“How much does a website cost” is the first question almost every client asks, and it is the hardest to answer in one line, because a five-page brochure site and a fifty-product store are both “a WordPress website” and the work behind them is nothing alike. What follows is how I actually price projects, with the ranges I quote and the reasons one job costs three times another.
What are you actually paying for?
Not pages. You are paying for unique page templates and the decisions inside them. A site with fifteen service pages that all share one layout is close in cost to a site with three. Five things move the number more than anything else:
- Templates, not pages. How many genuinely different layouts the site needs.
- Design. Whether you bring a design, or it is created from scratch as part of the build.
- Content. Placing text and images you supply is quick. Writing the copy is a separate job.
- Migration. Moving and cleaning up an existing site’s content, and mapping every old URL so rankings survive.
- Integrations. A booking system, a CRM, payments, a membership area, custom fields. Each one adds real time.
Timeline matters too. A genuine rush costs more; a relaxed deadline can cost a little less.
How much does a WordPress website cost by project type?
These are the ranges I quote, assuming you supply the content and a rough idea of the design:
- Small business site: $150 to $400. A few pages, fast launch, room to grow.
- Landing page: $150 to $450. One conversion-focused page, built to be A/B tested.
- Bricks or Elementor marketing site: $200 to $600. Several templates, lean and fast, easy to edit after handoff.
- Local business site: $250 to $700. Google Business Profile, LocalBusiness schema, service-area pages.
- Website redesign: $400 to $1,500. New design, same content, every URL mapped and 301-redirected.
- Custom WordPress theme: $500 to $1,800. Hand-coded, no builder, for raw performance.
- WooCommerce store: $600 to $2,500 and up. Catalogue structure, checkout, payment gateways, abandoned-cart recovery.
Full detail, plus the maintenance and hosting plans, is on the pricing page.
Should you pay per hour or a flat price?
Both work. My rate is $18 an hour, tracked through Upwork. For anything with a clear scope I quote a single flat price after a short call, so the number is fixed before work starts. Hourly suits open-ended work, like an audit or a “fix whatever is broken” pass. Either way the money sits in Upwork escrow and you release it as each milestone is delivered, so neither side is exposed.
Does the page builder change the price?
Less than people expect. Bricks and Elementor builds land in a similar range. Divi is comparable. A custom theme costs more because hand-coding is slower, but it is the lightest result. The scope and the design drive the price far more than the tool.
One builder-specific cost: Elementor’s pro widgets and theme builder need either an Elementor Pro licence or the Crocoblock plugin set. I provide a licence key for your site and you choose which; it renews yearly. Bricks includes its equivalent.
Is a “free” website ever really free?
It can be, with a trade. I give the build away in exchange for a maintenance commitment: $99 a month for eight months, or $115 a month for six months with managed hosting bundled in. You pay only the monthly fee, there is no separate build charge, and after the initial term it continues month to month and you can leave with 30 days’ notice. It suits businesses that would be paying for maintenance anyway and would rather spread the build cost than write one cheque.
What about the running costs?
Independent of the build: hosting is roughly $5 to $30 a month for a small site, a domain is about $12 a year, and some builds carry a yearly Elementor Pro or Crocoblock licence. Maintenance is optional and starts at $99 a month.
