The Cost to Build a WordPress Website

WPLift.com has been running for many years now. In all that time, the question of how much it costs to build a WordPress website is one that we’ve received more than any other. 

The short answer is that it costs between $30.86 and $1,195 to build a basic WordPress website. 

There’s obviously a huge difference between those two figures, which is why the real, much longer answer, is that it all depends on what type of website you want to create. 

If you’re starting a blog, for example, then that’s probably going to cost you much less than starting an eCommerce store, while launching a basic company website for your new startup will likewise come with its own unique costs involved. 

Sound confusing?

It doesn’t have to be. In this complete WordPress website cost breakdown, we’ll outline all of the essentials you’re going to need to create any kind of website to help you set an accurate budget for your project. 

How Much Does WordPress Hosting Cost? 

$23 – $86 Per Year

Regardless of whether you’re a blogger, online store owner, or startup, building a successful website of any kind starts with a solid and reliable web hosting package. 

This hosting plan is where you’ll store all of the files that make up your new site so that visitors can access them via their web browser. 

There are countless web hosting companies out there, and, as such, prices can vary dramatically. 

Siteground is one of our favorite cheap web hosting providers. Their plans start at just $1.99 per month which works out at $23.88 per year. 

At the opposite end of the scale, an entry-level plan from Cloudways will cost $7.20 per month or $86.40 per year.
You can find more options in our guide to the best managed WordPress hosts.

How Much Does a Domain Name Cost?

$6.98 – $10.99+ Per Year

Along with your hosting, you’re also going to need a domain name to direct people to your website. 

Most standard dot-com domain names will cost somewhere between $6 – $12 for the first year.

At Namecheap, for example, you can snap up a domain for 12 months at a cost of $6.98 while domains.com currently charges $10.99 per year. 

It’s worth keeping in mind that other Top Level Domains (TLDs) such as .org, .net, and .info are usually priced differently.

Typical costs for common TLDs include: 

• .Net – $12.99 p/y
• .Org – $8.99 p/y
• .Store – $9.99 p/y
• .Blog – $6.99 p/y
• .Info – $3.99.

Premium Domains: What You Need to Know

If you search for a domain name and find that the asking price is significantly higher than the $6 – $12 quoted above, there’s a good chance that this is a premium domain. 

Premium domains are those domains that have been purchased by a company or individual domain investor to make a profit from them. These domain names are usually short, catchy, and easy to remember which makes them highly sought-after. Thus, a domain investor can charge hundreds, if not thousands of dollars, to part with it. 

How to Save Money on Hosting and Domains 

To help you keep your costs down, you may want to look for a web hosting provider that also doubles as a domain registrar. 

Hosting companies like Hostinger and Bluehost offer a free one-year domain registration when you buy a hosting plan from them. 

Though you’ll still have to pay for your domain after that first year is up, this can be a major help if you’re planning to launch your site on a shoestring budget. 

An additional benefit to this is that your domain will automatically be connected to your new website, saving you the time and hassle of configuring name servers manually. 

How Much Does WordPress Actually Cost? 

$0

Now that you’ve got your hosting and domain name set up, it’s time to install WordPress. 

The good news is that since WordPress is open-source software, it doesn’t cost you anything to use. 

You can download WordPress and install it on your hosting server free of charge. 

Even better, pretty much all major hosting companies come with what’s known as “one-click installation,” which is exactly what it sounds like: 

Execute one click on the WordPress button in your hosting dashboard, and this will launch an installation wizard which takes you through the entire process with no technical ability required on your part. 

Since this is part of your hosting package, it’s also free of charge. 

How Much Do WordPress Themes Cost? 

$0 – $175

On its own, the default WordPress theme is rather basic and uninspiring. This is why the majority of users will shop around to find a theme that suits the type of site they want to create and does a great job of presenting their content in a way that’s attractive to visitors. 

If your budget is tight, you’ll be pleased to know that there are countless free WordPress themes available to use. 

While these themes are typically great for starter sites, most will restrict access to certain features that you can only access if you pay for the upgraded, premium version of that theme. 

To give you an example, Astra is one of the most popular free themes out there and is packed full of quality templates and tools that any novice WordPress user can take advantage of to put together a fantastic website. 

However, many of the theme’s best templates, along with features such as custom background styling and the ability to create custom 404 pages are only available to users who pay between $44 and $175 for one of the Astra Pro plans. 

If you’re looking for a premium theme that’s a little more affordable, ThemeForest by Envato regularly has professional-grade WordPress themes available for between $30 – $60. 

How Much Does an SSL Certificate for WordPress Cost?

$0 – $117 Per Year

An SSL certificate is an essential component of any website as it provides extra security for your visitors, helps to inspire confidence among those visitors, and also appeals to Google’s algorithms which determine where your site ranks in search results. 

Some hosting and domain companies will offer a free SSL certificate. We also put together this guide on the best places to a free SSL certificate. 

However, free SSL certificates typically only offer a basic level of protection. 

For greater protection, you may want to invest in buying an SSL certificate. 

Companies such as the aforementioned Namecheap offer premium SSLs from as little as $5.99 per year to $117 per year. 

To help you understand which option is right for you, we put together this complete beginner’s guide to SSL certificates.

How Much Do WordPress Security Plugins Cost?

$0 – $499 per year

While an SSL certificate can help to protect your site, you’ll also benefit from installing a WordPress security plugin to ensure you have adequate protection against threats such as malware and brute force attacks.  

