Depending on your needs, the cost of building a WordPress website can vary from $0 to well over $100,000. The most important thing to keep in mind is what kind of website are you building and what functionalities you need. A simple blog would cost between $0 on the low end to $1,000 on the high end whereas an alternative to Netflix would cost closer to $100,000 to build.
Nowadays, building a website is essential to the success of any business. That’s why it’s crucial to know what to expect when building a WordPress website and how much to budget for it. This article will break down exactly how much it usually costs to build a WordPress website. However, the exact cost of building your own website may vary based on your needs and objectives.
What Do You Need to Build a WordPress Website?
If it’s your first time building a WordPress website, it might be hard to figure out what you need to build it. Here’s exactly everything you’ll need to build your WordPress website:
1. WordPress
The first thing you’ll need to build a WordPress website is WordPress. It’s the core of your website which can be customized with themes and plugins. WordPress is basically the software that lets you manage everything for your website on the backend.
2. Hosting Provider
The second thing you’ll need to build a WordPress website is a hosting provider. Your hosting provider will be the company that keeps your website online. They make sure it’s available 24/7 and are there to help you if you ever have any issues with your website. Most of the time, you’d have to pay a monthly subscription for your hosting service.
3. Domain Name
Next, you’ll need a domain name. Your domain name is basically the address of your website on the Internet. For example, our domain name is SilentWP.com. You can register your domain name with your hosting provider and you’ll have to pay a yearly fee to keep it.
4. WordPress Theme
WordPress themes are what makes WordPress so easy to work with. They’re premade website templates that you can download and use to create your own website. There are a lot of free WordPress themes available online but you might want to buy a premium WordPress theme depending on your needs.
5. WordPress Plugins
WordPress plugins are add-ons that you can add to your website to get extra features. You can often find a free WordPress plugin to do what you’re looking for, but sometimes you’ll have to buy a premium WordPress plugin for more functionalities.
6. Content Delivery Network (optional)
Finally, you might want to spend some extra money on a content delivery network (CDN). This is totally optional but a CDN will help you speed up your website and help it perform better under heavy traffic.
However, if you’re just starting out, you can use Cloudflare’s free CDN network and you won’t have to spend any money on it.
How Much Does WordPress Cost?
Let’s start with the basics, the first thing you will need to build your WordPress website is WordPress. WordPress is the content management system (CMS) that will be the core of your website. Everything will be built upon WordPress and it’s by using plugins and themes that you can customize it.
So, how much does WordPress cost? If you take a look at WordPress.com, you might think that you have to pay a monthly fee to use WordPress, and that’s a common misconception. WordPress is actually an open-source software that anyone can download for free on WordPress.org.
WordPress.com is just a hosting provider that keeps your website on the Internet like many other companies and we’ll discuss the cost of WordPress hosting below.
The Cost of WordPress Hosting ($0-$250)
Your hosting provider will be the company that keeps your website on the Internet, you can think of it as a landlord. There are a lot of different hosting services available and they’re not all the same. Even though some companies promise to host your website with unlimited traffic for $0.99 per month, it’s not really possible.
For most websites, hosting will cost you anything from $0 per month to $250 per month. The main thing to keep in mind is how much traffic are you expecting to your website? Here’s a simple breakdown of how much you can expect to spend on hosting for the number of visitors your website gets every month:
- 0 to 10,000 visitors: $0 to $10 per month
- 10,000 to 25,000 visitors: $10 to $25 per month
- 25,000 to 100,000 visitors: $25 to $100 per month
- 100,000 to 400,000 visitors: $100 to $250 per month
- 400,000+ visitors: $250+ per month
If you’re just starting out your website and don’t have a lot of money to spend on it, I’d recommend using Google Cloud’s free hosting.
Once you get a little bit of traffic and Google Cloud can’t keep up with it, I’d recommend switching to a hosting provider like Uncode Hosting or WPEngine which will cost you between $10 a month to $250 a month.
