Online stores built for BC businesses on Shopify or WooCommerce. We tell you which platform fits before you spend anything, and we say so plainly when the cheaper option is the right one.
Maple Web Design is a small studio in Port Coquitlam. You work directly with the person building your store, on a fixed price agreed before any work starts.
Shopify or WooCommerce for a BC Business
This is the decision that matters, and most agencies answer it with whichever platform they prefer to build on. Here is the honest version.
Shopify is the right default for most first stores
It handles Canadian sales tax automatically, bills you in CAD, integrates with Canada Post properly, and takes hosting and security off your plate entirely.
If this is your first store, your catalogue is under a couple of hundred products, and you want to spend your time selling rather than maintaining software, Shopify is usually the cheaper and simpler choice over three years. We will tell you that even though WooCommerce is more profitable work for us.
WooCommerce wins in specific situations
It makes sense when you already run a WordPress site and want the store inside it, when your order volume is high enough that Shopify’s transaction fees start to sting, when you need custom logic that does not exist as an app, or when content and SEO are the main way you sell rather than paid ads.
It costs more to run and needs someone maintaining it, which we are honest about below.
What we will not tell you
That there is one right answer. If you have already been quoted by two agencies who each pushed their own platform, ask each of them what would have to be true for the other choice to win.
The answer tells you whether they are advising or selling. Our comparison of Shopify and WooCommerce for Canadian stores goes deeper.
What an Online Store Costs in Vancouver
Across the Vancouver market, a designer-built Shopify store for a small business runs roughly $3,000 to $10,000. Larger builds with custom development and integrations sit between $10,000 and $25,000, and agency-tier projects go well beyond that. Below about $2,000, you are buying a free theme with your logo dropped into it.
Our pricing is published so you can compare before you book a call.
Starter store, from $3,300
Up to 25 products. Custom design built from a blank canvas rather than a purchased theme, product and category pages, cart and checkout, payment and shipping setup, Canadian tax rules configured, and Analytics and Search Console connected properly.
Right for a first store or a focused catalogue.
Growth store, from $6,900
Up to 200 products. Everything above plus product variations, filtering and search built for how people actually browse your catalogue, email platform integration, review collection, abandoned cart recovery, and keyword research on category structure before anything is designed.
Migration or replatform, from $4,900
Moving an existing store to a new platform, with products, customers and order history brought across and a redirect mapped from every old product address.
Priced separately because it is real work, and because getting it wrong is the most expensive mistake in e-commerce. More on that below.
B2B or custom, from $12,000
Tiered pricing by customer account, quote-based ordering, wholesale portals, or connections to inventory and accounting systems. Scoped individually.
Rebuilding a store you already have rather than moving platforms? Start at website redesign.
Moving a Store Without Losing Your Rankings
A store that has been live for a few years has product pages ranking in Google that you may not even know about. When it moves platform, every one of those addresses changes format, and without a redirect for each one, that traffic is gone.
The scale of this is why migration is priced separately. One published Canadian project moved 220 products between platforms for $9,400, and $2,800 of that was the migration work alone. Roughly a third of the budget went into redirects, order history and preserving search visibility, because skipping it would have cost more in lost sales than it saved.
We map every old product, category and page address before anything is built, point each one at its replacement, and watch Search Console daily for the first two weeks after launch. The same approach we use on every SEO project.
Setting Up Canadian Sales Tax Correctly
A store based in BC charges 5% GST and 7% PST, but the rate a customer pays depends on where they are, and Ontario, the Maritimes and the territories all work differently.
Get this wrong and you either overcharge customers or owe the difference yourself at year end.
We set the tax rules up with your accountant’s input rather than guessing, configure Canada Post for live shipping rates so customers see real costs at checkout, and set up Shopify Payments or your gateway of choice.
One detail worth knowing early: Shopify Payments requires a Canadian business bank account, and without it you pay an extra transaction fee on every sale.
What Actually Makes a Store Convert
Visual design matters less than most people expect. These are the things that move the number.
- Product photography. The single biggest factor, and the one we cannot do for you. If your photos are weak, we will tell you before we start rather than building around them.
- Checkout length. Every extra field costs you orders. Guest checkout stays on unless you have a reason to remove it.
