Castlegar, BC. Serving the Kootenays and beyond.Four programs compared at eleven at night, on a phone, quietly.
Childcare and education websites built for the parent deciding at eleven at night.
I build childcare and education websites from Castlegar, BC for daycares, preschools, private schools, tutors, and music, art and sport programs. A parent needs four answers: ages, hours, fees, and whether there is room. Publish those and the waitlist fills itself while you are on the floor with the kids.
Built for licensed group daycares and family child care, preschools, before and after school care, independent schools, tutoring practices, music and dance studios, and seasonal kids programs across the Kootenays, including the many that have never had a website at all.
The search a parent runs at eleven at night
I treat a childcare or education site as the answer sheet a tired parent needs at eleven at night. Programs by age with real hours, monthly fees with the subsidy explained, the parent handbook as pages instead of a stale PDF, photos of the actual rooms, and a waitlist form that captures a birth date and a start month. Your daily-report app keeps doing the day. The site does the enrolment, and it does it while you are on the floor.
- 01
There is a deadline behind the search
A parent looking for care has a start date and very little choice. Anything your site leaves open becomes an evening of phone calls they do not have. The program that publishes ages, hours and fees gets the enquiry first, almost every time.
- 02
Trust is built from faces and rooms
A parent is handing a small person to people they have never met. Photos of the real space, a short page per educator with their training, and the plain description of a normal day do more than any amount of warm language about nurturing environments.
- 03
The fee question decides half the tours
Fees are the most searched and least published fact in this category. Naming the monthly number and explaining how the provincial subsidy changes it turns a nervous browse into a booked tour, and it stops you touring families who were never going to enrol.
- 04
A silent waitlist reads as no waitlist
Parents assume a message left in June was lost by August. A form that confirms in writing what you have, and a short note about how the list actually moves, keeps families waiting instead of quietly enrolling elsewhere.
- 05
Lessons and programs are bought by the season
Music, dance, tutoring and sport run on registration windows. Parents plan the fall in July. The studio whose schedule, ages, levels and fees are live in advance takes the registrations from the one still building a Facebook post in September.
Where a program build earns a parent’s trust
No childcare or school build sits in the portfolio yet. Here is the standard the first centre, studio, or school will get.
The pages a daycare, school, or studio actually needs
- 01
Programs by age, with the hours spelled out
Infant and toddler, three to five, before and after school, or the levels and grades you teach. Each with the exact hours, the months it runs, the number of licensed spaces, and the staffing ratio. This is the page a parent reads first, and the one that stops the mismatched enquiries.
- 02
Fees, subsidy, and what is included
The monthly fee for each program, what a deposit holds, what is included, and a clear explanation of how the Affordable Child Care Benefit and the fee reduction affect the number. Naming it does not lose you families. It wins the ones who can afford you and were afraid to ask.
- 03
The parent handbook, as pages instead of a PDF
Sick-day policy, food and allergies, nap and rest, clothing, late pickup, holidays, and behaviour guidance. Written as pages you can edit from a phone, so the policy that changed in February is correct in February. Parents search these questions constantly and almost nobody publishes the answers.
- 04
The people and the room
A short page for each educator or teacher with their training, their certifications, and one honest line about their work with kids. Real photographs of the rooms, the yard, the entrance and the parking. I direct that shoot, because photos of your actual space outsell every stock image ever taken.
- 05
Registration windows and the seasonal rush
For lessons, camps and programs the year has shapes: fall registration, winter session, spring recital, summer camp. Each gets a page that goes live early, holds the dates and fees, and takes a registration or a deposit through a processor you already use.
The standard that comes with every build I ship.
- Programs by age with hours, licensed spaces, and ratios
- Fees, deposits, and a plain-language subsidy explanation
- Waitlist form with birth date, start month, and days needed
- Parent handbook published as editable pages
- A page for each educator or teacher, with training and certifications
- Directed photography of the rooms, yard, and entrance
- Registration and seasonal program pages for lessons and camps
- Secure forms, privacy policy, and CASL-ready email capture
- Accessibility to WCAG 2.2 AA, performance, and analytics baked in
Where an enrolment quietly falls through
A parent looking for care is tired, on a phone, and comparing you against three other programs. Every gap costs them an evening and costs you a family. The last column is the fix.