If your website gets over 400,000 visitors per month, you should consider a dedicated hosting plan with WPEngine or scalable cloud hosting like Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, or DigitalOcean.
The Cost of a Domain Name ($10-$20)
The next thing you’ll need to build your WordPress website is a domain name. It’s the equivalent of your address on the Internet. For example, our domain name here is SilentWP.com.
If the domain name you want is available, you should be able to buy it for as cheap as $12 a year in most cases. However, some domain extensions might be more expensive than that, for example, a .me domain would cost $20 a year.
If you want to check if your domain is available, I’d recommend using Google Domains. If your domain name is not available, it means someone else already owns it. In that case, you can either try to buy it from them or look for another domain name that’s available.
Buying a domain name from someone can be quite expensive, according to DomainNameSales.com, most domain name re-sales occur between $5,000 to $80,000. Some .com domain names have even been sold for millions of dollars.
So, if you’re just getting started, I’d recommend registering a new domain name with your hosting provider which will cost you between $10 and $20 a year.
The Cost of a WordPress Theme ($0-$500)
WordPress themes are what make it so easy to build a WordPress website without any previous experience. You can build your website from scratch in a few hours using a WordPress theme without writing a single line of code.
There are two kinds of WordPress themes, free and premium ones. Free WordPress themes can be found on WordPress.org and used for free. The only real downside to free WordPress themes is that they can be limited in their functionalities and most of them have simple designs.
If you can’t find what you want with free WordPress themes, you can check out premium WordPress themes. They’re more advanced themes with premium functionalities. Even though premium WordPress themes might seem expensive, they’re actually not. According to CodeInWP, the average premium WordPress theme only costs $57.54.
When choosing a WordPress theme, the main thing to keep in mind is to avoid nulled WordPress themes at all costs. Nulled WordPress themes are premium WordPress themes that are distributed illegally online for free. Most of the time using a nulled WordPress theme will lead to malicious code being installed on your website.
The Cost of WordPress Plugins ($0-$500)
WordPress plugins are small addons that you can add to your WordPress website to add features to it. Most of the time, you can find free WordPress plugins to do what you’re looking for, but, in some cases, you might need to buy a premium WordPress plugin for your website.
If you need to buy a WordPress plugin, you can expect to spend anything from $1 to $500. Some plugins even have a monthly subscription instead of a one-time fee. I’d recommend checking out Envato Market to browse premium plugins.
The Cost of a Content Delivery Network ($0-Unlimited)
A content delivery network or CDN is something that you might want to consider for your WordPress website if you expect a lot of traffic. Using a CDN is basically making a copy of your website on servers across the world to make sure anyone can access it quickly from anywhere.
Usually, you can use Cloudflare’s free CDN and get all the benefits of a CDN without having to spend any money on it. But, if your website gets a lot of traffic or you’d like something even faster than Cloudflare, you can pay for a CDN.
Most CDN’s are on a paid-per-use pricing where you only pay for the amount of data you use. So, the cost of a CDN really depends on the traffic to your website.
The Cost of Designing Your Website
If you’re not really into website design and development, you might want to hire someone to design and build your WordPress website for you. If you’re looking for a budget-friendly option, you can hire a freelancer on Fiverr or Upwork and get your website created for as low as $5. However, we’d recommend spending at least $100 to make sure your website is well built.
If you have a little bit more budget, you can hire a website design agency to build your WordPress website. Usually, it’s better to work with a web design agency because they have more employees each specializing in their part of the website. Hiring a website design agency costs between $1,000 to $100,000.
Conclusion
To conclude, a WordPress website will cost anything from $12 to well over $100,000 to build. If you manage to get free hosting with Google Cloud, use a free theme, and free plugins, the only real expense would be your domain name and you should be able to build your whole website for $12.
On the other hand, if you want a custom-made website that’s really fast, you can expect to spend a lot more on building your website.
If you want to learn more about WordPress and find some tips to help improve your website, I’d recommend checking out our blog!
