New Brunswick, Canada who do that well for a fraction of it.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a website cost in Saint John, NB?
For most small businesses, $500 to $3,500 with a local freelancer, or $5,000 to $15,000 with an agency in Saint John, NB. Doing it yourself costs roughly $170 to $650 a year.
Are there monthly fees after the website is built?
Almost always. At minimum you'll pay for the domain and hosting or a builder plan, usually $200 to $700 a year combined. Maintenance plans, if you take one, add more. Ask for the yearly total before you sign.
Can I build my own website instead?
Yes, and for a brand new business with no budget it's often the right call. Expect to spend 20 to 40 hours, and spend most of that on the words, not the design.
How long does it take to get a small business website built?
One to four weeks with a local freelancer once your content is ready, three to eight weeks with an agency, and two months or more for custom work. Missing content is the most common delay.
Do I need a website if I already have a Google Business Profile?
The profile matters more for being found, and it should come first. But most people who find you there will click through to check you're real before they call, and a missing or outdated site loses some of them.
The short answer: most small business websites in New Brunswick, Canada cost between $500 and $15,000 to build, plus somewhere between $200 and $1,000 a year to keep running. Local freelancers publish packages from $500 to $3,500, and established agencies in Saint John, NB typically start around $5,000. Doing it yourself on a website builder costs roughly $170 to $650 a year and your own time. Anything above $15,000 usually means an online store at scale or custom functionality.
That range is wide because "a website" covers very different things. Below are the four real ways to get one if you're in Saint John, NB or anywhere else in the province, what each costs, and who each one actually suits. We build websites for a living, so we'll also say what we charge and when you shouldn't hire anyone at all.
Key takeaways
DIY builder: roughly $170 to $650 a year, plus 20 to 40 hours of your own time.
Local freelancer or solo builder: roughly $500 to $3,500 one-time for most small sites.
Small agency: usually $5,000 to $15,000, and the extra money buys strategy, writing and what happens around the site.
Full custom: $15,000 and up, and most small businesses in New Brunswick, Canada don't need it.
Copywriting is the biggest hidden variable. Writing your own words is the fastest way to bring any quote down.
The four ways to get a website
*Prices checked October 2026. Published rates change - confirm before you budget.*
1. Build it yourself
Cost: roughly $170 to $650 CAD a year, depending on the exchange rate. Time: 20 to 40 hours of yours, spread over a few weekends.
Wix, Squarespace and Framer all let you build a decent site from a template. On annual billing, Wix's plans start at US$17 a month, Squarespace's at US$19 and Framer's at US$10, and the plan you'd realistically use for a business sits one tier up from the cheapest on Wix and Squarespace. All three bill in US dollars, so the Canadian cost moves with the exchange rate.
What you get: a clean, mobile-friendly site that looks like a template, because it is one. That's fine. Plenty of customers can't tell and don't care.
What you don't get: anyone thinking about what the site should say or whether it's working. The hardest part of a website is the words, and the builder won't write them for you.
Who it's for: brand new businesses with no budget and no customers yet, and anyone who enjoys this kind of thing. If you're still at the stage of registering a name and finding premises, our guide to the steps for starting a business in New Brunswick, Canada comes first. A DIY site is a perfectly good place to start.
2. A local freelancer or solo builder
Cost: roughly $500 to $3,500 one-time for most small sites. Time: one to four weeks once they have your content.
This is most of the market in New Brunswick, Canada: one person, or two, building sites for local businesses. Prices are lower than the national guides suggest. Ambrite Web Services, a Canadian WordPress builder that works remotely with Saint John, NB businesses, publishes three packages: $500 for up to five pages, $1,500 for up to ten pages with lead-capture forms, and $3,500 for an online store. Each includes the first year of hosting, and maintenance plans start at $49 a month after that. Genuinely local solo builders here mostly don’t publish prices at all, so expect to ask.
Some builders sell the same thing as a monthly plan instead: no upfront cost, a fixed monthly fee, and a minimum contract of a year or more. Do the arithmetic before signing. $250 a month for twelve months is $3,000.
What you get: a properly built site, usually designed around your business rather than straight from a template, at a fair price.
What you don't get, usually: copywriting, a plan for getting found, or anyone watching what happens after launch. Some include these. Most expect you to supply the words and photos.
Who it's for: most established small businesses that need a professional site and can write a few paragraphs about what they do.
3. A small agency
Cost: usually $5,000 to $15,000. Time: three to eight weeks.
The site itself isn't much better than a good freelancer's. What the extra money buys is everything around it: someone working out what the site needs to say and to whom, writing it, setting up your Google Business Profile, connecting booking or enquiry forms, and making sure the whole thing leads to the phone ringing.
Most local agencies don’t publish prices, but some numbers are findable. ICS Creative Agency in Saint John, NB lists a $5,000 minimum project and an hourly rate of $100 to $149 on Clutch. Magnolia Studio, also in Saint John, lists its Squarespace and Shopify builds from US$5,000 for five custom pages.
Who it's for: businesses that already get work and want the online side handled properly in one go, rather than a site now and the rest later.
4. Full custom
Cost: $15,000 and up, often well up. Time: two to four months, sometimes longer.
Custom design from scratch, custom code, and functionality a builder can't do: a large online store, a client portal, integration with your scheduling or inventory systems. Coderapper, a Fredericton agency that builds online stores, lists a $25,000 minimum project.
Who it's for: businesses with a specific technical need. If you can't name the thing you need that a cheaper option can't do, you don't need this.
What actually drives the price up
If a quote looks high, it's almost always one of these. Each one is also a lever you can pull to bring it down.