Ages and hours are not published
Costs them
A parent cannot tell whether you take an eighteen-month-old, or whether you close at five.
Costs you
Calls from families you could never serve, and none from the ones you could.
FixPrograms by age with the exact hours, ratios, and the months each group runs.
Fees are a phone call
Costs them
They are budgeting to the dollar and cannot plan around a number nobody will say out loud.
Costs you
Tours booked by families who leave the moment the fee comes up, and a calendar full of them.
FixMonthly fees by program, what is included, and how the provincial subsidy changes the number.
The waitlist is a notebook by the phone
Costs them
They leave a message, hear nothing for six weeks, and assume they were forgotten.
Costs you
A list you cannot sort, cannot count, and cannot use when a space actually opens.
FixA waitlist form capturing the child’s birth date, start month, and days needed, sorted the moment it arrives.
Nobody can see the room or meet the staff
Costs them
They are handing a kid to strangers and have nothing to look at but a logo.
Costs you
You compete on price against a program the parent has already seen inside.
FixPhotos of the actual rooms and yard, plus a short page per educator with their training and their why.
The handbook is a PDF from four years ago
Costs them
Sick-day rules, food, naps, and the late-pickup fee are the questions parents actually have, and they are buried.
Costs you
The same conversation with every new family, repeated at the door during pickup.
FixA parent handbook as real pages you can edit yourself, so policy changes take one minute.
The waitlist that runs itself
Every centre I have looked at keeps the waitlist somewhere unreliable: a notebook, an inbox, a spreadsheet that only one person understands. Then a space opens in March and the office spends two days phoning families who found care last October. I build the waitlist as a real form. It asks for the child’s birth date, the month care is needed, the days per week, and whether a subsidy is involved, so the list arrives sorted the way you actually fill spaces.
The page around it does the rest of the work. It states how the list moves, roughly how long it has run lately, and that being on it costs nothing. Families get a written confirmation instead of silence. You get a list you can filter by age group and start month, so when the space opens you make one call rather than fifteen.
- Birth date, start month, days needed, and subsidy status captured up front
- A written confirmation so a parent knows they are actually on the list
- A plain explanation of how the list moves and what it does not guarantee
- Sortable by age group and start month, so one call fills the space
Licensing, children’s photos, and family information
A site in this category is judged on more than looks. These are the obligations and reassurances I build in by default, so the business stays credible and protected.
Licensing stated the way the licence reads
Your licence covers specific care types, ages, and a number of spaces, and your health authority holds the record. I publish what the licence actually says, with the care type named correctly, so nothing on the site drifts from the document on the wall.
Children’s photos and written consent
A photo of a child is personal information belonging to a family, not marketing material. I set up written photo consent per family, keep faces off the site where consent is absent, and build a fast way to pull an image down when a parent changes their mind.
Family information under PIPA
Waitlist forms collect a child’s birth date and a family’s contact details, which British Columbia’s privacy legislation covers. Forms ask for only what a purpose needs, submissions travel encrypted, and the privacy policy states in plain words what you keep and for how long.
Subsidy information, accurate and dated
The Affordable Child Care Benefit and the Child Care Fee Reduction Initiative are provincial programs with their own rules and their own application. I explain how they affect your fee, link to the province rather than paraphrasing the eligibility rules, and never let the page imply your centre decides who qualifies.
Consent rules on the family newsletter
Canada’s Anti-Spam Legislation covers newsletters to prospective families. Sign-up forms capture express consent, name the centre as the sender, and carry a working unsubscribe, so the September registration email lands safely.
Accessibility to WCAG 2.2 AA
The Accessible British Columbia Act keeps moving, and this is a category where a parent using a screen reader or a keyboard is filling out the same waitlist form as everybody else. I build to WCAG 2.2 AA: contrast, keyboard navigation, labelled forms, and alt text throughout.
Want this standard on your site?
One conversation, no pitch deck. Tell me where the business is stuck and I will tell you what I would build.
What a build like this costs.
Most builds here start at $2,000, or $189 a month on Own It Monthly
The Trailhead · typical timeline 2 to 3 weeks
Programs, fees, the handbook and a working waitlist form fit the Trailhead, and it is my starter tier, so there is no smaller step below it. If you run several sites or several towns, the Full Coverage add-on gives each location its own page for $1,200, or $3,200 bundled with the Trailhead at purchase, which is $299 a month over twelve payments and $3,588 all in.
