If you are thinking about having a WordPress website built for your business or you have a project, then you probably want to know pricing. Pricing can vary drastically from method to method making it harder to pin down a price than you might think.
What does a WordPress website cost? WordPress websites having a varying range of pricing from hundreds of dollars for DIY websites and even hundreds of thousands of dollars for major websites. Much of the price comes from the cost of additional plugins, services and costs involving agencies or freelancers skills. They can also charge you can also a monthly fee which is a standard among most websites costs.
So if you want to learn how to save money or what some average costs are, let’s go over the details. We will look at where to hire people, pricing ranges and what each service cost.
Domain Names
The first thing you need to do is acquire a domain name. These have a range just like anything else, but I would recommend that you always buy your own domain name. Owning your name gives you more control and ensures that no one can take that away from you.
You can always give a company or freelancer access to your domain name so that your professional or agency can make changes. Someone should only need a minor amount of time to do any work with your domain name. Typically, once you set it up, you hardly ever will need to touch it again.
Pricing: $8-20/per year
*Note: These assume average prices, if you are buying a rare domain name, there’s a good chance it could cost you thousands. Established domains will always cost more money.
Hosting
Hosting is the next thing that you would need to do to have your website setup. If you hire an outside company or freelancer, you might end up getting reseller hosting. This means hosting that the freelancer or agency gets a chip of the money for selling to you.
Another thing you have to think about is the amount of bandwidth or space that you need for the website itself. If you have a small website, then you can start out very cheap. If you have a bigger website you are working with, then you probably need a better hosting package.
Hosting is another place where pricing is never the same. You can find hosting companies that cost as little as $12 a year and some that can cost over $150/a month. That is a fairly huge spread with figuring out what the right host is, you need to consider what you need.
Most companies will roll hosting into a package that you either pay per month or a onetime fee. Keep in mind that hosting will always cost more on the second year, every hosting will give you a discount for the first year. if you are looking for ideas of hosting your website check out our article what is a web host.
Pricing: $12/year to $150+/month
Plugins
Plugins are another place that someone can spend a decent amount of money. Some plugins are cheap, some offer lifetime licenses, and some are nothing short of expensive. Plugins really run the gamut of pricing everything from a few dollars to hundreds of dollars a year.
Plugins like ecommerce or membership site plugins can easily cost into the thousands for expanded functions. Most companies will pass this pricing on to you and then charge you to set up the plugin which will require some kind of setup.
Because plugins range from such a large pricing, you can expect that the more unique features you want on your website the more it will cost you. Want a calendar? That will cost extra. What to put audio on your site? Cost extra money. Everything will cost you something, ask your freelancer or designer for a breakdown if the pricing seems off.
Pricing: Varies
Ecommerce
Ecommerce is probably one of the more popular areas when someone wants to build a website. What they don’t realize is that ecommerce is not like flipping a switch. It requires a large amount of time to set up which will cost you for the total price.
Ecommerce is more expensive because each product could be considered its own page. Each product needs images, pricing, sku’s and requires descriptions. Because of this, you will find that the amount of work that goes into setting up ecommerce depends on how many items, how much manpower and what you want.
Because of this, consider that if you will add ecommerce to your website, then expect to pay much more money.
Pricing: $250-$10000+ more added to any project
SSL
SSL is stands for secure socket layer which is a fancy way of saving you information that is transmitted to the website is protected meaning less chance of a hacker stealing it. Nowadays a website has to have a secure connection otherwise most browsers will display a message warning users that the website is not secure.
Add to the fact that Google is now penalizing websites with no HTTPS with a bump on the search engine and you have a reason to worry about this. Eventually this will become standard and most web hosts will offer this as a free service but that is not the case today.
SSL’s vary in price from free to thousands of dollars depending on the type of protection that you want for your website. This means if you are running a store, you will want more insurance so higher prices and if you have a standard website, then a free SSL will probably do you.
If you have questions about the SSL process, talk to your freelancer or agency that you are using. SSL’s will require yearly renewals to keep them going and might require a little a maintenance, but to be honest most people can do it themselves with time. We wrote an article about installing SSL on WordPress if you are interested.
Pricing: Free to $1000+ depending on the level of security that you want
Additional Services
Additional services are things that can range from several hundred dollars to thousands depending on the amount of work involved. While not all tasks will require great amounts of time, some require more skill than others.
Examples of these additional services would be:
- SEO
- Video product
- Image processing
- Writing support
- Marketing
- Website maintenance
- Hosting support
Some of these services will be things one-off meaning that you only pay for them once and you never need to pay for them again. Some services specifically things like SEO, website maintenance, marketing and hosting support could be month fees which are paid in small portions after the project is complete.
