What it costs
Custom website vs Wix or Squarespace: five-year cost in Canada
Five-year totals in CAD for a hand-coded site, Wix, Squarespace, and a WordPress build in Canada, plus July 2026 speed data on what each one really ships.
A template plan is cheaper than a hand-coded website over five years, and that is the wrong reason to pick one. Squarespace Basic runs $1,260 CAD over 60 months and Wix Core runs $1,980 CAD. An $895 CAD hand-coded build plus hosting runs $2,095 CAD over the same period. All prices were retrieved 2026-08-30, with sources in the table below. The gap between the cheapest builder and a custom build is about $835 CAD, or $14 CAD a month.
The genuinely expensive option is neither of them: an agency build on a monthly retainer at $1,995 CAD setup plus $129 CAD a month reaches $9,735 CAD over the same five years. So the decision is not about price. It is about what you own at the end, and what the page carries while it loads.
The short version
- Five-year totals on published prices retrieved 2026-08-30: Squarespace Basic $1,260 CAD, Wix Core $1,980 CAD, a one-time hand-coded build plus hosting $2,095 CAD, WordPress on managed hosting $2,280 CAD, and an agency build on a monthly retainer $9,735 CAD.
- Hosted builders are not slow any more. 80.4% of Wix origins passed all three Core Web Vitals on mobile in July 2026, against 49.5% of WordPress origins (calculated from the HTTP Archive Core Web Vitals Technology Report, July 2026 dataset).
- The weak link on WordPress is what gets bolted onto it. Only 24.4% of WordPress origins hit the Time to First Byte threshold on mobile in that same HTTP Archive dataset.
- Price is not the deciding number. A builder plan rents you a layout you cannot take with you, so the second build costs what the first one would have.
- Canada is still desktop-majority, at 55.95% of page views in July 2026 (Statcounter, read 2026-08-30), so desktop speed matters more here than in comparisons written for a United States audience.
The five-year totals, side by side
Over 60 months the four realistic options land within about $1,000 CAD of each other. The fifth is more than four times the dearest. Every number below comes from the vendor's own pricing page.
| Option | What you pay | Five-year total | What you own at the end |
|---|---|---|---|
| Squarespace Basic | $21 CAD a month, billed annually | $1,260 CAD | Your content and your domain, not the layout |
| Wix Core | $33 CAD a month, billed yearly | $1,980 CAD | Your content and your domain, not the layout |
| Hand-coded build, one-time | $895 CAD once, plus $20 CAD a month hosting | $2,095 CAD | The code, the design, and the domain |
| WordPress on managed hosting | $38 CAD a month, theme and plugins on top | $2,280 CAD and up | The files and database, tied to the theme |
| Agency build on a retainer (archived) | $1,995 CAD setup plus $129 CAD a month | $9,735 CAD | Depends on the retainer terms |
How this table was built: five options, each priced from the vendor's own public page on 2026-08-30, on annual billing wherever it is offered, counting 60 hosting months from the first charge. It covers brochure and lead-generation sites; online stores are a different comparison. Five vendors is a small sample, not a Canadian market average. The agency row is one published example rather than an average, which is why it links to an archived copy as well as the live page.
The WordPress row prices hosting only, at WP Engine's annual-billing monthly equivalent, because theme and plugin renewals vary by build. WP Rocket publishes $59 a year and Gravity Forms publishes $59 a year for one site. Neither vendor prints a currency code, so neither can be restated in CAD, and both sit on top of the $2,280 CAD.
Disclosure: Samro Studios sells custom websites and competes with every tool in this table. Every third-party figure is quoted from that company's own pricing page on the retrieval date, and none were contacted. Squarespace displayed a 50% off promotion on its Core, Plus, and Advanced plans that day, while Basic carried no promotion, which is why Basic is the row in the table.
The number worth arguing about is the bottom bar. For the full Canadian price range across agencies, builders, and freelancers, see how much a website costs in Canada in 2026.
What the monthly price does not cover
The plan fee buys software, not a website. Three costs sit outside it.
- Your hours. Somebody chooses the template, writes the pages, crops the photos, and wires the form. On a builder that person is you.
- The design. A template is a layout drawn for nobody in particular. Paying a designer to make it yours is a separate invoice, and it is the most common reason a $21 CAD a month site quietly becomes a $2,000 CAD project.
- The rebuild. Template sites get replaced rather than upgraded, because the layout is the product. The second build costs roughly what the first would have.
The fee does cover real things. Hosting, the certificate, updates, and uptime are the platform's problem, which is what the $20 CAD a month line buys on the custom row.
Speed: what actually separates them in 2026
Hosted builders now beat the average WordPress install on speed, and the margin is wide. That is not what most comparison articles claim.
Google publishes three pass or fail thresholds, each measured at the 75th percentile of page loads (web.dev, October 2024):
- Largest Contentful Paint within 2.5 seconds.
- Interaction to Next Paint at 200 milliseconds or less.
- Cumulative Layout Shift at 0.1 or less.
The HTTP Archive publishes how many real origins clear all three, by platform, every month. Hand-coded sites are not a tracked technology there, so they carry no line of their own.
The pass rate is not the whole story. The sharpest gap is in server response time, where Google's threshold is 0.8 seconds (web.dev, November 2025). Only 24.4% of WordPress origins met it on mobile in July 2026, against 81.5% of Squarespace origins (calculated from the HTTP Archive Core Web Vitals Technology Report, July 2026 dataset). That points to hosting and to what gets bolted on, rather than to the content manager itself.
The longer series points the same way. The 2025 Web Almanac found "WordPress remains among the lowest-ranked with a pass rate of 45%" while Wix "saw a significant jump from 55% to 74%" (HTTP Archive Web Almanac, July 2025 crawl, published January 2026).
