What a website costs in Squamish

Two sites with the same number of pages can involve very different amounts of work. One arrives with approved photography, written service copy and a settled structure. The other needs the offer worked out from nothing, old URLs untangled, and a booking system connected before a single page can be designed. The second project costs more, every time, and a quote that only counts pages will miss the difference.

The factors that actually move a website’s price in Squamish are the same five I go through with every client here: what content is ready against what still needs writing, which page types and screen sizes are in scope, which existing links and forms need to keep working, whether the site talks to a booking or payment system, and who edits it once it is live. I walk through all five with worked questions, using the same current terms, in a separate guide, so I will not repeat the whole thing on this page.

The August map contains 877 open businesses, of which 716 have browser audit records. Of the 877, 109 were marked as having no website and 13 used only a social or ordering platform: 122 without a website of their own (byImprint business map, August 2026).

The September intake scan read 642 websites. It identified Squarespace on 125, WordPress on 112, Wix on 94 and Shopify on 41. These counts describe detected platform signatures on readable sites, not platform choices across every business in town.

The 13 platform-only pages are included in the 122, not an additional group. Whether to improve a platform page or build a separate site depends on the business’s needs.

The browser records contain 112 severity 4 or 5 verdicts among 716 audited businesses, about 16%. That is a finding rate within a selected audit set, not a town-wide estimate. The original 160 of 877 was a commercial rescue or repair segment and is not an equivalent count of verified failures.

A repair may be more useful than a rebuild when the existing site serves the business but a specific customer path fails. The right scope follows a check of that path.

The original mobile, phone-conflict and dead-domain totals are withdrawn pending a reproducible derivation. They should not be treated as verified subsets of the commercial segment. See the report methodology for the correction.

A missing website is an easy number to react to, but it is not automatically the most valuable thing to fix. Some of the 122 run entirely on word of mouth, a phone number and a good location, and do fine without one. Others are losing the customer who searches before they ever call, and never know it happened. The way to tell which one describes your business is the same conversation I start every project with: what is the one thing that is not working the way you would like, and what would actually change if it did.

If your business already has a website and the real question is whether to repair it or replace it, that is its own decision with its own trade-offs, and I have set out the questions worth asking in the guide linked above rather than repeat the argument here.

At byImprint, a focused website project starts at CA$2,500. That covers one defined improvement, built, tested and handed over. For a Squamish business that might be a service page that actually explains what you do, a contact route that works on the first try, or a repair to a site that has drifted since it was built (byImprint pricing, revision 2026-09-06). It is not a fixed price for a complete website. A full build, or a project that spans several connected tools, gets its own quote once we have talked through the scope.

Projects normally begin with 50% of the fee to reserve the start, with the balance due after you review and accept the finished work. All fees are in Canadian dollars, and agreed software costs and applicable taxes are additional to the quoted price.

If the scope is not clear yet, a CA$750 focused discovery is available first: a 60-minute session, a review of one workflow, and a written recommendation you keep either way. It is optional, not a required first step, and if we agree a project within 30 days the CA$750 already paid counts toward the total fee.

Content preparation, photography, a full rebuild and migration off an old platform all change the scope, and CA$2,500 is not a promise that they are folded in. If your business is one of the 122 without a website, expect the first conversation to start with what you already have on hand: photos, a description of what you offer, past client examples, anything usable. Someone still has to organise and write what is missing, and that is real work whether I do it or you do.

Running costs sit outside the project fee too: a domain, hosting, and any booking, payment or email tool the site depends on. I flag what a build will need before you commit to it, not after the invoice arrives.

None of this is meant to make the number vague. It is meant to make it accurate: a scope document names every one of these before you agree to a fee, so the number you see at the start is the number that applies at the end, not a floor that grows once work is underway.

Eightfold Creative had strong studio work that its old website did not show. I gave Brent a prioritised plan for the story, the pages, the proof and the enquiry path, and he made the changes himself. The follow-up found the work, about and service pages live, with real client examples and a clearer route to contact, verified on 4 June 2026. Traffic, enquiry and revenue effects were not measured, and I am not going to claim otherwise on a page about pricing.

That project ran as a focused engagement rather than a full rebuild, because the work Brent already had was strong; the gap was in how it was organised and explained, not in what needed to be created from nothing. Scoping a Squamish project the same way, honestly, against what already exists, is usually what keeps the number close to the starting price rather than well past it.

A website is one piece of how a customer reaches you. If bookings, quotes or enquiries are also landing by phone and getting written down by hand, a new site alone will not close that gap; the fix usually sits in how the request gets handled once it arrives, not just how the page looks. I have written that up separately for service businesses taking bookings.

That guide covers what by-hand booking, quoting and enquiry handling costs a service business in the corridor, using the same September intake census figures rather than a separate set of numbers, so the two pages describe one consistent picture of what the town’s websites and workflows are actually doing.

Some businesses need one thing built and handed over. Others want someone checking the whole surface on a schedule, for longer than a single project runs, websites included. That is the ongoing partnership, from CA$3,000 per month for 12 hours of direct work, and it covers more ground than a single site.

That matters for a website specifically because a site rarely stays finished: search settings drift, a form integration breaks quietly, seasonal information goes stale. A partnership is built for checking that on a schedule rather than waiting for a visitor to notice first.

I mention this on a cost page specifically because the two options are often compared on price alone, and that comparison only makes sense once you know which one is actually being priced: a single defined job, or ongoing attention.

Send your website address, if you have one, and the one thing that is not working the way you want: people ask the same question every time, nobody can find a particular service, a booking step gets abandoned, or you are not sure anyone is looking at all. That is enough to start the pricing conversation properly, and the first 20-minute call is free.

If you are not sure yet whether the answer is a small repair or a larger rebuild, say that too. Working it out together, before any fee is agreed, is part of the free conversation, not a separate paid step.