A website has the face value for any business.
For a business to succeed and grow an online presence is a mandatory aspect that is fulfilled by a website. Businesses often struggle to build a website that aligns with their business objectives yet fall into their budget.
This issue is well resolved by wordpress development company, which has gained immense popularity in the development world due to its flexibility in website building functionalities.
WordPress is a popular option for not just flexibility but also offers a comprehensive Content Management System (CMS) that serves the need of multiple use cases.
Despite having amazing and uncountable benefits, there is always a concern which stays with the WordPress website development.
Do you wonder what it is?
COST!
Yes, cost is the factor that pollutes the expansion plan for business, and WordPress is no exception to it.
Although WordPress as a platform with functionalities and features is free of cost, there are other factors that incur some additional costs in the site development.
To help you glean insights and gain a clear understanding of WordPress website pricing, we have brought you this guide.
Just scroll further to read ahead…
WordPress.org and WordPress.com
Not many of us know that WordPress has 2 different platforms WordPress.org and WordPress.com
WordPress.org is a self-hosted version of WordPress enabling users to host their websites with a chosen hosting provider. Its hosting service costs $1.99–$29.99/month based on the plan.
On the other hand, WordPress.com site is hosted by Automatic, and businesses can set up a website with the free plan costs between $5-63/month.
WordPress Web Hosting
To build a website, hosting and domain name are the foundation steps to build a fully-functional WordPress website.
There are multiple web hosting options and plans available with WordPress, such as:
Shared Hosting
Indeed, this server hosting is economical and best for small businesses or personal blogging websites.
In this server users share the server and its resources, and due to this functionality its hosting plans cost $1.99–$3.99/month.
This server comes with an auto-installer to set up WordPress or other CMS easily. Also, it has a built-in malware scanner and web application firewall to protect from cyber attack.
Managed WordPress Hosting
In this server, there is an easy setup process to create a WordPress site with pre-installed performance-optimisation plugins.
It offers hosting plans that cost $2.99–$8.99/month with useful features like a staging tool and auto-updates ensuring seamless maintenance.
VPS (Virtual Private Server) Hosting
This hosting server splits one physical server into multiple virtual servers.
This custom server configuration is good for creating WordPress websites and gives control over the server giving root access and flexibility to set up the server based on the demand.
The cost plan for Hostinger’s VPS web hosting plans range from $6.49 to $19.99/month.
Cloud Hosting
This server uses a cluster of servers that helps the website to balance the load and minimise downtime. This helps the businesses to continue their operations even if one server goes down, another will continue to run the site.
This server has integrated infrastructure hence the cloud hosting is expensive compared to other hosting types and costs between $8.99–$29.99/month.
It is an ideal option for the websites that experience high-traffic.
WordPress Domain Name
To build a website a domain name is required which acts as an identity of your business.
A custom domain name is somewhat based on the chosen TLD (top-level domain), whereas some of the most common gTLDs (general top-level domains) are .com, .net, and .org domain name extensions.
The most popular gTLD is .com usually costs $9.99/year at Hostinger and with .net, costs $12.99/year
On the other hand, there are substantially reduced cost domain name options also available such as .live, .tech, .online, and .xyz cost $0.99.
There is one more option available: country-code top-level domain (ccTLD). As the name suggests, these extensions are assigned for specific countries worldwide, such as the .us TLD for the United States, .in for India, and the .se domain for Sweden. Such domain names are popular for localization, and costs between $5.50-49.99/year.
With the advancement of technology, now ai.domain is also getting popular which costs around $129.99/year, and wordpress development company implying it sacrosanct.
WordPress Maintenance and Security
It goes without saying security of a website is paramount and cannot be ignored at any given point.
On the other hand, to optimise website performance and availability, regular maintenance is not a choice, but a mandated fact that needs to be taken care of.
However, when it comes to security and maintenance of a WordPress website there is a cost involved, which can be impacted depending upon multiple factors, such as hosting types and domain names to website software and applications, and the size of WordPress website.
For instance, the maintenance cost for a small website would cost $5-25 monthly, professional blogging site would cost $25-75 monthly, large business website would cost $35-300 monthly, small-to-medium size eCommerce website would cost $150-1500 monthly, whereas the large enterprise level website maintenance may cost $1500 or beyond monthly.
WordPress Themes and Plugins
A website is not just about its offerings, but the way it is represented to the users. In this realm, a theme works as the foundation stone of impressive website design.
WordPress offers premium and free versions of themes and plugins that include intricacy into the website design.
WordPress Themes
There is a huge glut of themes available with WordPress spanning across free to paid.
The cost bracket of paid themes generally fall between $2-200/year or can be accessed for lifetime at the cost of $1,000.
WordPress Plugins
TBH, WordPress is popular for plugins, which can be described as the small software that can be added into a website to experience new features and functionalities within existing WordPress features without moving around coding snippets.
WordPress offers three types of plugins:
- Free plugins are usually open-source and come with no upfront or add-on-costs.
- Freemium plugins allow users to use the basic features for free and to access the high-end features premium plan has to be purchased.
- Premium plugins are the paid-only option with no free version, and offer extended features such as- support, functionalities and regular updates.
The cost bracket of premium plugins range between $2-1,000/year and can come with monthly or one-time fee options as well.
Custom Website
As the name suggests, a custom WordPress website is all about tailoring the features and functionalities of a website to fit your business needs.
With this approach it becomes easier for the businesses to get a complete control on the website design and functionality using custom themes and scripts.
To make a custom WordPress website requires advanced technical expertise and cost around $3500 and above.
eCommerce Website
Well, not many of us know that WordPress doesn’t have built-in eCommerce functionalities.
There is a popular WordPress plugin WooCommerce which allows businesses to add eCommerce functionality to their website.
It costs around $673 + $41 for the monthly recurring costs.
Although, this cost can be reduced by selecting a few products and user traffic to start with, and this can even be reduced to $3.99/month.
It is very simple to install WooCommerce from the admin dashboard, wherein it can be integrated seamlessly with multiple payment gateway options.
Small Business Website
Small businesses also need a website to portray their offerings and reach out to a larger audience base.
This is where a WordPress website for small business comes into play and enables businesses to explore opportunities to beat the competition blues.
It costs around $403 on upfront costs with recurring monthly payments costing $27/monthly.
WordPress Costs for a Blog
Blogging is the new charming job opportunity that has grabbed the attention of passionate writers across the globe.
To convert writing passion into a professional online space, WordPress comes for help.
The estimated upfront cost of a WordPress blog is $173 with a requirement of paying annual or monthly costs in advance.
Furthermore, there is a recurring monthly cost which is $12; however, the total cost can be reduced to minimal by installing free plugins and themes.
Final Thoughts
There is not just one single factor but multiple aspects that combine and impact the costing bracket of WordPress website.
It thoroughly depends on a specific need of a business about different needs and requirements to fulfil their business goals.
In accordance with this, businesses should hire wordpress developer and select the right plan to proceed ahead and ensure to scale their marketing strategy.