The four ways to get a website
1. Do it yourself with a website builder
What you get: a monthly subscription, templates, and your evenings. Good for: testing an idea, very simple needs, people who enjoy it. Watch for: the time it really takes, sites that all look alike, and moving away later (you usually can’t take the design with you).
2. A template set up by someone else
What you get: a theme customised with your logo, colours and text. Good for: a quick, decent-looking start. Watch for: slow pages from bloated themes and plugins, and nobody looking after updates.
3. A freelancer
What you get: anything from a template to fully custom work. Good for: a direct relationship and fair prices. Watch for: what happens after launch. The most common complaint owners have is a designer who stops answering.
4. A studio or agency
What you get: custom design and development, and usually ongoing support. Good for: businesses that rely on their site for leads. Watch for: long contracts, and who you’ll actually be dealing with.
The costs nobody mentions up front
- Domain name: renewed every year. Make sure it’s registered in your name.
- Hosting: where the site lives. Cheap hosting is often slow hosting.
- Security and updates: software needs patching, or sites get hacked.
- Backups: worthless until the day you need one.
- Changes: new prices, photos, staff, services. Who does them, how fast, and at what cost?
- Your time: writing text, gathering photos, answering questions. Budget for it.
Who owns the website?
This one surprises people. In Canada, whoever creates a piece of work owns the copyright unless it’s assigned in writing and signed. That means a contractor can own the website you paid for unless your contract says otherwise. Moral rights, the right to be associated with the work, can be waived but not transferred.
So ask, and get it in writing:
- Will the copyright in the custom work be assigned to me once it’s paid for?
- Is the domain registered in my name, with me as the owner?
- Which parts (fonts, plugins, photos) are licensed rather than owned, and are those licences mine to keep?
- If I leave, what exactly do I get, and how fast?
At Pinlight the answer is simple: you own the custom work once it’s paid in full, your domain is in your name, and if you leave a care plan you get your files and accounts. It’s all in the contract.
How builds are priced
A one-page site for a painter and a booking system for a clinic aren’t the same job, so honest studios quote after understanding what you need. A good quote spells out the pages, the features, who writes the text, the timeline, and what’s not included. Fixed prices beat open-ended hourly billing for most small businesses.
Pinlight quotes builds after a free call. Ongoing care is published: Essential $49, Growth $99 and Priority Partner $199 a month, plus HST/GST, on top of the one-time build price. See exactly what each includes.
Red flags
- “Guaranteed page one on Google.”
- The domain registered in their name, not yours.
- No written contract, or one that never mentions ownership.
- A long lock-in with no way to take your site with you.
- Prices that grow at checkout with fees nobody mentioned.
Questions to ask before you sign
- Who will I actually talk to, and how quickly do they reply?
- What happens if the site goes down at night?
- Who owns the site, the domain and the content?
- What does it cost each month after launch, and what’s included?
- Can I see sites you’ve built, and talk to the owners?
Want straight answers about your situation? Book a free 15-minute call. You’ll get a fixed quote in writing, or an honest “you don’t need us yet”.