Ask five agencies to quote the same WordPress site and the numbers will not be within a factor of ten of each other. One will say $600, one will say $18,000, and neither of them is lying. They are quoting different jobs and calling both of them “a website”.
This is what actually drives the number, what the bands really buy, and the costs that are usually left out of the quote and arrive later anyway.
The bands, and what each one is really buying
Ignore the adjectives in proposals and look at what is physically being done to produce the site. There are only about four answers.
- Under a few hundred dollars — a theme, filled in. A commercial theme is installed, its demo content is replaced with yours, and the logo goes in the corner. This is a real service and for some businesses it is the correct purchase. What you are buying is the theme author’s work, not the builder’s.
- Roughly $900 to $4,000 — a built site. Pages laid out to your content rather than to a demo’s, a theme configured or built rather than accepted, forms that work, performance and structure attended to. Most small business sites that are actually worth having live here.
- Roughly $4,000 to $15,000 — a site with systems in it. A store with real product logic, memberships, bookings, an integration with a CRM or an ERP, a multilingual build, or a design produced specifically for you rather than adapted. The cost is in the parts that are not pages.
- Above that — a site with a team behind it. Discovery, a designer, a project manager, QA, staged releases. Sometimes genuinely required. Frequently the same site as the band above with more people in the meetings.
Our own floors are published rather than quoted on request: WordPress development from $900, WooCommerce development from $1,200, Figma to WordPress from $450. The full list is on the pricing page. Those are floors, not estimates — the audit turns a floor into one fixed number before anything starts.
What actually moves the price
Not the page count, which is what most people expect to be asked. Twelve pages that share one layout cost barely more than eight. Four pages that each behave differently cost more than twenty that do not.
What moves it, in roughly the order it moves it:
- Number of distinct layouts. Every layout is designed, built, made responsive and tested once. Repeating one is nearly free. This is the single largest lever you control.
- Whether anything has to talk to another system. A form that emails you is trivial. A form that creates a record in a CRM, checks stock, or triggers a payment is a different category of work, because it has to be built and it has to keep working when the other system changes.
- Whether the design already exists. A finished Figma file removes the design phase entirely. No design at all means someone has to make one, and design revisions are where projects slip.
- Whether the content exists. Sites stall on copy far more often than on code. If the text is written and the photographs are taken, the build is short. If it is not, the project waits, and waiting costs money on a day-rate arrangement.
- Whether anything is being migrated. Moving an existing site, its URLs and its history is a job in itself — migration from $299 — and it is frequently forgotten in a rebuild quote until the week before launch.
Why the same brief gets a $600 quote and an $18,000 quote
Because the brief did not say who does the parts nobody enjoys.
The cheap quote is usually honest about being a theme install and is priced accordingly. Where it goes wrong is when it is priced as a theme install and described as a custom build. The gap surfaces at exactly the same points every time: the design cannot be changed where you want it changed, because it belongs to the theme; the site is fast in the demo and slow with your images in it; and the person who built it does not have the depth to fix a plugin conflict, so the answer to any problem after launch is another plugin.
The expensive quote is usually honest too. It includes people the cheap one does not have — a designer, someone doing QA, someone answering the phone in your timezone — and processes the cheap one does not run. Whether that is worth four times the money depends entirely on whether your project has the risk those people are there to absorb.
The useful question is not “why is this one cheaper”. It is “what will you do that the other quote will not, and what happens if I do not buy it”. A supplier who cannot answer that in plain sentences is guessing.
The costs that are not in the quote
These are not hidden fees. They are real running costs that arrive whoever builds the site, and a quote that never mentions them is not cheaper — it is less complete.
- Hosting. A few dollars a month at the bottom, considerably more for managed WordPress hosting. Worth spending on if the site earns money, and one of the cheapest things on this list to get wrong.
- The domain. Small, annual, and the one bill that takes the site off the internet if it lapses. Keep it in your own account, not your agency’s.
- Premium plugin licences. Usually annual, usually per site. A form builder, a booking system and a page builder together can run to a few hundred dollars a year. Ask which licences the build depends on before signing, because they renew forever.
