WordPress Website Cost – The Real Truth Behind Building a Site

WordPress may have started as a simple blogging platform, but it has exploded into becoming not only the best blogging platform, but also a full-blown CMS in recent years.

Enterprises like jQuery, Dyn, NGINX, The New York Times, all call WordPress their online home. They’re just the cream of the crop, though. According to BuiltWith, another 37,365,862 live websites (and counting) all use WordPress, too.

There’s a reason that so many websites use it. Rather than charge for their enterprise-level CMS, the founding company behind it, Automattic, chose to keep it open source.

So technically speaking, WordPress is “free.” But… nothing is truly free, right? There’s always some kind of cost.

How much does it really cost, then? How much would it set you back to run a moderately-sized site or one that competes with Mashable or TechCrunch’s sites? Let’s find out.

Why WordPress isn’t actually free

WordPress.org will tell you it’s completely free, and technically it is free to download and install.

However, running a fully functional WordPress website isn’t free. To get a site up and running, you’ll need hosting, a domain name, a theme, and at minimum a handful of plugins.

These extras are where the real costs come in, and how much you end up spending depends entirely on the type of website you’ll create.

What kind of site are you building?

The cost of a WordPress site isn’t one number. A personal blog and a WooCommerce store for a mid-size retailer are both “WordPress websites”, but they have almost nothing in common financially.

Here’s a realistic breakdown by site type, before we get into individual cost components.

These ranges assume you’re doing most of the work yourself. Hire an agency or a developer and the numbers shift significantly upward. We’ll get into why as we break down each component.

Breaking down the costs

1. Web Hosting ($35 – $1,650)

Deciding which web host to invest in is one of the most important choices you’ll make when creating your WordPress site. WordPress hosting with Kinsta can range from $35 per month to $1,650 per month.

That’s a huge range. But the good news is that you can pick a plan that best matches your ideal bandwidth and budget.

Of course, you can also host your website directly on WordPress.

Unfortunately, hosting is about all you can do with WordPress’s offer. While the price points are lower, WordPress won’t monitor your website for you or help you solve discrepancies between third-party plugins.

Kinsta, on the other hand, will. You need to choose a plan that you can afford, but you also need to choose a plan that will give your business the best chance of success. For many of you, that price point will fall somewhere in the middle. With website hosting, you get what you pay for.

Remember: the cheaper the hosting you choose, generally speaking, the lower quality it will be. Cheap hosting tends to cut corners and overcrowd servers to make a profit. This can dramatically impact the performance of your site.

Higher-cost hosting, on the other hand, is usually more flexible and includes advanced features such as resource isolation meaning you won’t share resources with other sites. This ensures your site stays online during traffic surges. Whatever you choose, select an option that offers the right price, flexible features, and much-needed support.

SSL

Depending on who you host with or your specific needs you might also have to end up spending money on an SSL certificate. Kinsta, for example, has free SSL certificates, but not every host offers this (make sure to check our in-depth guide on how to add an SSL certificate to WooCommerce).

Also, if you need an Extended Validation SSL certificate, this will cost you. These can range anywhere from $50 to $200 per year.

CDN and caching

This cost often goes unmentioned. On many hosts, you pay extra for a content delivery network, which is what keeps your site fast for visitors who aren’t geographically close to your server.

Kinsta includes Cloudflare integration on every plan, so that’s a line item you don’t have to budget for separately. On hosts where it isn’t included, expect to add $10 to $50 per month depending on traffic volume.

2. Domain Name ($10 to $30)

When you register a domain name, you’re purchasing a site URL, or address, where users can go to view the contents of your web pages.

You can purchase domain names from tons of different places, but GoDaddy and Namecheap are two affordable options. A domain name will probably cost you anywhere from $10 to $30 every year.

Whatever you do, don’t use WordPress’s free domain name option that looks like “www.yourdomainname.wordpress.com.” If you want people to take your business seriously, then you need to move to self-hosted WordPress and get your own domain name. We extensively covered this topic in our other post How to Choose a Domain Name.

You should also be aware of domain privacy protection, or WhoisGuard protection. Usually, when you buy a domain, your personal information is published in the Whois directory. That can be bad news for you because anyone can get hold of that information unless you protect it. Anyone from an email spammer to a hacker can see exactly how to contact you.

But you can buy this add-on to keep your personal contact information private once you register a domain. This add-on can cost you anywhere from an additional $10 to $15 per year, but it’s a service you shouldn’t overlook.

3. Design and Themes ($0 – $50,000)

WordPress has many themes available to all users. Some are free, but some are upwards of $200. Free WordPress themes are great for beginners, but they often don’t have the necessary features for serious business owners.

