One of the questions we often get asked is: how much does it cost to build a WordPress website? While the core WordPress software is free, the cost of a WordPress site depends entirely on your budget and goals. In this article, we will break it all down to answer the ultimate question: How much does it really cost to build a WordPress website? We’ll also show you how to avoid overspending and minimize cost when building a website.
What Do You Need to Build a WordPress Website?
WordPress is free for anyone to download and use. It is an open source software which gives you freedom to install it on any kind of website.
So if WordPress is free, then where is the cost coming from?
The cost of a WordPress site can be broken down into following categories:
- WordPress hosting
- Domain Name
- Design
- Plugins and Extensions (Apps)
To create a self hosted WordPress site, you need web hosting to store your files. Every website on the internet needs hosting. This is your website’s home on the internet.
Next, you will need a domain name. This will be your website’s address on the internet, and this is what your users will type in the browser to reach your website (example, wpbeginner.com or google.com).
With WordPress, there are tons of free website templates available that you can use. However if you want something more advanced / custom, then you can purchase a premium template or have one custom made which will raise the cost.
There are 40,000+ free plugins for WordPress. These are apps and extensions for your websites. Think features like contact form, gallery, etc.
So while you can build a website with just the hosting and domain cost, based on your situation, you may end up paying for additional tools and services. That’s why it’s often confusing for people to find out the real cost of a WordPress website.
Let us walk you through the real cost of building a WordPress site.
Estimating The Real Cost of Building a WordPress Site
Depending on your needs, your cost to start a WordPress website can range from $100 to $500 to $3000, to even as high as $30,000 or more.
It’s important to know what type of website you are building, and what you’ll need for it because that will directly affect your cost.
But don’t worry, we’ll show you how to avoid a financial disaster and make the best decisions.
For the sake of this article, let’s break down websites into different budget categories:
- Building a WordPress website (low budget)
- Building a WordPress website (with more features)
- Building a WordPress eCommerce website
- Building a custom WordPress website
Now let’s see how much each of these projects cost and how you can avoid spending any more than necessary.
What’s the Cost of a WordPress Website (Low Budget)?
You can build a fully functional WordPress website for yourself and keep your costs under $100. Here is the cost break down of a WordPress website on low budget.
First, you will need a domain name and web hosting.
A domain name typically costs $14.99 / year, and web hosting normally costs $7.99 / month.
Thankfully, Bluehost, an official WordPress recommended hosting provider, has agreed to offer our users a free domain name and over 60% off on web hosting.
→ Click here to Claim this Exclusive Bluehost offer ←
For more hosting recommendations check out our guide on how to choose the best WordPress hosting.
Next, you will need to install WordPress on your hosting account. See our step by step guide on how to start a WordPress blog for complete instructions.
Once you have installed WordPress, you can choose a design for your website using a free template.
There are thousands of free and professionally designed templates available for WordPress that you can install. See our expert-pick of 43 beautiful free WordPress blog themes for some examples.
Once you have chosen a WordPress template, follow the instructions in our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress theme.
Next, you may want to add certain features to your website like adding a contact form, a photo gallery, a slider, etc. Don’t worry there are more than 40,000 WordPress plugins available that will help you do that.
Plugins are like apps or extensions for your WordPress site. See our step by step guide on how to install a WordPress plugin.
Below is our selection of the essentials WordPress plugins that you should install on your website. All of them are available for free.
Features
- WPForms Lite – Add contact forms to your WordPress site
- Envira Gallery Lite – Add beautiful image galleries to your site
- Soliloquy Lite – Add beautiful image sliders in WordPress
Website Optimization
- Yoast SEO – Improve your WordPress SEO and get more traffic from Google
- MonsterInsights (Free) – Helps you track visitor stats using Google Analytics
- WP Super Cache – Improves your website’s speed by adding cache
Website Security
- UpdraftPlus – Free WordPress backup plugin
- Sucuri – Free website malware scanner
There are many more free WordPress plugins to add different features and extend your WordPress site. See our best WordPress plugins category where we have reviewed hundreds of WordPress plugins.
Total Cost of website: $46 – $100 per year
What’s the Cost of a WordPress Site (with More Features)?
We always recommend our users to start small and then add more features as their website grow. This way you will not be paying for anything that you don’t really need.
