How Much Does a WordPress Website Cost to Make?

Wordpress is the platform on which a large proportion of the internet is built. It is estimated that a third of all websites run using WordPress software, which is staggering! If you want a website for your business, one of the best decisions you can make is to create it in WordPress. It is user friendly and the results look great. But how much does a WordPress website cost to make? Keep reading to find out.

The short answer is that a WordPress website can cost anything from nothing at all to thousands of pounds. It all depends on whether you want simple or complicated, to go it alone or employ a designer or developer. Also, do you want to self-host and have complete freedom to fiddle about with the site, or are you happy with a rigid template? We’ll explain more about these decisions and the other choices you make that help us answer the question ‘how much does a WordPress website cost to make?’.

What is WordPress?

Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. You might not even know what WordPress is, let alone have an idea of how you would like to use it. To put it simply, WordPress is a content management system and website creation tool. Essentially, it gives you a basic website template and allows you to stick words and pictures on there.

When you want to add a page or a blog post, you go to your WordPress dashboard and bring up a blank screen. Simply tap away at the keyboard and, hey presto, you can publish the results to the internet for everyone to see! But now we need to go a little deeper. Do you want to use WordPress.com or WordPress.org? This calls for a separate section!

WordPress.com or WordPress.org?

[et_bloom_locked optin_id=optin_2]There are several differences between WordPress.com and WordPress.org. Technically, you could create a website for free on WordPress.com. You simply open an account, pick a template and add up to 3GB of content. However, the free templates are known as themes in the WordPress world) are limited and on the free plan, you can’t use your custom domain name. Instead, you are stuck with something unprofessional looking like www.yoursite.wordpress.com.

For a simple hobby, this might be acceptable, but not for a professional business. You also have to carry adverts that WordPress takes all the revenue for. However, there are annual plans you can pay for. For £3 a month, you can add a custom domain (such as www.yoursite.com). £7 per month gives you a few added options when it comes to the look of the site, with a leap up to £20 a month before you get anywhere near having a site capable of acting as a professional representation of your company.

If you add on top of this the cost of employing someone professional to design your site and add your content, this can become pretty pricey.

The alternative is to use WordPress.org. The WordPress.org software is free to download, but you need to host the WordPress website yourself. This means that you hire space on the internet in which the website sits. You pay a company such as GoDaddy or Kualo a few pounds a month to rent that space.

Once you have hosting sorted and have downloaded the software, you can choose from thousands of free or premium themes and you (or a professional developer) can customise them to meet your exact needs. You can add plugins, which are bits of software that allow your site to do different, exciting things, and you can monetise the site if you wish, keeping all the ad revenue for yourself. Essentially, for a business that wants to look good online, WordPress.org is the way to go.

WordPress.org Costs

The first cost for WordPress.org is your hosting. As your site gains more daily views, you might have to move to a more powerful package, but there are plenty of good hosting deals for WordPress sites out there. Other expenses include:

The domain name
Website design
Content

Domain names vary in price considerably. They can cost anything from £1 to thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of pounds for the most competitive terms. Simply type your preferred URL into any domain seller’s website and it will give you a price. If that seems prohibitive, it will offer you some similar, less costly, alternatives. In general, .co.uk addresses cost less than .com names.

If you want your WordPress site to shine and help sell your business, it is a good idea to hire a professional to set it up. Once they have got you up and running, you can then decide whether you are confident enough to keep it updated yourself or if you need to retain their services.

In addition, you will need content for your website. To be competitive, this should be SEO-focused and written especially to target your desired audience. This takes skill and you should consider enlisting a professional to help. It is not good enough simply to write well; you also need to write in a way that allows Google and other
search engines to rank your copy as highly as possible.