WordPress has a massive theme library you can browse through to find what you’re looking for. You can make changes to this theme later with plugins, so the key is to find a theme that fits the overall feel you want your website to have.

Do you want your website to be simple? Professional? Quick to navigate? Fun? Intriguing? You can find a theme that gives your site that feel. Here’s how to install a WordPress theme.

You can also filter search results by the layout, features, and subject relating to your vision. But, you don’t have to use one of WordPress’s premade templates. You can find premade website templates from a different site like Template Monster for prices that range from $75 to $200.

You can also find them on Envato Market for prices from $13 to $1,200.

Some other reputable theme shops you might want to also look at include Elegant Themes, ProteusThemes, ThemeIsle, MyThemeShop, and Premiumcoding. Also, here is a good article about misconceptions when it comes to WordPress Themes.

When you’re choosing a theme, also make sure that you choose a mobile-friendly theme.

But keep this in mind: when you buy themes from third-party SaaS companies, you run the risk of using a template that doesn’t automatically integrate with native plugins that you want on your website. Pre-made templates are also difficult to customize unless you know how to read and write HTML and CSS. If you don’t, then what you see is what you get.

Some of you won’t be satisfied by any of the themes you find, though. In that case, consider hiring a web developer to create your very own theme. Depending on who you hire, you can expect a price that lands anywhere from $700 to $10,000. And if your business is well-established with extensive needs, you could even be looking at a price point closer to $50,000.

If you choose to have someone design a custom theme for your WordPress site, then you should probably have some in-house developers who can help you make future changes. Otherwise, you’ll be severely limited by your lack of coding knowledge. Consider browsing through Codeable to find a developer who fits your needs.

Or check out these other recommended places to hire WordPress developers.

4. Plugins/Extensions ($426 – $1,587)

WordPress plugins are small bits of code that you can add to your website. Some plugins (also called extensions) are free, but premium options run anywhere from $47 to $200. And charges can be one-time or recurring. You can search through all of them on WordPress.org.

In particular, though, here’s a list of plugins you especially need to consider implementing on your website. Look at exactly what they do and how much they cost.

• Yoast SEO ($0 to $118.80) — Yoast allows you to optimize every single page on your website for search engines. Meaning you have the best chance to rank on your target SERP and generate passive traffic. Read our advanced Yoast SEO tutorial here.
• Gravity Forms ($59) — Gravity Forms lets you create opt-in forms for providers like MailChimp, Slack, Stripe, PayPal, Twilio, and tons more.
• Advanced Custom Fields ($0 to $249) — This plugin allows you to include additional customizations on different page fields. Suggested reading: Advanced Custom Fields Tutorial: Your Ultimate Guide
• MailChimp — ($0 to $114.75 per month or higher) — Email marketing software that quickly and easily integrates with your WordPress website, including other third-party plugins. You can also check out these other email marketing software solutions.
• HubSpot WordPress Plugin ($0) —  With HubSpot, you can build responsive newsletters to send to your contact database. All emails are automatically logged in your CRM and include reporting for opens and clicks. It’s free for up to 2000 emails/month.
• Bloom ($89 a year or $249 lifetime) — Bloom lets you leverage sidebar forms, floating bars, exit-intent overlays, and other features that will increase your website’s conversion rate. Kinsta uses Bloom on this blog.
• Sucuri ($299 to $999.98 per year) — Sucuri offers much-needed firewall protection for your WordPress website.
• UpdraftPlus ($0 to $490.77 per year) — This plugin ensures that you don’t lose critical information due to a data disaster.
• ShareThis (Free) — ShareThis lets you add share buttons to your WordPress pages so that visitors can easily share your content on social media.
• CSS Hero ($29 to $199 per year) — Want to make changes to your WordPress website without fiddling around in CSS? This plugin allows you to do that.

With all of these plugins, your website will be ready to compete with even the savviest WordPress experts. But you only want to install the plugins that are necessary for your business. Generally speaking, fewer plugins means a faster website.

So cut the clutter and only integrate necessary extensions. You can also consider having an in-house developer clean up the plugin code to better fit your website theme. However you do it, be sure to get the ones you need and ditch the ones you don’t.

5. Ecommerce features ($450 – $1000)

Creating an online store might sound like a daunting task, but it doesn’t have to be. WordPress by default doesn’t have any ecommerce features built into it, but there are plenty of solutions out there to get you up and running.

• WooCommerce (Free) — This is an all-in-one ecommerce solutions plugin for your WordPress website.
• Easy Digital Downloads (Free)  — A great solution for ecommerce stores that are selling digital downloads and services.
• Inventory Source ($0 to $599 per month) — If you want to dropship with your ecommerce store, then Inventory Source — which integrates directly with WooCommerce — will help keep all of your shipping information organized.