As you add more features to your website, your website cost will start to increase.
You can continue to use Bluehost for WordPress hosting to keep the cost low and get a free domain name.
However since you will be adding more features to your website, it may make sense to get a more powerful hosting configuration like SiteGround’s GoGeek plan. This will cost you a little more, but it comes with premium features like staging, faster performance, and can handle up to 100,000 visitors per month.
You can use our SiteGround coupon to get 60% off for the first year of your hosting.
You can also go for a premium WordPress template for your site. Unlike free WordPress templates, these templates come with extra features and priority support. See our expert selection of 40 best responsive WordPress themes for some great premium templates that you can use.
For more website features you need to use a combination of free + paid plugin addons.
Here are some essential premium WordPress plugins and extensions that you’ll need as your site grows:
Features
- WPForms (Pro) – Adds a drag drop form builder to your WordPress site
- Envira Gallery – WordPress image gallery plugin for photography or portfolio websites
- Beaver Builder – Adds a drag and drop WordPress page builder
Marketing
- Constant Contact – One of the best Email marketing services
- OptinMonster – Converts abandoning website visitors into subscribers. Lead generation for WordPress.
- MonsterInsights Pro – See how visitors find and use your website.
Security
- BackupBuddy – For automatic WordPress backups
- Sucuri Firewall – Website firewall and malware protection
There are many more WordPress plugins and services that you can add. Each paid service or addon that you add will increase the cost of your WordPress site.
Total cost of website: Depending on the premium WordPress plugins and services that you add, it can be anywhere between $500 and $1000 per year.
What’s the Cost of a WordPress Ecommerce Website?
WordPress powers millions of eCommerce websites around the world.
The cost of building a WordPress eCommerce website can be significantly higher, but we will show you how to build a WordPress eCommerce website while avoiding potential losses and overspending.
In addition to hosting and domain, your eCommerce site will also need an SSL certificate which costs around $69.99/year. SSL is required to securely transfer customer data such as credit card information, usernames, passwords, etc.
We recommend using Bluehost Ecommerce plan. It gives you a free domain and SSL certificate, plus discount on hosting.
After that, you need to select a WordPress eCommerce plugin.
There are several eCommerce plugins for WordPress, but none comes even close to WooCommerce. It is the most popular WordPress eCommerce plugin that allows you to build robust online stores to sell your products/services.
Next, you will need to install WordPress and WooCommerce on your website. We have a step by step guide on how to start an online store.
While WooCommerce is free, you will need to use paid addons for additional features. The cost of your website will go up depending on how many addons you need to add on your website.
Once you are up and running, you will need to choose a WooCommerce ready WordPress template for your site. There are several paid and free WordPress templates with full WooCommerce support. Choosing a premium or paid template gives you access to support and extra features.
We have a list of the best free WooCommerce addons, but depending on your needs, you may have to use some paid extensions as well.
Here are some other paid services that you’ll need on your eCommerce website.
Features
- WPForms – To add customer inquiries and feedback forms
- Beaver Builder – To create stunning landing pages using a drag and drop page builder
- Soliloquy – Create beautiful product sliders with their WooCommerce addon
Marketing
- OptinMonster – Convert visitors into customers with this powerful lead generation tool
- Constant Contact – powerful email marketing service
- MonsterInsights – Ecommerce tracking with real time stats using Google Analytics
Security
- BackupBuddy – Automatic WordPress backups
- Sucuri – Website firewall and malware scanner
Remember the best way to keep your costs down is by starting small and adding extensions and services as your business grows.
Total cost of building a WordPress eCommerce website: $1000 – $3000. It could be higher depending on how many paid addons and services you add to your site.
What’s the Cost of a Custom WordPress Site?
A custom WordPress site is when you hire a WordPress developer to create a unique design and build specific features for it.
Usually well established, large to medium sized businesses choose this route.
To support a custom WordPress site, you may also want to go for a managed WordPress hosting provider. This is WordPress centric hosting environment, with managed updates, premium support, strict security, and developer friendly tools.
In addition to your hosting and domain name, you will also be paying the developer that’s building your website.
The cost of a custom website depends on your requirements, budget, and the rates of the developer or agency you hire.