The honest answer depends on what you actually need, not on a package name. Start with the free check-up or the contact form, and I will book a proper 45-minute consultation with you, no pressure either way.
Comparing options right now? What a website should cost breaks down how to read any quote, and who actually owns your website covers what you keep if you ever leave, on any platform, including mine.
Parent groups, word of mouth, and the software that runs your day does the plumbing. KMD wins the decision.
A group post reaches whoever is scrolling that hour. Your daily-report app talks to families you already have. The parent moving to town in August is on a search engine, and they need ages, hours, fees, and whether there is room.
Facebook parent groups fill spaces fast, and referrals from families you already serve fill them faster. Lillio, Brightwheel, Storypark, Jackrabbit and their cousins run daily reports, attendance, billing and photo feeds. All of it is worth keeping. None of it answers the parent who has not found you yet.
What the group and the software already do well
- Daily reports, attendance, and photos for current families
- Billing, subsidy paperwork, and parent messaging
- A post that fills a space when the right person happens to be online
- Referrals that arrive already warm, and always too few
Where the upgrade actually pays off.
- 01
Publish the monthly fee and stop touring families who were never going to enrol.
- 02
Turn the waitlist notebook into a sorted form that confirms in writing.
- 03
Put the parent handbook on real pages you can edit yourself in a minute.
- 04
Show the rooms, the yard and the educators, because a parent is trusting people and a place.
- 05
Open registration pages weeks early, because parents plan the fall in July.
Answers for directors, owners, and teachers
We are full with a two-year waitlist. Why would we need a website?+
Because the list is doing work the site should do. A form that sorts by age group and start month means one call fills a space instead of fifteen. It also holds your licensing details, your handbook, and your hiring page, which is the harder problem in this sector right now.
How much does a childcare or school website cost?+
Most centres and studios land on the Trailhead: $2,000, or 12 payments of $189 on Own It Monthly, which is $2,268 all in, delivered in 2 to 3 weeks. Several locations or several towns add Full Coverage at $1,200, or $3,200 bundled at purchase, which is $299 a month and $3,588 all in.
Do we have to publish our fees?+
You should. Fees are the most searched and least published fact in this category. Naming the monthly number and explaining how the provincial subsidy changes it means the families who tour are the families who can enrol, which gives you back an afternoon a week.
Can the site handle photos of the children safely?+
Only with written consent per family, and I build the site so removing a photo takes a minute. Plenty of centres run beautiful sites with no identifiable faces at all: the rooms, the materials, hands at work, the yard in the morning. That approach photographs better than most people expect.
Will it work with our daily-report app?+
It sits beside it. Lillio, Brightwheel, Storypark, Jackrabbit and the rest keep doing attendance, billing and family messaging. The website handles the people who are not your families yet, and hands them to your app once they enrol.
Can I update the handbook myself?+
Yes, and you should be able to do it from a phone during nap time. Policy pages, fees, hours and closure notices are all editable without a designer. A handbook that goes stale is worse than no handbook, because a parent reads the wrong policy and plans around it.
We are a tutoring or music studio, not a daycare. Does this fit?+
It fits well. The shape is the same: programs by age or level, real fees, a schedule that goes live before the season, and a registration form that captures what you need to place a student. The vocabulary changes and the structure does not.
Is anyone in this sector even online around here?+
Less than you would think. On The Kootenay List, the register of 5,836 Kootenay businesses I built and maintain, roughly 200 childcare, school, lesson and kids-activity businesses are listed, and about half of them have no website at all. Being the one that answers a parent at eleven at night is a real advantage right now.
How long does it take to build?+
Two to three weeks for a Trailhead build once I have your programs, fees and handbook, and you get a live preview link in the first week. If you want it live before September registration, tell me the date and I will work the schedule backwards from it.
Who builds this
I am Brett, the person behind Kootenay Made Digital. I plan, design, and build every site myself from Castlegar, BC, so the person you email is the person doing the work.
Founder, Kootenay Made Digital · Castlegar, BC
Fill September before the summer runs out
A parent looking for care will decide tonight, on a phone, from whatever they can find. Publish the ages, the hours, the fees and the waitlist, and the family that fits your program stops slipping past you.