It’s important to know that these services are an option and sometimes you can save time and money doing this yourself or hiring out freelancers who can do the same work that an agency can do at a cheaper rate. The key is finding someone decent who you want to work with that can work within your budget.
Some of these services will require a commitment to time before you will see returns. Things like SEO and marketing do not produce results overnight. You need to be patient because these type of services take time before you see results but they do amazing things for websites.
Pricing: Varies from service to service and provider
Hourly rates
Most freelancers will work with two or three different models for charging for web design. They will either charge an hourly fee, a lower monthly fee, or a flat fee. They could also use a hybrid method of combining one or more of these options.
Hourly fee is a standard fee that you pay for the hours that a freelancer works on your website. The more changes and revisions, the more your website will cost once you are completely done with it. Many people will often complain because like Lawyers or any other profession, people can abuse hourly rates to get more money out of a customer. This type of web design may or may not have a contract involved depending on the pricing and who is designing the website.
A monthly fee is when a freelancer or company charges a low monthly fee but offer requires a customers commitment for the continuation of service with them. Monthly fees will often be much lower than a lump sum but breaks out the fee to a yearly rather than flat rate. You may be given a discount for paying for months in advance but make sure you find out any details of the commitment.
A flat fee is probably the most popular way of paying and is a flat amount of payment that is required for work to begin. If the project is very large, then payments will be broken into milestones. These milestones will be paid upon completion of an object in the project. Flat fee is harder to manage because unlike hourly rates or monthly rates the price is static. That means that if anything comes up, there might be additional charges added to the project.
Finally, the last type of rate is a hybrid. An example of hybrid is you may pay a flat rate for the project itself but upon completion pay a monthly rate for ongoing services that you need. I have even done a monthly rate which some are moving to while also including flat rate items into the project.
Pricing: Varies from freelancer to freelancer, Company to Company, typically the bigger the project the more money it will cost
Agency Rates
Unlike a freelancer, Agencies are large organizations that work together to give a customer full service. They may include things like web developers, web designers, writers, graphic designer and even marketing. They combine all these skill sets to give you one place that you can come to with your project rather than using several freelancers together.
The disadvantage of agencies are they are costly, the pricing for an agency can be thousands of dollars more than using freelancers to put the project together. The advantage is that you don’t have to manage them and you are under the assumption that the agency themselves will solve any problems.
Unless you are trying to price a bigger website example such as Walmart or Amazon, I would hardly think agencies would be competitive compared to freelancers but there are some off-shores agencies which can be very affordable if you can break language barriers and communication down.
One thing is certain, you don’t go to an agency when you have a very low budget. While I am sure that there are agencies out there that can help you, a majority will turn you down.
Pricing: Varies but tends to be higher priced than hiring a traditional freelancer
Saving Money
The easiest and most effective way of saving money during the web design process is to do most of the work yourself. By supplying a designer with images and text for your website, you can cut down prices dramatically. All of this is less work that the designer has to do and less they will have to surprise you with.
It’s always confused me how someone can order a website with zero idea how they want to it look or act, but yet, this is not that uncommon in the design world. If you are a person who says “I’ll know when I see” that comes with a very high price tag.
Go in to a design meeting with a good idea of what you want to accomplish and what you want on your website and you will save tons of money. For those people with little or no budget, I will always recommend WordPress for the shear amount of information is on the web.
Related Questions
How do I know when I am ready to move to an agency over a freelancer? Your budget will give this away. Agencies are typically in the $50,000 to 1 million dollar range while anything under that could be a freelancer. It’s not uncommon for a simple website to cost $10,000 and only one person is working on it.
How do you organize a team to make a website? The simple answer is find a program or solution that allows you to involve multiple people and then you manage them. One of my favorite solutions is something like Trello, Monday.com or Plutio.
Do I need to sign a contract? In most cases I would say yes, the only time I wouldn’t even consider a contract is if you are ultra cheap meaning websites that are valued at $1000 or less. While that is a significant sum of money if you are being charged less than $250 then that person is probably not a full-time freelancer or professional, they are getting their feet wet which is fine but don’t expect professionalism from such low bottom of the barrel pricing.
What do you recommend for someone with a low budget? I recommend WordPress with a nice theme and possibly a page builder. This whole package can be put together with minimal effort for roughly $500 or less including hosting and domain name. The difference being you are to make it happen, if you aren’t tech savvy pay someone to teach you or read blogs like this which walk you through.
Conclusion
I hope you have enjoyed this article discussing what does a WordPress website cost. And if you want more articles about WordPress or web design, I hope you will read more of our articles.