So the honest case for hand-coding is not that builders are slow. It is that a builder's speed belongs to the platform and can change with it. A hand-coded page competes with the top of that range.
Speed is measurable in the traffic that stays, and the clearest published figures predate the data above. Google reports the BBC "lost an additional 10% of users for every additional second their site took to load" (web.dev, November 2023). The Economic Times "reduced bounce rates by 43% overall" after cutting Largest Contentful Paint from 4.5 seconds to 2.5 seconds (web.dev, December 2021).
One Canadian correction. Canada ran 55.95% desktop against 41.38% mobile page views in July 2026, while the world ran 52.61% mobile (Statcounter Canada and Statcounter worldwide, both read 2026-08-30). Desktop numbers count for more here, and Squarespace is the one platform here that scores worse on desktop than on mobile.
Who owns the site if you leave
You can export your words. You cannot export the site. That is most of the difference between a template plan and a build.
On a builder, the content is portable and the design is not. Pages, styling, and behaviour are the platform's, so moving means rebuilding. On a hand-coded build the code, the design files, and the domain are yours, and another developer can pick it up. WordPress sits in between: the files are yours, but a page-builder theme carries its own markup, so the site rarely survives the theme.
In W3Techs' running survey of more than 20 million sites, WordPress is used by 40.7% of them, Wix by 4.2%, and Squarespace by 2.5% (read 2026-08-30). Most site owners are therefore on a platform whose exit terms they have never checked. Ask before the deposit who holds the code, the domain registration, and the analytics, in writing. The Groom Room Vancouver build is a working example: one hand-coded site, booking wired to the tool the owner already used, and nothing rented from a page builder.
Where a template is the right call
Two situations where a builder is right.
- A page nobody searches for. One address, hours, and a phone number, for a business that runs on referrals. A builder does that in an evening.
- An idea you are testing. If the business might not exist in six months, rent the site.
The moment the site is supposed to bring in calls from search, a template becomes a floor rather than a plan. The difference shows up in the pages a builder cannot really give you: service pages, area pages, structured data, and a French-first structure for Québec.
What we build, and what it costs
Samro Studios hand-codes these sites, and the price is published rather than quoted on request. A custom build is $895 to $1,795 CAD as a one-time investment, with the exact figure set by scope: $895 CAD for a growth site and $1,795 CAD for a full e-commerce build. Either one carries a standard $20 CAD a month hosting fee starting 30 days after payment.
The same build is available on a subscription plan from $99 CAD a month, or $199 CAD a month for e-commerce, on a 12-month term with hosting bundled in.
Support is included with every build rather than sold as a retainer: security and daily backups, content updates and changes at a 24 to 48 hour pace, and a person who answers. The only optional monthly add-on is SEO/AEO Management at $79 CAD a month, with no commitment. It covers Google Business Profile management and search and AI-answer visibility reporting.
A bilingual English and Québec French build is scoped inside the same price rather than billed as a second website, structured French-first from the start. That is the part that matters for anyone reading this in Montréal. You approve the finished site before it goes live, and everything you have paid is refundable right up until it does: love your site or your money back. More builds are on the portfolio.
How to decide in five minutes
You need a page to exist and nothing more. Take Squarespace Basic at $21 CAD a month. It is the cheapest honest answer in this article.
You want calls from Google and you will keep the business for five years. Take the custom build. The five-year difference is about $14 CAD a month. It buys a layout drawn for your trade, code in your name, and pages a builder does not have a template for.
You already have a WordPress site an agency maintains. Put the retainer on a 60-month line before you renew. $129 CAD a month is $7,740 CAD over five years.
If you want an exact figure instead of a range, tell us about the project on the contact form.
Frequently asked questions
Is Wix or Squarespace good enough for a small business?
For a single page nobody searches for, yes. For a business that wants calls from search, a builder is a starting floor. The layout is the product and it cannot be taken with you. Making it yours is a separate invoice on top of the $21 to $33 CAD a month.
Is a custom website faster than Wix or Squarespace?
Not automatically, and the data does not support the usual claim. In July 2026, 80.4% of Wix origins and 71.7% of Squarespace origins passed all three Core Web Vitals on mobile, against 49.5% of WordPress origins (calculated from the HTTP Archive Core Web Vitals Technology Report, July 2026 dataset). A hand-coded page competes with the top of that range because it ships only what the page needs.
Does a custom website really cost more over five years?
Slightly, against the cheapest builder plan. An $895 CAD build plus $20 CAD a month hosting is $2,095 CAD over 60 months, against $1,260 CAD for Squarespace Basic and $1,980 CAD for Wix Core. Against the agency route at $9,735 CAD, it costs far less.
Can I move my Wix or Squarespace site to a custom build?
Your text, images, and domain move. The design does not, because it belongs to the platform. In practice a migration is a rebuild with your content already written, which is the easier half of the work. Your Google rankings can move too, if every old URL redirects to its new address with a 301 and the page titles stay put. That redirect map is part of the build, not an extra.
Is WordPress a better middle ground?
It is the middle ground on ownership and the weak one on speed. Managed hosting is $38 CAD a month before theme and plugin renewals. Only 24.4% of WordPress origins met the Time to First Byte threshold on mobile in July 2026 (calculated from the HTTP Archive Core Web Vitals Technology Report, July 2026 dataset).
Two questions to ask before you sign
Put both options on a 60-month line, then ask what the price cannot answer. Who owns the code and the design if you walk away, and what happens when the layout dates in year three. The builders win on cost by $14 CAD a month, and lose on both.
If the site is a placeholder, rent it. If it is supposed to produce work, buy it, and check that whoever builds it hands you the code.
Sami Bdeira is the founder of Samro Studios, a Montréal studio that hand-codes bilingual websites and builds AI phone agents for Canadian service businesses.
