While WordPress itself is free, you will need a web hosting account and a domain name to use it on a live website. These will cost you money.
You can get started by signing up for a shared hosting account. After that, you can use a free WordPress theme with essential free plugins to get started. This would cost you roughly around $150/year.
As your website grows, you will need more features, tools, and services to better serve your users. Some of these services and tools will cost additional money. Your goal will be to keep the costs down while offering the best experience for your users.
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 the 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, miltonmarketing.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 a low budget.
First, you will need a domain name and web hosting.
A domain name typically costs $10.00 to $20.00 / year, and web hosting normally costs $10.00 / month. Anything cheaper and your getting skimped on service somehow. (ie: excessive load on the server (due to hosting too many websites on the same server aka shared hosting.) causing website delays or complete inability to render causing hours or more of downtime. Use https://tools.pingdom.com/ or https://gtmetrix.com/ to test your websites loading speeds.)
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