How much does a website cost per month in Canada?

The build is a one-time bill. The monthly cost is the part that quietly runs for years, and it is the number most quotes leave vague. This page breaks the monthly cost of a small business website in Canada into its parts, using prices Canadian providers publish today, so you can check any quote line by line.

If you are still deciding what to build, start with our small business website cost guide for build prices, or is $15K for a website normal if you are holding a big quote. This page is only about what it costs to keep a site running.

What are the monthly costs of running a website in Canada?

Every website, however it was built, pays for the same five things each month or year: somewhere to live (hosting), an address (the domain), a padlock (the SSL certificate), the add-ons that make it work (plugins, themes or a builder plan) and someone to keep it updated and safe. Here is what each one costs in Canadian dollars.

• Hosting: dotCanada puts shared hosting for a small WordPress site at $5 to $15 a month, with VPS hosting from about $20 to $40 a month once traffic grows.
• Domain: a .ca or .com typically costs $15 to $25 a year, which works out to about $1.25 to $2 a month. First-year promotions as low as $1 to $2 revert to the normal rate at renewal.
• SSL certificate: Let's Encrypt issues free TLS certificates, and most Canadian hosts install one for you. Paying extra for a basic certificate is rarely needed.
• Plugins and theme: dotCanada estimates $100 to $300 a year for three to five premium plugins, with each premium plugin typically $50 to $150 a year. Many essential plugins are free.
• Upkeep: doing it yourself costs time. Paying a freelancer or agency for updates, backups and security monitoring runs $50 to $150 a month on dotCanada's estimate, and named Canadian care plans go higher (see below).

Add those up and a self-managed WordPress site lands at roughly $10 to $45 a month. The spread comes almost entirely from hosting tier and paid plugins.

How much is website hosting per month in Canada?

Entry hosting is cheap, but the advertised price is usually a multi-year promotion. Web Hosting Canada's shared plan shows C$3.89 a month when you prepay 36 months, then renews at $6.99 a month. Its managed WordPress hosting starts at C$3.99 a month on the same kind of promotion. Ambrite lists cloud hosting from $7.99 a month.

Three questions decide whether cheap hosting is fine for you. Is your site mostly brochure pages with a contact form? Shared hosting is enough. Do you sell online or run bookings through the site? Look at managed or higher-tier plans with daily backups. Do you handle health, legal or financial details through forms? Ask the host where data is stored, because Canadian customers increasingly ask, and some hosts market Canadian data centres as a feature.

How much does website maintenance cost per month?

Maintenance is where the real monthly spread lives. Published Canadian care plans we checked on October 28, 2026:

• Ambrite: WordPress maintenance from $49 a month. Its own guide says most Canadian small businesses spend $50 to $200 a month, with basic plans at $49 to $99, standard plans at $100 to $250 and premium plans at $250 to $500 or more.
• Rightdesign: maintenance from $100 a month plus a one-time $50 setup fee, in CAD before tax.
• SatelliteWP: three plans at $175, $350 and $650 a month, all in Canadian dollars, with monthly or annual billing.

Online stores cost more to look after. Ambrite suggests budgeting at least $150 to $250 a month for e-commerce maintenance, because a broken checkout loses sales the same day.

Is a website builder cheaper per month than WordPress?

Not usually, but it is simpler. A builder bundles hosting, security, updates and the SSL certificate into one subscription, so there is less to maintain and less that can break. You pay for that convenience every month. Shopify's Basic plan, for example, is $49 CAD a month paid monthly or $37 CAD a month paid yearly, with Grow at $99 CAD and Advanced at $389 CAD a month on yearly billing.

A self-hosted WordPress site at $10 to $45 a month is cheaper on paper, but only if someone keeps it updated. An unpatched plugin is one of the most common ways small business sites get hacked. If nobody on your team will log in monthly, budget for a care plan or choose a builder.

What does a website maintenance plan include?

Plans use different names for the same jobs. When you compare two quotes, check each one for these items:

• Updates to the core software, theme and plugins, ideally tested on a copy of the site first.
• Daily or weekly backups stored off the server, plus a written promise to restore them.
• Uptime monitoring. SatelliteWP's tiers, for instance, check every 30, 15 or 5 minutes depending on the plan.
• Security scans and malware cleanup. Some plans include cleanup, others bill it hourly.
• Small content edits. Ask how many minutes or hours a month are included.
• A monthly report you can read in two minutes.

What maintenance plans rarely include: new pages, SEO work, copywriting or answering the leads the site produces. If the site gets enquiries nobody replies to quickly, that is a bigger leak than any plugin. Our chatbot vs contact form comparison covers the fix.

Should you pay a freelancer or an agency to maintain your website?

Use the table to match the option to your situation. All prices are Canadian dollars from the published sources linked below.

Checked October 2026. Sources: dotCanada, Web Hosting Canada, Shopify Canada, Ambrite, Rightdesign, SatelliteWP. Prices exclude HST/GST. AGNT/01 pricing is published at agntone.ca/#pricing and is not repeated here.

A freelancer is often the best value for a simple site, as long as you know who covers them when they are away. An agency plan earns its price when downtime costs you bookings. Either way, make sure you own the domain, hosting account and admin login.

What website costs do Canadian owners usually miss?

• Renewal pricing. Promotional rates for hosting and domains revert. Budget on the renewal price, not the first bill.
• Sales tax. Canadian providers add GST or HST to these prices, and quotes often leave it out.
• Email. Business email at your domain is often a separate subscription.
• Plugin licences that lapse. When a premium licence expires, updates stop, which is a security risk.
• The cost of slow replies. A cheap site that gets enquiries nobody answers within the hour costs more than a dear one that books them.

Want to see where your own site leaks? Run the free 60 second site roast, then work through the local SEO checklist so the site you are paying for gets found. If you are budgeting search work on top of upkeep, see how much SEO costs per month in Canada.