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Most bad web projects in Ontario fail on the same four things: who owns the code, who actually writes it, what happens after launch, and whether the quote includes the work that always appears later. Here are the questions that surface all four.
Updated · 3 min read
Ask directly: at the end of this project, who owns the code, the repository, the hosting account, the domain, and the design files. Get the answer in writing.
The pattern to avoid is an agency that hosts your site on their account, holds the repository, and bills you monthly for access to your own business. Ownership should transfer by default. If leaving requires their cooperation, you are not a client, you are a hostage.
The people in the pitch are frequently not the people who write the code. Ask who specifically will be on your project, what their level is, and who reviews their work.
A junior learning on your budget is not automatically wrong if the rate reflects it and someone senior reviews the output. It is wrong when you are paying senior rates for it. Ask to see recent work by the actual team, not the agency's best-ever case study.
Launch is the middle of the project, not the end. Ask what happens when something breaks at 9pm, who monitors uptime, how bugs found in week two are handled, and what ongoing support costs.
A quote with no answer to this is a quote for a handover you will feel abandoned by. Get the support arrangement in the same document as the build.
The predictable omissions: content migration, product data cleanup, redirects from the old URLs, third-party app or license fees, accessibility work, and post-launch fixes. Any of them can add materially to a build.
Ask for them as explicit line items, priced or explicitly excluded. A vendor who will not itemise them is either guessing or planning to bill you later.
In Ontario you will find plenty of local agencies and plenty of remote ones, and proximity matters far less than most buyers expect. What matters is response time, whether you talk to the people building it, and whether you see working software regularly rather than status updates.
Ask how often you will see the thing itself. Weekly demos of working software tell you more about a vendor's health than any reference call.
Only if in-person time genuinely changes the outcome. Most of this work is done in shared tools with scheduled calls, so response time and seniority matter more than a postal code. Ask how quickly they respond and who you will actually be speaking to.
Fixed price for well-defined build work, so the estimating risk sits with the vendor. Ongoing or open-ended work fits a monthly arrangement better. Be wary of hourly on a vague scope: it prices the vendor's uncertainty into your budget.
A straightforward marketing site is usually weeks. An ecommerce build with real integrations is usually months. Anyone promising a complex build in days is describing a template, which may be fine, but you should know that is what you are buying.
A CAD $120,000 developer costs roughly $155,000 a year once payroll costs, recruiting, equipment, and ramp-up are counted, and buys about 160 usable hours a month whether you use them or not. Here is the honest comparison against a $5,000 monthly retainer, including the cases where hiring wins.
Custom softwareIn Canada a focused internal tool typically costs CAD $15,000 to $40,000, a customer-facing web application $40,000 to $120,000, and a SaaS product you can charge for $100,000 to $250,000 before the first paying customer. Integrations, user roles and undecided requirements move the number; the count of screens does not.
Custom softwareRedesign when the problem is how the site looks and reads; rebuild when the problem is what the site cannot do. The tell is the workaround list: if the team keeps more than a handful of manual steps, plugins or spreadsheets propping the site up, a redesign buys about a year before the same conversation. Here is how to decide, and what each one costs.
Nockta builds ecommerce, custom software, and Amazon operations for businesses across Ontario and Quebec. See where we work or the full service list.