Nobody wants to be the first to say a number. Agencies dodge it because scope varies wildly; clients avoid it because naming a budget feels like an invitation to spend all of it. The result is weeks of polite circling before anyone learns whether a conversation was ever worth having.
So here are real ranges, what moves them, and how to tell whether a quote you have been given is sensible. All figures are Canadian dollars and reflect what a competent Canadian studio charges — not offshore rates, and not big-city agency rates with a floor of six figures.
What things actually cost
Marketing website — $4,000 to $15,000
Five to fifteen pages, a content management system your team can use, contact forms, analytics and technical SEO. The lower end is a well-executed build on a strong foundation. The upper end adds custom design, copywriting, multiple languages or integrations with a CRM.
E-commerce store — $6,000 to $40,000
A Shopify or WooCommerce store with a modest catalogue, payments and shipping sits near the bottom of that range. Costs climb with catalogue complexity, B2B pricing rules, ERP or accounting integration, multi-currency selling, and a headless front end built for speed.
Web application — $15,000 to $80,000+
This is the widest band because "web application" covers everything from an internal tool with three screens to a multi-tenant SaaS product. A realistic first release with user accounts, a couple of core workflows, an admin area and one integration usually lands between $25,000 and $45,000.
Mobile application — $25,000 to $100,000+
Cross-platform, with a backend, offline handling and store submission. Anything involving real-time location, payments, video or hardware integration moves up quickly.
A rule of thumb that holds up: if a quote is less than half of these ranges, something is missing — usually testing, project management, accessibility, or the person who will still be there in six months. If it is more than double, ask precisely what the extra buys.
The five things that actually move the number
1. The number of distinct user types
One kind of user is one set of screens and one permission model. Three kinds — customer, staff, administrator — is close to three applications sharing a database. This single factor moves budgets more than any other, and it is the one clients most often forget to mention up front.
2. Integrations
Every external system is an unknown until someone reads its documentation. A modern REST API with good docs might be two days. A legacy system with a SOAP endpoint, no sandbox and a support queue measured in weeks might be three. Budget generously and ask your developer to timebox the investigation before quoting the work.
3. Data migration
Moving history from spreadsheets or an old system is routinely underestimated. The technical part is easy; discovering that 8% of records have a malformed date, duplicate customers differ by a trailing space, and nobody knows which of two addresses is current — that is the expensive part.
4. Compliance and accessibility
If you handle health information, financial data or serve a public-sector client, expect additional requirements around audit logging, retention, encryption and access control. Accessibility to WCAG 2.2 AA adds perhaps 5–10% when planned from the start, and considerably more when retrofitted. Plan it from the start.
5. How decided you are
The cheapest client to work with is one who can make decisions. Every round of "let me check with the team" costs real days. If three people must approve every screen, say so early so it can be planned for rather than absorbed.
Costs that appear after launch
- Hosting and infrastructure — $20 to $500 a month depending on traffic and redundancy.
- Third-party services — email delivery, SMS, mapping, search, error monitoring. Individually small, collectively $50–$300 a month.
- App store accounts — USD $99 a year for Apple, USD $25 once for Google.
- Maintenance — budget 15–20% of the build cost annually. Dependencies need patching, browsers and mobile operating systems change, and security issues do not wait for a convenient quarter.
- The second release — real users always surface things no plan predicted. Hold back 20–30% of your total budget for what you learn after launch. It is the best-value money you will spend.
Fixed price or time and materials?
Fixed price works when scope is genuinely knowable. You get certainty; the developer prices in risk, so you pay a premium of roughly 15–25% for that certainty. Changes require a change order, which is a feature, not a bureaucratic obstacle — it is what keeps the price fixed.
Time and materials works when the destination is still moving. You pay for what is used and can change direction freely, but you carry the risk of overrun. It demands a client who will engage with a weekly burn report.
A sensible hybrid, and the one we recommend most often: fixed price for a paid discovery phase that produces requirements and designs, then a fixed price for the build based on what discovery established. You get certainty where it matters, having paid a small amount to earn it.
Four questions to ask any quote
- What is explicitly not included? The exclusions list tells you more than the inclusions list.
- Who owns the code and the accounts? If the answer is not "you, unconditionally, on final payment", keep looking.
- What happens if it takes longer than estimated? On fixed price it should be the developer's problem. Confirm that in writing.
- What does month thirteen look like? Anyone who has not thought about maintenance has not thought about your project properly.
The short version. A good build costs roughly what the ranges above suggest, plus 15–20% a year to keep it alive. Anyone who quotes without asking about user types, integrations and data migration has not understood the work — and that is the quote most likely to grow.
Written by the team at AKASH Tech Inc., a software studio in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Questions about your own project? Email support@akash-tech.online or call +1 (306) 500-7938.