Web development team for Canadian businesses, in English and French

Who we are and how remote delivery works for Canadian clients

BtechWaleTech is three engineers in India. One of us is a full stack developer. Another of us covers AI and machine learning, AWS, data science, technical SEO and deployment. The third of us runs project management along with data science, AI and automation. That is the whole team, and the person who answers your email is one of the people who will write your code. There is no sales team and no hand-off to a delivery group you never meet.

We have no Canadian office, no business number and no address in Toronto, Montreal or Vancouver. We would rather say that plainly than hide behind a forwarding address, and it matters for practical reasons too: a .ca domain, a Moneris merchant account and a Google Business Profile all have to be in your name, not ours, which is exactly how we set them up. Read more about the team before you decide anything.

How a remote project runs. It starts with a call in your morning, which is our evening, and a short written questionnaire covering goals, audience, provinces served, languages, pages, integrations and deadlines. You receive a written scope and an itemized quote. Once you approve it, a private staging link goes up early in the build and stays live until launch, so you and your colleagues review real pages on your own devices. Written updates arrive on a fixed schedule, weekly on small projects and twice weekly on larger ones, covering what shipped, what is next, anything blocked and anything we need from you.

The time gap works in your favour. Canadian clients tend to send feedback in the afternoon. We work through it during our day, which is your night, and the changes are usually on staging before you are back at your desk. That cycle is especially useful on bilingual projects, where English and French versions of the same page often go through separate review rounds with different people.

Tools and access. We work over email, WhatsApp, Slack, Google Meet, Zoom or Microsoft Teams, in English. We can work inside your GitHub or GitLab organization and your existing cloud accounts, and if your policies limit who can see personal data in production, we plan our access around that from the start rather than after launch.

When we are the wrong fit. If you need someone on site several times a month, a Canadian entity to satisfy a procurement rule, French copywriting from the vendor itself, or a large team on call around the clock, a local agency is the better choice, and we will tell you so on the first call.

Services for the Canadian market, in detail

Web development. Most Canadian business sites we build are static or statically generated pages on a CDN, which keeps them fast on office fibre in downtown Toronto and on a patchy mobile signal on a highway outside Thunder Bay. A static site of up to 100 pages starts from US$150, with custom design, mobile layouts, contact and quote forms, on-page SEO, structured data, hosting and deployment. Larger content sites built for search, with 700 or more pages generated from structured data such as services and towns, start from US$300. If your team wants to edit pages without us, we connect a headless CMS or build a lean WordPress site. The web development service page has more on the stack.

Website design. Good design for Canadian buyers is mostly about removing doubt. We show service areas plainly, format phone numbers and postal codes the way people expect, use Canadian spelling, and show prices in CAD with the tax wording your accountant approves. For bilingual sites, both languages are part of the design from the first mock-up, so French headings, buttons and navigation have room instead of being squeezed into an English-sized box. Accessibility is designed in, not bolted on: readable type, strong contrast, clear focus states and forms that work with a keyboard and a screen reader.

Ecommerce. Stores on Shopify, WooCommerce or a custom stack, starting from US$750, with Stripe, Shopify Payments, PayPal, Square or Moneris, provincial sales tax rules and Canadian shipping. The ecommerce section below goes into detail.

SEO for Google in Canada. Technical SEO, on-page work, content and local search, with en-CA and fr-CA hreflang done properly and, where you also sell into the US, en-US pages that do not cannibalize your Canadian ones. Monthly SEO starts from US$150/mo; see the SEO services page and the SEO section below.

Custom software and web apps. Custom web applications start from US$900. Canadian projects we are suited to include booking and scheduling for clinics and trades, client portals for accounting and consulting firms, estimating tools for contractors, inventory dashboards for small manufacturers, volunteer and donor tools for nonprofits, and admin panels that replace a tangle of spreadsheets. We build the first useful version, put it in front of real users and extend it from there, hosted in a Canadian cloud region if you prefer.

AI automation. AI automation starts from US$600 and fits repetitive work: routing enquiries, extracting data from invoices and shipping documents, drafting product descriptions, or answering routine questions from your own documentation. For bilingual businesses, automation can detect whether an enquiry arrived in English or French, route it to the right person and draft a first reply in the same language for a human to check before it goes out. We keep a person in the loop for anything customer-facing and do not send personal information to third-party AI services unless you have approved it, which matters under Quebec's Law 25 in particular.