While many of these are free, you most likely will need some premium plugins to make sure they function and operate the way you need them to. For example, if you’re a developer selling a plugin with Easy Digital Downloads and using a recurring subscription model, here are some plugins you’ll most likely need:

• Recurring Payments ($199 a year) — Add-on for EDD which allows you to set up recurring subscriptions for your downloads or digital products.
• Stripe Payment Gateway ($89 a year)  — Allows you to accept credit cards securely via Stripe in EDD.
• Software Licensing ($199 a year) — Provides a complete license key generation, activation, and checking system.
• AffiliateWP ($149.50 a year) — Many plugin and theme developers need a way to integrate an affiliate marketing program into EDD. AffiliateWP is by far the best solution.

As you can see, getting all the ecommerce features you want or need in WordPress isn’t always cheap. And this can vary a lot based upon your ecommerce needs.

If you’re running a WooCommerce store, hosting costs more than they do for a standard site. WooCommerce stores are resource-intensive, particularly during traffic spikes or flash sales.

Shared hosting will buckle. Kinsta’s WooCommerce hosting starts at $42/month and is configured specifically for the performance demands of an online store: automatic scaling, isolated resources, no shared CPU with other sites on the server.

6. Ongoing Maintenance ($50 – $200)

A WordPress site isn’t something you set up and forget.

Core updates, plugin updates, theme compatibility: these need attention on a regular basis. When they don’t get it, sites break or get hacked.

If you’re doing it yourself, this is a few hours per month. If you’re paying someone, managed maintenance packages from freelancers typically run $50 to $200 per month, depending on what’s included. Agencies charge more.

Kinsta handles core WordPress updates and provides automatic daily backups on all plans, which takes a meaningful chunk of the maintenance burden off your plate.

Security is the other recurring cost. Wordfence has a free tier, but Wordfence Premium is $149 per year. Sucuri’s firewall and monitoring plans start at $229 per year.

If you’re on managed hosting with built-in security monitoring, you can skip these. Kinsta’s Cloudflare integration handles DDoS protection and a WAF at the infrastructure level.

7. Your Time

Another huge factor you should consider is your time. How much is your time worth to you?

This is the section most cost guides skip, and it’s usually the one that surprises people most. The time you spend configuring WordPress, troubleshooting plugin conflicts, or figuring out why your contact form stopped working is not free. It has an opportunity cost. And for small business owners, that cost is often higher than what they’d pay a professional to just handle it.

Armin, Sallie and John, all WordPress developers and designers, brought this up below in the comments so it’s worth highlighting.

Time – this is the most important and least considered factor. Your own time! People always assume if you do it yourself its basically free, but it isn’t. Especially since making even a very simple website by yourself you will be spending a few days on it. If you are a freelancer you already know how to calculate how much your time is worth. Doing it yourself effectively costs you just as much as having someone else do it. – Armin

Store setup and configuration is time-consuming and best done by someone with experience, unless your own time really is not worth anything and you won’t be sacrificing any earnings going through the learning curve and taking weeks longer to set up your store. – Sallie

A good rule of thumb is to decide whether you have more time or money (most businesses have more money than time). In that case, it is better to hire a specialist to build your site. – John

What’s the final tally?

The price depends on what you want your website to do, how fast you want it to run, how safe you want it to be, and how much traffic you want it to handle.

In other words, the amount of money you spend will directly reflect how capable your website is.

A simple personal site might cost less than $300 per year, while a growing business website typically falls between $500 and $3,000 per year.

Ecommerce stores often spend $1,000 to $8,000+ annually, and highly customized enterprise websites can easily exceed $10,000 per year.

The good news is that WordPress can scale from a simple brochure website to a high-traffic online business. You only pay for the features and infrastructure you actually need.

Conclusion

Some of the most powerful websites in the world use WordPress. And if they can use it, you can use it, too. But don’t get duped into thinking that it ain’t going to cost you.

For a real site with a real purpose, hosting alone will cost you money every month, and the total adds up fast once you factor in themes, plugins, and maintenance.

The single biggest variable in that annual cost is your host. A bad one will charge you less upfront and cost you more in performance, downtime, and support gaps.

Kinsta starts at $35/month and includes everything that most hosts charge extra for: Cloudflare CDN, daily backups, a staging environment, and 24/7 expert support. Check out our managed WordPress hosting plans.

John Mason

John Mason is a WordPress, privacy, and security enthusiast, working as an analyst for TheBestVPN.com.

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