We Build Websites That Work. Here Is Why.
Elevate Web Design was founded on a simple idea: small businesses deserve great websites at fair prices. Not $25,000 agency prices. Not $99 template garbage. Real custom websites, built fast, priced fairly, with SEO included from day one.
Hi, I'm Jacob Brown.
Jacob Brown is a Toronto web designer and Computer Science graduate of Queen's University who founded Elevate Web Design to build custom small-business websites at fair prices. I started building sites in high school — first for friends, then for my parents' friends, then for small businesses around East York who heard I could "do that internet stuff." By the time I got to Queen's to study Computer Science, I already had a small client roster paying real invoices.
What I noticed early on: the small business owners I was working with had been quoted $12,000, $18,000, even $25,000 by agencies for sites that should have cost a quarter of that. They were terrified of the web because every quote felt like a punishment for not understanding it. I started Elevate Web Design to fix that.
Today the studio serves 20+ businesses across North America — salons, contractors, restaurants, lawyers, nonprofits, galleries. The pricing is on the website. The timeline is on the website. The features are on the website. No discovery calls to "find out the price." No surprises on the invoice.
- 1st place design — Hack The Skies hackathon
- Queen's University, Computer Science
- 3+ years building production websites for paying clients
- 20+ launches · 5.0★ across 27 Google reviews
The web design industry is broken for small businesses.
If you are a small business owner trying to get online, you have two options today, and both are bad.
Option one: hire an agency. They will charge you $12,000 to $30,000, take three to six months, route every email through an account manager, and deliver a site you cannot edit without paying them again. You will sit through "discovery workshops" that exist mostly to justify the bill. Half the agency budget goes to the downtown office and the sales team that pitched you.
Option two: do it yourself. Wix, Squarespace, GoDaddy. You will spend 40 hours of your own time wrestling with a page builder, the result will look like every other Squarespace site, it will load slowly, it will not rank on Google, and you will pay $30/month forever for the privilege of hosting it on their platform.
Elevate is the third option. Custom code. Fair prices. Real timelines. Owned by you. SEO and hosting included. Built by a developer who answers their own emails.
Our process — start to launch in 3–10 business days.
No mystery. No discovery phase that costs $2,000. Here is exactly what happens.
Free homepage design
You fill out a short brief. Within 48 hours we send back a real designed homepage — not a mockup template, an actual functioning page built for your business. No payment, no obligation. If you do not like it, you owe us nothing.
Kickoff & content
If you want to move forward, we collect copy, images, and any integrations you need (booking systems, payment processors, CRMs). Most clients send us a Google Drive folder and we handle the rest.
Build & review
We build out the rest of the site on a staging URL you can review at any time. You get 2–3 rounds of revisions depending on your plan. Most edits happen the same day.
Launch & rank
We push live, set up Google Search Console and Analytics, optimize your Google Business Profile, and submit your sitemap. Most clients start seeing impressions within 7–14 days.
Ongoing support
Hosting, SSL, backups, security patches, and minor content edits are included in your monthly plan. You email us, we handle it — usually within hours.
What we stand for.
Speed
Sites live in 3–10 business days. We do not believe in 3-month timelines for a small business website. Most agencies stretch projects to justify five-figure invoices — we do not.
Transparency
Our pricing is on the website. No discovery calls just to find out a number. No hidden fees. No contracts that lock you in for a year.
Results
Beautiful is not enough. Every layout, every CTA, every meta tag is designed to convert visitors into leads. We measure what matters.
Partnership
We do not disappear after launch. Every plan includes ongoing hosting, maintenance, monitoring, and support — for as long as you stay with us.