A standard custom WordPress theme alone can cost you upto $5000. More robust WordPress sites with specific custom features can cost up to $15000 or even higher.
How to Avoid Overpaying and Cut Down Spending?
We always recommend our users to start small and then scale their WordPress site as it grows. In many cases you don’t need all the premium features that you see on many well established websites in your industry.
Keep in mind that those websites had a head start, and it likely took them time to figure out how to manage costs and grow their business.
You can start with a budget website using free plugins and template. Once you start getting visitors, you can consider adding premium features like a premium template, email marketing, paid backup plugin, website firewall and so on.
Same goes for your eCommerce website. Start with bare minimum and then as you start selling, you will find out exactly the tools that will help you and your customers.
Look for best WordPress deals and coupons to get additional discounts whenever you can.
Even for robust WordPress sites you don’t always need to hire a developer. We have step by step tutorials on how to create different types of WordPress websites such as:
- How to create a business directory with WordPress
- How to create an online review website with WordPress
- How to build an auction website using WordPress
- How to build a coupons website with WordPress
- How to create a multilingual website with WordPress
- How to create a job board with WordPress
- How to create a questions & answers website with WordPress
- How to create a portfolio website with WordPress
- How to create a wiki knowledge base website using WordPress
We hope this article answered your questions about how much does it cost to build a WordPress website. You may also want to see our list of 25 legit ways to make money online blogging with WordPress.
If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our YouTube Channel for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on Twitter and Facebook.
I think this article is great for some one is well articulate with website design and cost implications but a bit misleading for some one who is very naive about website costing. cheap can be cost saving in the short run but a complete disaster in the long run.
I have built websites for clients who really want to save a huge cost but in the end they fail to get value for their little money.
Everyone wants a beautiful website and luckily WordPress offers many themes at reasonable prices. Since you’re doing things yourself, you’ll probably want to choose a pre-made WordPress theme for your site’s design. A lot will depend on the type of look you want for your WordPress site and you need to think about how you want to represent yourself or your brand online, and that costs.
A lot of these articles neglect a huge factor of building your own site: time. If you have never built a site before you are going to spend a lot of time figuring out things work. Then once you do have it built, how do you know it is right?
What is your time worth? Would you pay me with no experience in your job the same amount you make.
Looking at the Holistic Cost and the TERM cost is important: Time, Enjoyment, Result, Money. Money is last for a reason.
Great article! I love how you’ve broken it down.
However, I feel there needs to be some words of caution for the “cheapest” option you’ve outlined.
Sometimes, saving money in the short-term can cause headaches and larger financial burdens later on down the line.
I would add that *if you know you want to grow your site* (more then just validating an idea or starting a blog), that you should really start out with a premium theme. I feel that the ‘cost’ (time, headache and money) of changing themes later is unnecessary and more trouble than it’s worth.
Premium themes are so cheap that, in my opinion, it’s better to start out with something really good that you can grow into, than to upgrade later. This is even more true for “free” themes that use proprietary visual editors and shortcodes. moving from one shortcode library to another is, essentially, re-constructing every single page of your website.
Another word of caution is to find a reputable source for free themes. the danger is that “free” themes could have built-in back doors for potentially nefarious intrusions. beware free themes that have not gone through some kind of checks and balance or, third part verification.
I’m sure this could probably be an entire post in itself but, i feel it’s worth mentioning here as well.
Great Article!
I am Confused, as I have purchased Domain name from Godaddy and Hosting from Hostgator. But still thinking that I dont know the basic wordpress Editing.
Currently using Blogger and very Well known. But wanted to work on it.
Can you please suggest me should I register my domain name and hosting without an experience?
WordPress can offer your website a better visual appearance and functionality than blogger, But as far as managing your hosting account is concerned, you can watch self guiding tutorials or get some one who is well conversant with cPanel since you said you bought hosting from HostGator and they use the industry standard cPanel, then you’ll have o make GoDaddy point your domain to the Hostgator nameservers where your files shall be hosted.
I hope this helps a bit.
Regards.
One thing that I think is important to point out in terms of cost is maintenance. A lot of people buy or build a website without considering that there are ongoing costs and time. WordPress sites tend to need some TLC when it comes to updates, security, and backups. While some of this can be automated, there’s some risk of updates breaking themes and plugins. There’s also issues that your backups could be compromised, if you’re just letting a server keep 30 days worth.