- Shipping cost visible early. Surprise shipping at the final step is the most common reason carts get abandoned.
- Filtering that matches how people shop. If customers think in sizes and colours, filtering by product type does not help them.
- Mobile speed. Most store traffic is mobile, and most stores are built desktop-first and squeezed down. We design mobile separately.
- Reviews on product pages. Set up during the build, because asking for reviews six months later never happens.
What You Pay Every Month After Launch
Any agency that quotes a build price without explaining ongoing costs is leaving you a surprise. Here are the real numbers.
On Shopify, the Basic plan runs about $37 to $49 CAD a month. Apps typically add $50 to $200. If you use a payment gateway other than Shopify Payments, add a platform transaction fee of roughly 2% on top of your card processing.
On WooCommerce, the software is free and everything around it is not. Managed hosting runs $25 to $80 a month, and the plugins most stores need add up: subscriptions, bookings, shipping rules, email, security and caching licences together commonly reach $500 to $1,000 a year. Total cost of ownership for a growing WooCommerce store is usually $2,500 to $5,000 a year once maintenance time is counted. There is no transaction fee, which is what makes it cheaper at higher order volumes.
For stores we run Store Care at $165 a month, which adds checkout testing after every update cycle and payment gateway monitoring, because a broken checkout costs money by the hour rather than by the week. Business sites without a store are $95.
How Long a Store Build Takes
A starter store is typically four weeks. A growth store with integrations is six to eight. A migration with a large catalogue and order history runs eight to twelve, because moving data properly cannot be rushed.
The single biggest thing that delays a store project is product data. Descriptions, photos, variants, weights and dimensions. We give you a template in week one, and how quickly it comes back sets the launch date more than anything we do.
How the Project Runs, Week by Week
Week one, platform and structure
We look at your catalogue, your margins, your order volume and how customers find you, then recommend a platform in writing with the reasoning.
Category structure comes from keyword research, not from your internal product list. You get a fixed price and a launch date.
Weeks 2 and 3, design
Homepage and one product page first, so we agree on the pattern before the rest is built. Two rounds of revisions included.
Weeks 4 and 5, build and data
Products imported and checked, payment and shipping configured, tax rules set, and test orders placed end to end on real devices.
If we are migrating, redirects are written and tested on staging before anything goes live.
Week 6, launch and watch
We launch outside business hours. Then two weeks of daily monitoring, and a walkthrough recording showing how to add a product, run a sale and process an order on your specific store.
What We Do Not Build
Marketplaces with multiple independent vendors, dropshipping stores built to be flipped, and stores selling products we would not be comfortable putting our name to.
We also will not build you a store if the honest answer is that you should validate demand on a marketplace first. Saying so costs us a sale and saves you several thousand dollars.
Questions Store Owners Ask
Who is actually building my store?
Arash Khalaj, who has been building websites for over 17 years and runs Maple Web Design out of Port Coquitlam. No account manager layer, no offshoring.
Can you upload my products for me?
Yes. Bulk import is included up to the product count in your tier. If your data needs cleaning up first, or you need product descriptions written, we quote that separately so you can decide.
What if I already have a store that is not selling?
Then a rebuild may not be the answer. Low sales usually come from traffic or pricing rather than design, and we would rather look at your analytics first. Often the honest recommendation is local SEO or fixing specific pages instead.
Do I own the store when it is finished?
Yes. Your domain, your platform account, your billing, your logins, your data. Nothing is held on our accounts and there is no proprietary system to stay subscribed to.
Can I move platforms later?
Yes, and it costs money, which is exactly why the platform decision in week one matters more than the design. That is why we put the recommendation in writing with reasoning rather than just asking what you prefer.
Do you handle product photography?
No, and we will not pretend otherwise. We can recommend photographers in Metro Vancouver and tell you exactly what shots the store layout needs before you book one.
Start With a Platform Recommendation
Thirty minutes, no pitch. Tell us what you sell, how many products, and roughly what you expect to do in orders. You will get a written recommendation on platform, a realistic budget range, and an honest answer on whether you should build now or wait.
Serving Vancouver, Burnaby, Coquitlam, Port Coquitlam, Port Moody, New Westminster, Richmond and Surrey.