Copywriting. Writing the words for your site is real work, and it's where quotes differ most. A builder who writes your copy is charging for it, whether or not it's itemised. Write your own first draft, even a rough one, and most quotes drop.
Page count. Five pages and fifteen pages are different jobs. Most service businesses need a home page, a page per main service, an about page and a contact page. Start there and add later.
Custom design versus a template. A designer working from a blank page costs more than one adapting a good template. For most local businesses a well-adapted template is enough. The customer cares whether the site is clear and current, not whether the layout is original.
E-commerce. Selling online adds products, payments, shipping and tax rules, and each product has to be set up. That's why store packages start several times higher than brochure sites.
Integrations. Online booking, a CRM, automated follow-up, connecting to your scheduling software. Each one adds setup and testing.
Revisions and content you don't have yet. Unlimited rounds of changes and missing photos or text both stretch a project. Have your content ready before the build starts and you'll pay for less time.
The costs nobody quotes you
A build quote is a one-time number. These are the ones that come every year, or come up when you realise you need them.
Cost | Typical amount | How often |
|---|---|---|
Domain name (.ca or .com) | $10 to $20 | Every year |
Hosting or builder plan | $170 to $650 | Every year |
Maintenance plan | $0, or about $590 on a $49-a-month plan | Every year, if you have one |
Business email | About US$84 per person on Google Workspace's starter plan | Every year |
Copywriting, if not included | About $80 to $500 per page | Once, then for updates |
Photography | $200 to $600 for a session with an independent photographer | Once, then occasionally |
Two things are worth checking. First, many builders include the first year of hosting free, so year two is the real number to ask about. Second, whether you need a maintenance plan depends on what the site is built on. A WordPress site needs updates and backups that someone has to do. A site on a hosted builder like Framer, Wix or Squarespace mostly looks after itself, and the plan you're paying for is the hosting.
Photography gets skipped more than anything else on this list, and it shows. Stock photos of smiling strangers are the fastest way to make a local business look like it isn't one.
What's different about buying locally
Every national pricing guide compares freelancers with mid-sized studios and big agencies. That's not the choice in Saint John, NB. In a city of about 70,000, the real options are a handful of local builders, a few solo operators, some who work out of Fredericton or Moncton, and the template services. There's no mid-market studio down the street with a team of twelve.
That has downsides. There's less choice, and the good local builders are often booked up. Some specialties, like complex e-commerce or custom software, may mean looking outside the province.
But it has real advantages too.
You can check their work in person. Ask a local builder for sites they've made for businesses you've heard of. Then call one of those businesses. In a small market, reputations travel and they're easy to verify.
You can meet them. Not every project needs it, but sitting across a table from the person building your site makes it much easier to explain what your business actually does.
Prices are lower than the national figures. Most of the national guides quote ranges built on Toronto and Vancouver rates. Local builders in New Brunswick, Canada often charge noticeably less for comparable work.
They know the market. Someone who has built sites for other businesses in Saint John, NB knows what people here search for, and that "Saint John" on its own gets confused with St. John's in Newfoundland.
You’ll have to ask for a number. Most builders here quote per project rather than publishing packages. That’s not evasiveness. It’s a small market where every job is different. But it does mean comparing options takes a few phone calls.
How to tell whether a quote is fair
Two quotes for "a five-page website" can be $800 and $5,000 and both be fair, because they describe different jobs. These four questions tell you which job you're being quoted for.
1. Who writes the words? If the answer is "you do," the quote is for building, not writing. Budget your own time accordingly, or ask what it costs to add.
2. What will I pay every year after launch? Hosting, the builder plan, maintenance, the domain. Get a single annual number in writing. A low build price with a $100 monthly fee costs more over three years than a higher price with none.
3. Who owns the site and the domain, and can I take it with me? The domain should be registered in your name, not the builder's. Ask what happens if you stop paying them: do you keep the site, can you move it, or does it go offline? Some monthly plans and proprietary platforms make leaving hard.
4. Can I change my own hours and phone number? Out-of-date details cost more customers than a dated design. If every small change means an email and an invoice, the site will drift out of date, and that's a cost too.
A builder who answers all four clearly and without hedging is usually one worth hiring, whatever the price.
What we charge
A build with us is $5,500. That's more than a local freelancer charges and at the low end of what agencies in Saint John, NB charge, because it isn't only a website. We build the site, set up and run the Google Business Profile, and automate the follow-up for service businesses in Saint John, NB, including online booking, a text back to anyone whose call you miss, and a campaign to customers you haven't heard from in a while. We build on Framer, so you can change your own hours without emailing anyone, and payments can be split.
If what you need is just a website, that's the wrong price for you. One of the cheaper options above is the right answer, and there are people in New Brunswick, Canada who do that well for a fraction of it.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a website cost in Saint John, NB?
For most small businesses, $500 to $3,500 with a local freelancer, or $5,000 to $15,000 with an agency in Saint John, NB. Doing it yourself costs roughly $170 to $650 a year.
Are there monthly fees after the website is built?
Almost always. At minimum you'll pay for the domain and hosting or a builder plan, usually $200 to $700 a year combined. Maintenance plans, if you take one, add more. Ask for the yearly total before you sign.
Can I build my own website instead?
Yes, and for a brand new business with no budget it's often the right call. Expect to spend 20 to 40 hours, and spend most of that on the words, not the design.
How long does it take to get a small business website built?
One to four weeks with a local freelancer once your content is ready, three to eight weeks with an agency, and two months or more for custom work. Missing content is the most common delay.
Do I need a website if I already have a Google Business Profile?
The profile matters more for being found, and it should come first. But most people who find you there will click through to check you're real before they call, and a missing or outdated site loses some of them.