Maintenance. The first two months after launch are included free: content updates in both languages, bug fixes, security updates, backups, uptime and speed checks, and basic SEO health checks. Once those months end, you can keep a plan from US$120/mo or simply message us when a change comes up. The pricing page lists what each plan covers.

Bilingual English and French websites, built properly

If you sell to customers in Quebec, or to French speakers in New Brunswick, eastern and northern Ontario or Manitoba, French is not an afterthought. Quebec's language rules generally expect businesses operating there to make commercial content, including websites, available in French, and French speakers anywhere in the country trust a site more when it is written for them rather than machine-translated. Ask your adviser how the rules apply to your business; our job is to make sure the site can meet them without a rebuild.

Structure. Each language lives on its own URLs, such as /en/ and /fr/, or on separate subdomains if you prefer. Each page carries en-CA and fr-CA hreflang annotations pointing at its equivalent, plus an x-default. Titles, meta descriptions, structured data, image alt text, sitemaps and even URL slugs exist in both languages, so a French searcher sees a French result with a French URL. The language switcher takes visitors to the equivalent page, not back to the home page, and the site remembers their choice.

Design and testing. French text typically runs noticeably longer than English, which breaks cramped buttons, menus and card layouts designed only for English. We design with French strings from the first mock-up and test every template in both languages on narrow phone screens. Forms, validation and error messages, confirmation pages, transactional emails, PDF invoices, cookie banners and the privacy page all exist in both languages, because a French page with an English error message undermines the whole effort.

Who writes the French. Not us. Our team does not write professional French copy, and we are upfront about that. You supply it, or a translator you trust does, and we provide a simple handover format so both language versions stay in sync. Canadian French also differs from European French in vocabulary and tone, so a Quebec-based translator is usually worth the cost.

Starting in English only. If you only need English now, we structure the site so French can be added later without a rebuild. Retrofitting a second language into a site never designed for one costs far more than planning for it from the start.

Other languages. Some businesses in the Greater Toronto Area and the Lower Mainland also serve large Punjabi-, Chinese-, Tagalog-, Arabic- or Spanish-speaking communities. We build the same multilingual structure for any additional language, with the text supplied and checked by fluent speakers.

Ecommerce in Canada: Moneris, Stripe, Shopify, sales taxes and shipping

Ecommerce builds start from US$750. For Canadian stores, three details decide whether checkout actually works: sales taxes by province, prices in Canadian dollars, and shipping to a very large country with expensive rural and northern delivery.

Sales taxes. Tax depends on where the customer is. Alberta and the three territories charge GST only. Ontario, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland and Labrador use a single harmonized sales tax (HST). British Columbia, Saskatchewan and Manitoba charge GST plus a provincial sales tax, and Quebec charges GST plus QST. Rates change from time to time, some products are treated differently, and registration thresholds apply, so your accountant should confirm your registrations and product treatment. We configure the store to apply those rules by shipping address and show taxes clearly on the cart, receipt, invoice and confirmation email, with your registration numbers where your accountant says they should appear.

Payment providers. Shopify, which started in Ottawa, is the default for most product brands, with Shopify Payments handling cards and wallets. Stripe suits subscriptions, B2B invoicing, marketplaces and checkouts embedded in web apps. Square suits businesses that also sell in person. Moneris, the large Canadian processor owned by two of the big banks, and Helcim are good choices when you want a Canadian processor or your bank already offers one. PayPal works well as a second option. We integrate whichever you choose, test refunds, failed cards and partial orders, and keep card details with the processor, never on your server.

Shipping. Live rates from Canada Post, Purolator, UPS, FedEx or a shipping app such as ShipStation, flat-rate zones, free-shipping thresholds, local pickup and delivery for bricks-and-mortar shops, and sensible rules for rural, remote and northern postal codes where costs jump. For cross-border orders to the US, we can show duties and taxes clearly or offer delivered-duty-paid options through your shipping provider.

Bilingual stores. Stores selling in Quebec need French product names, descriptions, checkout, emails and policies, not just a translated home page. Shopify Markets and multilingual WooCommerce setups both handle this when configured properly.

Marketing plumbing. Google Merchant Center feeds with CAD prices, Meta catalogue sync, Klaviyo or Mailchimp flows for abandoned carts and post-purchase emails, and product structured data for price and availability. Marketing sign-ups at checkout use a separate, unticked box, in line with CASL.