Overall, the point here is that if you’re serious about owning a website and keeping it healthy, don’t consider your cost a one-time thing. Factor in the other ongoing costs. Managed hosting does a lot of this, but it’s not the be-all to end all solution.
That is so true. I have seen so many people say they want to upkeep and maintain thier websites, but they don’t.
Oh man.. Every client I’ve ever had. :o)
how to create a flate image for blog post like you ???? ?????
An appropriate comparison to notify the clients, that there is a fair price if you want to get a professional website. If you want cheap, you will “play” in around a free templates that is used millions of others throughout the world.
The title of this article is misleading at the very least. Nowhere do you mention the cost of content, imagery, learning WP, etc… Building a web site is so much than what you outline, even for experienced individuals.
Hi Brett,
We wrote this article for our DIY users. They normally create their own content. You can use WPBeginner to learn WordPress (all for free). There are tons of cc0 images that one can use as well.
WordPress and web designers dont need to worry about their future just because people can build their own site for free. Yes, anyone can learn how to make a WordPress page for free, that is so true. But I have many years of experience working with a lot of clients both building websites for them and teaching them how to manage it themselves, and there are two important reasons why the general public will always need web designers. First, many people are completely incapable of Googling something or even reading a WP Beginner article and doing their own DIY. If the entire world was capable of DIY there would be no Jiffy Lubes or plumbers. Tons of people will always need their hand held or someone to just do it all for them. The other reasons why people will always need to hire web designers is that you can teach a few of them how to *build* it, but so many will stop learning there, and never realize that being a carpenter is not the same thing as being an architect. Good design is hard to find on most DIY sites. Only a tiny fraction will ever push through both learning construction and learning design, let alone marketing. The rest will always be willing to throw a couple bucks into hiring a designer with business & marketing knowledge.
I like your article…except that it leaves out even the possibility of hiring someone to help with design until they are at massive corporate website level. I think you should consider that probably a good number of your subscribers are semi-pro designers who are the real people who do DIY. And at least give them a nod. Recognize that if small businesses didn’t hire web designers the web would be filled with hideous websites, with menus that have too many options, sidebars cluttered with dozens of distracting widgets, headers that don’t look right on mobile….and worse….Possibly dancing baby gifs, visitor counters, guest books…wallpaper!
I think you need something in between the “basic DIY site” and “Site with more features”. Because “more features” obviously means more paid plugins. And a good designer can get a wordpress website to do more and look better with less plugins…And certainly avoid paying for plugins for as long as possible. Depending on how “fussy” the client is they could easily have this designed for them for a one time fee of $300 – $500. Now I am being controversial because I know some designers charge $1000 and up. But I am talking simple sites for small businesses that only take a few hours to set up. Paying $1000 for that is over-paying.
And if I really want to get controversial and fly in the face of DIY, I have recently been exploring designing Wix sites for a few small business people. They may be built for DIY, but they still need someone with a designer’s eye and good marketing sense to help them out.
It is less costly if you just buy domain and let your friend host for you. For me, premium version cost 700 INR. Special thanks to the guy, hosting is the real money. And for addons, i guess it’s better to leave them and focus on your content first. Once you have 20-30 posts (or had earned from adsense), go premium plugins.
Why would a person select Woo Commerce instead of paying $29.95 for Shopify? By the time a person purchased the paid plugins for Woo Commerce wouldn’t it be more expensive than just getting a shopify store? Thanks.
Hi John,
Most WooCommerce plugins come with yearly licenses, WooCommerce itself is free. You are free to add features and extensions to your eCommerce site but you are not required to. You can control your expenses quite easily and spend as your business grows.
Hello Syed,
Great post as always. One thing though, for security, I am using Wordfence. I hope that is also a good plugin for the security purpose.
Hey Pankaj,
We use Sucuri on all of our websites. We try to recommend products and services that we use ourselves.
This is a very comprehensive breakdown of WordPress associated cost. Very good to see the breakdown from low cost to advance cost for ecommerce. This gives the novice user a better understanding of what WordPress is and how it can be leveraged for various types of projects as what we do. Ultimately, professional looking websites don’t have to cost a bundle.