Most agencies in Edmonton bill by the hour and pad the estimate. We don't. Here's the actual math behind our model — why Starter sites are $799, why Standard is $1,299, and why we're happy to charge less on the build because the SEO retainer is the real business.
When an Edmonton agency quotes you 80 hours at $150/hour, what do you think happens when the work goes faster? Right — nothing comes off the bill. Hourly billing creates a structural incentive to take longer than necessary. Flat fees flip it: we get paid for the deliverable, not the hours. If we ship fast, we move to the next project. If we ship slowly, we've eaten our own margin.
For a small business owner, this is the cleaner deal — you know what you're paying before we start. If scope changes mid-project, we re-quote. You never get a surprise invoice.
A Starter site at $799 covers about 18-25 hours of design and build time. That's a realistic budget for a one-page long-scroll site if:
For most small Edmonton service businesses, that's plenty. The owner already knows their business; they don't need a six-week discovery phase. They need a working website that looks like them, that loads fast, and that ranks for their service keywords.
We can charge $799 for Starter because we're not trying to make a year of revenue on a single web build. Most of our clients add the $650/mo local SEO retainer — that's where the long-term value sits, both for us and for them.
At $650/mo across a roster of clients, recurring revenue makes the math work. We can spend more time on each web build than the price suggests, because the relationship continues. The build is the first month; the SEO is the next twelve.
Most small business owners in Edmonton can't justify $5,000 to $10,000 for a website. They've got a $500/month marketing budget, maybe $1,000. So they go to Squarespace, build it themselves, hate the result, and stop investing in their online presence.
At $799 for a custom site + $650/mo for SEO, the total first-year cost is about $8,600. That's less than two months at a mid-market Edmonton agency. And it actually compounds — the SEO work pays back for years after the build.
We don't do brand strategy decks. We don't do six-figure brand identities. We don't bill for “discovery workshops.” If you want those, hire a bigger Edmonton agency — they're genuinely good at it, and they cost what they cost for a reason.
We do the website and the local SEO that gets it found. Two things. Done properly. See full pricing →