SEO for Google in Canada: local, national and bilingual

Canadian search results are local and often split by language. Someone in Mississauga searching for an accountant sees different results from someone in Laval, and a French query in Montreal pulls a different set again. Every site we build ships with the groundwork: clean URLs, unique titles and descriptions written for Canadian queries, business and service structured data, XML sitemaps per language, fast mobile pages and internal links that help crawlers understand what matters.

Local SEO. For businesses with a location or service area, we help you set up or tidy your Google Business Profile, owned and verified by you, with the right primary category, service areas, hours, services and real photographs. We keep your business name, address and phone number identical across the listings that already mention you, such as Apple Business Connect, Bing Places, Yelp, Yellow Pages Canada and industry directories. We then build city and service pages with genuinely different content for each area you serve: the neighbourhoods covered, typical jobs, travel charges or response times. Spelling follows Canadian usage, prices show in CAD and phone numbers are formatted the way your customers dial them.

French SEO. French keyword research is done in French, not translated from English, because people search differently in each language and Quebec French has its own vocabulary. A Montreal renovation company, for example, needs pages built around the words Quebecers actually use, which a literal translation of English keywords often misses.

Canada and the US. Many Canadian businesses also sell into the United States, and the two markets can end up competing in search. Where prices, shipping or regulations differ, we build separate pages for each market with en-CA, fr-CA and en-US hreflang and an x-default, and make canonicals, sitemaps and internal links agree, which is where most multi-region setups quietly break. Where the versions would be nearly identical, we usually recommend one version that mentions both markets. Our USA page covers the American side.

AI search. AI Overviews and answer engines increasingly summarize local and service results. Clear, factual pages that answer specific questions, visible business details, structured data and crawlable HTML help there as much as in classic search, and we build with that in mind in both languages.

Monthly SEO and reporting. Monthly SEO starts from US$150/mo and covers technical fixes, new content on a schedule, internal linking, listing work and a monthly report built on Search Console data. For bilingual sites, content can be planned for both languages, with the French supplied or approved by your translator. Expect movement over three to six months, and expect honest reports, including months where rankings stood still.

Compliance: PIPEDA, Quebec Law 25, CASL, AODA, French language rules and GST/HST

This section describes how we build, not legal advice. We are engineers, not lawyers. We do not certify compliance with any law, and we recommend a qualified adviser reviews your privacy policy, consent wording and anything that depends on how a law applies to your organization. What we do is build the site so that review has very little to fix.

PIPEDA. The Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act governs how private-sector organizations handle personal information in commercial activities across Canada, with Quebec, Alberta and British Columbia running their own substantially similar private-sector laws for activity within those provinces. It expects meaningful consent, collection limited to what you need, safeguards, a way for people to access their information, and reporting of breaches that pose a real risk of significant harm. For a website, that becomes concrete build decisions: forms that ask only for fields you use, HTTPS everywhere, access-controlled storage instead of an open spreadsheet, and a privacy page describing what actually happens to the data. Federal privacy reform has been proposed and stalled before; your adviser can tell you whether anything newer affects you.

Quebec Law 25. Quebec's modernized privacy law, phased in between 2022 and 2024, goes further than most. Technologies that identify, locate or profile visitors are expected to be off by default until the person chooses otherwise, so we configure consent banners that genuinely block analytics, ad pixels and embedded trackers until consent is given, in French and English. Organizations need a person in charge of the protection of personal information, whose contact details are published, and a privacy policy written in clear terms. Law 25 also generally expects a privacy impact assessment before personal information is communicated outside Quebec, which is relevant when a supplier elsewhere, including us, can access it. We keep that access minimal and describe it in writing so your privacy officer can assess it.

CASL. Canada's Anti-Spam Legislation generally requires consent before sending commercial electronic messages, clear identification of the sender in each message and an unsubscribe mechanism that is honoured promptly. We build marketing sign-ups as a separate, unticked checkbox with clear wording, store when and how consent was given, and connect forms to email platforms that handle unsubscribes properly. A contact form enquiry is never silently added to a newsletter list.

AODA and accessibility. Ontario's Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act requires many organizations, including private and non-profit organizations with 50 or more employees in Ontario and the public sector, to make their websites meet WCAG 2.0 level AA, with some exceptions. Manitoba, Nova Scotia and British Columbia have their own accessibility laws with standards being phased in, and the federal Accessible Canada Act applies to federally regulated organizations. We build to WCAG 2.1 AA practices by default: semantic structure, keyboard navigation, visible focus, sufficient contrast, labelled forms, alt text and captions where you supply video, tested with a screen reader before launch. We do not install overlay widgets that promise instant compliance.