One of the best tools for this particular task is Sucuri which is available in both free and paid-for versions. 

The free version of Sucuri comes with solid WordPress hardening features, an excellent malware scanner, and tools to get your site back on track if you’ve already been hacked. 

However, it doesn’t offer a firewall. Nor does the free version include other 

useful features such as done-for-you malware removal, and DDoS (Domain Denial of Service) attack prevention.

To access those features, you’ll need to upgrade to one of Sucuri’s premium plans. 

These cost between $199 and $499 per year depending on your requirements. 

To compare prices with similar tools, take a look at the options included in our list of the best WordPress security plugins. 

How Much Does it Cost to Start an Online Store with WordPress?

If you’re planning to use your WordPress site to run an eCommerce business, you’ll need to use WooCommerce. This is a popular plugin that provides all of the basic essentials for an online store such as: 

• Product pages
• Shopping cats
• Checkout pages
• Flat Rate shipping.

The good news is that this is completely free, so building a basic online store won’t actually cost you anything. 

However, as you’ll read in our ultimate guide to WooCommerce, there are some additional features that you may need. These include: 

Shipping – From  $0 to $99

The basic WooCommerce plugin allows you to set flat shipping rates as well as offer free shipping or local pickup from a physical location.

However, if your shopping requirements are more complex than that (for example, you want to offer different shipping rates based on location, product size, or order volume), you’ll need to install one of the many WooCommerce shipping add-ons that are available. 

The WooCommerce Table Rate Shipping add-on allows you to set multiple shipping rates depending on certain conditions. 

This will cost you $99.

You can also access shipping add-ons that connect you directly to services such as USPS and FedEx so that you access the best domestic and international shipping rates for your sold items in real time. 

These plugins currently cost $47.40 each from the WooCommerce store. 

Payment Gateways – $0 – $30 p/m (plus 2.9% + $0.30c per transaction)

A critical part of any online store is the payment gateway which allows you to collect payments from your customers. 

Here, you have multiple options to choose from, the best of which include: 

WooCommerce payments – $0 

WooCommerce Payments is a free add-on that allows you to accept payments via credit and debit cards.

PayPal – $0 

This free add-on makes it easy to accept PayPal payments. Customers can also be directed to the PayPal website to pay with a credit or debit card. 

PayPal Pro – $30 p/m

If you want to offer customers the most seamless checkout process, directing them away from your site to the PayPal platform may not be ideal. 

In that case, you can upgrade to PayPal Pro which allows you to use PayPal to accept card payments directly from your website. 

Stripe – $0 

With Stripe for WooCommerce, you can accept payments via debit and credit cards as well as local payments.

Authorize.Net – $25 p/m

Authorize.Net gives you the ability to accept all major payment types for one-off purchases, pre-orders, and subscriptions.

All four of these platforms offer the same transaction fees of 2.9% plus $0.30c per transaction. 

How Much Does it Cost to Add Contact Forms to WordPress?

$0 – $179

Whether you’re launching an online store, a blog, or a business website, it’s important that visitors have a way to get in touch with you if they have comments, questions, or complaints. 

The easiest way to do this is to use one of the best WordPress contact form plugins to add a contact form and manage any messages you receive via that form. 

Of all the countless contact form tools out there, WPForms remains among the best of the best. 

For budget-conscious WordPress users, the free version of this plugin, WPForms Lite comes with an intuitive drag-and-drop builder that makes it easy to create basic contact forms and configure options such as what happens after users complete the form (for example, seeing a ‘Thank You’ message or being redirected to another page).

If you need more than that, prices for WPForms Pro run from $49.50 to $179.70 and include additional features such as: 

• Subscription forms
• Payment collection forms and integrations with payment services such as Stripe, Paypal, and Square
• File uploads
• Advanced form fields
• Multi-page forms
• Surveys 
• Newsletter forms
• Integration with top email newsletter plugins such as MailChimp and Sendinblue.

Calculating the Cost of Building a WordPress  Website: A Few Final Things to Consider 

We started this guide by noting that the cost to build a WordPress website can run anywhere from as low as $30.86 to as much as $1,115. 

If you read everything that followed, we hope you’ve seen how we came to those figures. If not, it really was as simple as calculating all the lowest possible prices we could find (including zero-cost options) and then doing the same thing again with the highest prices. 

The figure that you’re most likely to pay will largely depend on the type of site you’re creating. We should also state that these are the fundamentals. We have not included the cost of content development such as copywriting. However, as this can technically be done by the website owner, we’ve not factored this as a cost.

If you’re planning to launch a simple blog to share your thoughts with the world, for example, you could probably get away with spending $23.88 per year on hosting from Siteground and $6.98 for a dot-com domain name from Namecheap and then relying solely on free themes and plugins to build and manage your site. 

If you’re starting a website to promote your new business, you may want to invest in things like paid security plugins and SSL certificates which will up the cost to between $100 – $300. 

However, if you’re going all out to create an all-singing, all-dancing eCommerce store, you’ll not only want top-level security and eCommerce-optimized web hosting, but you’ll also want to consider shipping and payment gateways too. All told, this could easily push the cost of your WordPress website to the top end of the pricing scale. 
Not that it always has to be so expensive. For ideas on how you can save money when creating your website, check out our detailed guide to the best free WordPress plugins to use for your new site.