Things owners actually ask me.

Because I'm a solo designer working from a home office, not an agency with account managers and a downtown lease. The Founding and Standard Starter prices reflect what it actually costs me to build, and the math only works because every build pairs with a monthly care plan. That's how I keep one-time pricing low without going broke supporting old clients for free a year later.

Founding is template-based: you pick from a curated shortlist, I customise the colours, type, photos, and copy. 4 pages, ~10–14 day turnaround, $450. Standard is semi-custom: brand colours and type system applied, a bespoke hero section, 7 pages, an industry-specific widget pre-configured (OpenTable, Fresha, or quote form), photo gallery, light copy polish. ~3-week turnaround, $750. Both come with on-page SEO, schema, GBP sync, and AODA-aware build.

Yes. Builds and care plans are sold together because hosting, security, and edits all live inside the platform. The minimum is 12 months — same as most subscription web designers in Ontario. After 12 months, you go month-to-month with 30 days' notice. Pre-pay for the year and the 12th month is free.

Subscription-Only is $140/month with no upfront fee. You get a Founding-equivalent build plus all the features of the Pro care plan, bundled. After 12 months it converts to the standard $85/mo Pro plan because the build is recovered. If you cancel early, the unrecovered build portion comes due. It's the right pick if you'd rather smooth out cash flow over 12 months than pay $450 + $85 upfront.

After the initial 12-month minimum, you can cancel any care plan with 30 days' written notice. Within the 12-month term, early cancellation triggers an early-termination fee equal to the remaining months on the plan (or, for Subscription-Only, the unrecovered build portion). When the plan ends, the site goes offline within 7 days. You keep your domain and a copy of your content.

No. The build is the build, the care plan is the care plan, and HST is added on top of both. Add-ons (logo, copywriting, etc.) are quoted in writing before any work begins. The only thing not included is your domain registration, which you handle directly with a registrar — but that's part of how you keep your domain ownership clean.

I build on a modern managed platform that ranks at the top in Core Web Vitals among major site builders, and includes SSL, CDN, daily backups, and DDoS protection out of the box. There are no plugins to update, nothing to get hacked, and no monthly "did the site break overnight?" anxiety. WordPress is brilliant for high-customisation builds — but for a local trades, salon, or restaurant site, this approach ships faster, loads faster, and is dramatically cheaper to maintain.

You own all your content (text, images, branding) and everything custom-written for you. The platform itself is not portable. The site can't be exported as a working copy to WordPress or another builder. If you ever leave, I'll provide a clean export of your content so you (or your next designer) can rebuild on your platform of choice. I'm upfront about this from day one.

You do, completely. You register your own domain (about $25/year through Cloudflare, Namecheap, or any registrar) and keep it on your account. I help configure the DNS records to point at your site, but I never hold or control the domain itself. If you ever leave, the domain is yours to keep — you just point it elsewhere.

Email is separate from the website. I'll happily set up a Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 mailbox for your domain (one-time $150 + your monthly mailbox subscription billed direct to Google/Microsoft). The mailbox is yours forever — completely portable, no lock-in.

Fair concern. The platform itself is run by a company much bigger than me — it'll outlast my freelance career. If I ever step back from doing this, your site keeps running on the platform; you'd just need someone else to manage it (most other designers familiar with the platform can take over). And in any worst-case scenario, you still own your domain and content — you can rebuild on any platform you want.

Every site I build follows WCAG 2.0 AA best practices: alt text, semantic headings, keyboard navigation, sufficient colour contrast, focus indicators. Ontario's AODA technically requires full WCAG 2.0 AA conformance for businesses with 50+ employees, with the next reporting deadline December 31, 2026 for businesses with 20+ employees. If you're under those thresholds, "AODA-aware" is a strong best-practice baseline. If you need a full third-party audit and remediation pass for legal or procurement reasons, that's a paid add-on ($350–$600).

Yes. The platform supports native multilingual sites. Adding a second language is a one-time $250–$500 setup add-on, and ongoing maintenance of additional languages is included in the Growth plan or available as a $25–$50/mo add-on per language on Essential and Pro. Especially relevant for bilingual or multilingual neighbourhoods.

All available as add-ons. Logo design $200–$600. Copywriting $30–$100/page. Photo direction (1-hour shot-list session) $85. Booking system setup $150–$350. Multilingual build $250–$500. AODA full remediation $350–$600. Local SEO add-on $99–$250/mo. The full menu is on the pricing page — I'll walk you through it on our call.

If you mean "rebuild my old site on this platform" — yes, that's just a normal Founding or Standard Starter build, and we'll migrate your existing content. If you mean "take over hosting and edits on the existing setup" — usually no, because most existing sites are on platforms I don't actively support. The cleanest path is almost always a fresh build.

Standard Starter clients get a 1-hour Zoom training so you can make minor edits (text, photos, hours, prices) yourself between care-plan check-ins. Founding clients can add this as a paid add-on, or just send edits to me — they're covered by your monthly minutes allowance.