French language requirements. In Quebec, the Charter of the French Language, strengthened by Bill 96, generally expects commercial content, websites included, to be available in French, and the French version should not be less complete than any other. Federal institutions have obligations under the Official Languages Act, and New Brunswick is officially bilingual. Our part is building sites where French is a full, first-class version; which rules apply to you is a question for your lawyer.

GST/HST and provincial taxes. As covered in the ecommerce section, we configure checkout to apply the taxes your accountant confirms. How you treat our own invoices as a supplier outside Canada is also a question for your accountant.

• Consent banner that blocks analytics, ad pixels and embedded trackers until the visitor agrees, with the choice stored and easy to change later.
• Banner, privacy page, cookie details and forms available in English and French for sites serving Quebec.
• Forms that ask only for fields you actually use, sent over HTTPS, with spam protection that does not rely on invasive tracking.
• A named privacy contact on the privacy page, using the person you designate.
• Marketing opt-in as a separate, unticked checkbox, with sender details and an unsubscribe link in every email template.
• Hosting and form storage in a Canadian region on request, and a written list of every third-party service that receives visitor data.
• Keyboard, screen reader and contrast checks on key templates and forms before launch.

This checklist is a set of engineering habits, not legal advice or a certificate. Your lawyer or privacy adviser decides what your organization needs; we make those decisions easy to implement.

Time-zone overlap between Canada and India

Canada spans six time zones, from Newfoundland at UTC−3:30 to Pacific at UTC−8, and India Standard Time at UTC+5:30 sits ahead of all of them. India never changes its clocks, while most of Canada moves forward in March and back in November, so the gap shifts by an hour twice a year. Two exceptions matter for scheduling: most of Saskatchewan stays on Central Standard Time all year, and Yukon has stayed on permanent Mountain Standard Time since 2020.

The Atlantic provinces get the best overlap: a Halifax or St. John's morning meeting lands in our late afternoon. Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal meet between 8 and 11 a.m. Eastern, which is our evening. Winnipeg, the Prairies and Alberta meet early in their morning, and Vancouver and Victoria at 7 to 9 a.m. Pacific. The table below lists the usual windows. Outside them, everything runs in writing, and urgent production issues follow the escalation route agreed in your maintenance plan.

For organizations with offices in several provinces, we usually anchor recurring calls to the easternmost team's morning and share a written summary afterwards, so western colleagues are not forced into a 6 a.m. call.

Paying from Canada: CAD or USD invoices, Wise, wire and milestones

Our international prices are set in US dollars. If you would rather pay in Canadian dollars, we invoice in CAD at the exchange rate on the day of the quote, so the amount you approve is the amount you pay for that scope, with no currency surprise at the end. Wise is usually the cheapest route from a Canadian bank account and typically works like a domestic transfer on your side. International wire works for finance teams that prefer it, and PayPal is available with higher fees. We cannot receive Interac e-Transfers, since they require a Canadian bank account.

Payment is split into milestones, typically a deposit to begin, a payment at staging review and the balance at launch and handover. Ongoing SEO and maintenance plans are invoiced each month, and you can end them with notice. Every payment gets an invoice with our business details. How to record an invoice from a supplier outside Canada, and whether any GST/HST self-assessment applies to you, is a question for your accountant, and we will provide whatever details they ask for.

Scope changes are quoted in writing and approved before they are built. The pricing page, terms and refund policy cover the commercial details.

How to hire an offshore web developer from Canada

Canadian businesses outsource web development for the same reason everyone does: skilled work at a lower cost. The projects that go wrong usually fail in predictable ways: a French version that was never really planned, accounts registered in the vendor's name, consent and privacy handled as an afterthought, or a vendor who goes quiet after the deposit. These questions filter most of that out. Ask them of anyone, including us.

• Who will build it, by name? If the salesperson is not the developer, find out who is and whether any part is subcontracted.
• How will the French version work? Separate URLs, fr-CA hreflang, translated metadata and emails, and who supplies the translation. "We use a plugin" is not an answer.
• Where will data be hosted, and who can access it? Especially important for Quebec businesses and anyone with a Canadian data-residency policy.
• Which live sites can I open myself? Open live sites on your phone over mobile data and run them through PageSpeed Insights.
• What exactly is in the quote? Pages and templates, languages, revision rounds, content writing, SEO setup, integrations, testing and exclusions.
• In whose name are the .ca domain, hosting and payment accounts? Yours, from day one; CIRA's presence rules mean a .ca should never be in a foreign vendor's name anyway.
• What happens after launch? Who fixes bugs, how quickly, for how long, and what support costs.