- Maintenance. Updates, backups, monitoring, and somebody to call. Care plans start at $299 a month. This is the line most often declined and most often regretted — the cost of not having it is a hacked or broken site at the worst possible moment.
- Changes after launch. Every site needs them. Agree how they are billed before you need one, not during the first request.
Fixed price or hourly
Fixed price when the scope can be written down. Hourly when it genuinely cannot.
The argument for hourly is honest in one situation: exploratory work where nobody knows what is wrong yet. The argument against it for a defined build is that it puts the entire risk of the estimate on you. If it takes twice as long as expected, you pay twice, and you have no way to tell whether that was the job’s fault or the builder’s.
We quote one fixed number, after the audit, before any work starts, and we hold it. That transfers the estimating risk to us, which is where it belongs — we are the ones who claimed to know how long it would take. Ongoing capacity is the exception: a dedicated developer is a monthly arrangement from $2,400, because the work is continuous rather than a defined project.
Where a cheap site actually costs you
Not in the build. In the two years afterwards.
The pattern is consistent enough to describe in advance. Twenty-odd plugins, several installed to solve a problem another plugin created. A page builder holding the layout together, so the content cannot be edited without breaking something. No staging site, so every change is made live. Nobody who knows the site is available, because the person who built it moved on.
The visible symptom is usually speed or a failed update, and the bill to fix it lands as speed optimization from $349, or a rebuild that costs more than the original build did. This is most of the work we get asked to do, and it is worth knowing that the saving at the start is often borrowed rather than made.
What this cannot fix
- A budget below the work is not a negotiation, it is a different project. If the money available does not cover what was described, the honest answer is to cut scope deliberately rather than to build the same thing worse. We will say which parts to drop.
- A new site does not create demand. If nobody is looking for what you sell, a better site converts a larger share of nobody. That is worth knowing before spending, not after.
- We do not write your copy or take your photographs. Both materially affect what the site is worth, and both are yours. A build waiting on content is a build that costs more than it needed to.
- We only work on WordPress. If the right answer for your business is Shopify, a booking platform, or no website at all, we will say so and we will not quote for it.
Questions we get asked
How much does a WordPress website cost in 2026?
A theme filled in with your content sits in the low hundreds. A properly built small business site runs from around $900 to $4,000 depending on how many distinct layouts it needs and whether anything has to integrate with another system. Stores, memberships and bespoke functionality run from roughly $4,000 upwards. Our own floors are published — development from $900, WooCommerce from $1,200 — and the audit turns the floor into one fixed number before work starts.
Is WordPress cheaper than Wix or Squarespace?
Cheaper to start on the hosted platforms, cheaper to own on WordPress over several years, and the crossover comes sooner than most people expect. The real difference is not price. On Wix or Squarespace you rent the platform and cannot leave with the site; on WordPress you own the files and the database and can move hosts whenever you like. Choose on that, then on the monthly cost.
Why is one quote $600 and another $6,000 for the same brief?
They are almost always different jobs. The cheap one is usually a commercial theme configured with your content, which is a legitimate service when it is described as one. The expensive one includes design, integration work, testing and people to call afterwards. Ask both suppliers the same question — what will you do that the other will not, and what happens if I do not buy it — and the difference stops being mysterious.
What are the ongoing costs of a WordPress site?
Hosting, the domain, any premium plugin licences the build depends on, and maintenance. The first three are usually modest. Maintenance is the one people decline, and it covers updates, backups, monitoring and someone to call — care plans start at $299 a month. Budget for changes after launch too; every site needs them and agreeing how they are billed in advance avoids an awkward first conversation.
How long does a WordPress site take to build?
A straightforward brochure site is a few weeks of working time. Stores and integration work run longer. The variable that decides it is almost never the code — it is whether your content is ready. Projects that stall stall on copy and photography, so having those finished before the build starts is the cheapest scheduling decision available to you.
Can you quote my project without a call?
Yes — that is the whole arrangement. Send what you have through the contact form: the current URL if there is one, what the site needs to do, and a rough budget if you have one. Within two business days you get a written reply with what we would build, what we would leave out, and one fixed price in USD. No call, and no follow-up sequence if you decide against it.