Red flags: guaranteed first-page rankings; domains or merchant accounts registered in the vendor's name; no written scope; full payment upfront; nulled or pirated themes and plugins; a consent banner that looks right but does not actually block tracking; machine-translated French presented as professional; reviews, logos or awards you cannot verify; and a Canadian address that turns out to be a virtual mailbox.

Ownership checklist: the scope lists every page, language and feature; you own the domain, hosting, source code, design files and content in both languages; paid licences for themes, plugins, fonts and images are in your name or transferred; the repository lives in your organization or is transferred at launch; credentials are handed over in writing and the vendor's access can be removed; and the agreement says what happens to personal data and backups if you part ways.

What a website costs for a Canadian business, explained

Website quotes in Canada vary enormously because the word covers everything from a single-page profile to a bilingual store with provincial tax rules. Price follows scope. Our figures are starting prices in US dollars for a clearly defined first version, with CAD invoicing on request, and the final quote depends on your requirements.

• From US$150, static website: a contractor, clinic, consultancy or small manufacturer with home, services, about, contact and gallery pages, up to 100 pages, using content you supply.
• From US$300, SEO website of 299+ pages: a structured site built around search intent, such as a trades company covering many services across dozens of towns, planned with keywords, schema and internal linking.
• From US$600, AI automation: one well-defined workflow, for example bilingual enquiry routing with first-draft replies in the right language for a person to approve.
• From US$750, ecommerce store: product and category pages, cart, checkout, payment setup, provincial tax rules, shipping rates and performance tuning.
• From US$900, custom web app: a focused first version of a booking system, client portal or dashboard with accounts, roles, an admin panel and deployment.
• From US$150/mo a month for SEO and US$120/mo a month for maintenance: recurring work with a monthly report, starting after the five included maintenance months.

What pushes a quote up: a second language across every template and email, many unique page designs, content we write from scratch, complex product catalogues, integrations with older systems, strict accessibility audits and tight deadlines. What keeps it down: ready content and translations, one decision-maker, and a sensible first version that can grow.

Also budget for costs paid to third parties: .ca and .com domains, hosting, a Shopify plan or paid plugins, payment processing fees, professional translation, email marketing platforms and any tax or shipping apps. We list expected running costs in the quote. The pricing page has the full breakdown.

Ontario: what businesses need online

Ontario is Canada's largest and most crowded search market, with finance and insurance in Toronto, federal government in Ottawa, manufacturing across the south and resource industries in the north. AODA shapes accessibility expectations for many organizations here, and Franco-Ontarian communities in the east and north make French pages worth considering well outside Quebec.

Quebec: what businesses need online

In Quebec, French comes first. Websites are generally expected to be available in French under the Charter of the French Language, Law 25 changes how tracking and consent work, and QST sits alongside GST at checkout. Montreal is also one of the country's most important technology, AI, gaming and aerospace hubs.

British Columbia: what businesses need online

British Columbia's economy mixes technology, film and visual effects, real estate, tourism, the Port of Vancouver, forestry and wine. BC businesses charge PST alongside GST, and the province's large multilingual communities make extra languages worth discussing for some sites. Most of the province is on Pacific time.

Alberta: what businesses need online

Alberta has energy company head offices, industrial services, agriculture and a fast-growing technology sector. It charges GST but no provincial sales tax, which simplifies checkout for Alberta-based stores, though you still collect the right tax for customers in other provinces. Alberta is on Mountain time.

The Prairies: Manitoba and Saskatchewan: what businesses need online

Manitoba and Saskatchewan run on agriculture, mining, manufacturing, transportation and insurance. Businesses often compete across the whole Prairie region rather than one city, so regional service pages and consistent listings matter. Both provinces charge PST alongside GST, and most of Saskatchewan stays on Central Standard Time all year.

Atlantic Canada: what businesses need online

The Atlantic provinces combine ocean industries, seafood, universities, defence and a large seasonal tourism economy. All four use HST, New Brunswick is Canada's only officially bilingual province, and Newfoundland keeps its own time zone half an hour ahead of Atlantic time, which gives the easiest overlap of all with India.

The North: Yukon, Northwest Territories and Nunavut: what businesses need online

The territories have small populations spread across enormous distances, and all three charge GST only. Internet connections in many communities are limited or satellite-based, so websites here need to be very light, readable without large images or scripts, and built around the information people need before they travel or order.