WordPress is free. That is the single most expensive thing about it.
The software costs nothing, so people choose it expecting a cheap website, then spend the next three years paying for the parts that are not free: the hosting, the plugin licences, the developer who fixes it when an update breaks something.
This article separates what you actually pay for, what makes those numbers move, and the one cost almost nobody puts in the budget.
What does a WordPress site cost?
There is no single figure, because a WordPress website is five separate purchases wearing one name. Split them and the number stops being mysterious.
- Hosting and a domain, paid yearly, and the cheapest option is rarely the cheapest outcome.
- A theme, free or a one-off purchase, which decides how the site looks.
- Plugins, which is where recurring costs quietly accumulate.
- The build, a one-off, and the part that varies most between quotes.
- Maintenance, ongoing, and the line people leave out until something breaks.
The five bills, side by side
Before any figures, the shape matters. Two of these are one-off and three recur every year for as long as the site exists.
| Cost | One-off or recurring | What decides it |
|---|---|---|
| Domain | Recurring, yearly | The extension. Little else moves it. |
| Hosting | Recurring | Traffic, and whether you want somebody answering the phone when it goes down. |
| Theme | Usually one-off | Ready-made or built for you. A bought theme is cheaper and always a compromise somewhere. |
| Plugins | Mostly recurring | How much the site has to do. This is the line that surprises people. |
| The build | One-off | Content, migration, integrations, and how much is genuinely custom. |
| Maintenance | Recurring | Whether anyone is responsible for updates, backups and security. |
Why free is the expensive part
A WordPress site with no plugins does very little. A WordPress site that takes bookings, captures leads properly, runs a shop, backs itself up and loads quickly has a stack of them, and most serious plugins are sold as annual licences.
Individually each one looks trivial. Together, renewing every year, they are often the largest recurring cost of the site, and they are easy to lose track of because they renew on different dates to different companies.
The discipline worth applying is the same one we apply to automation: install what the site actually needs and nothing else. Every plugin is another thing that can break, another thing to update, and another renewal nobody remembers agreeing to.
What moves the build cost
This is the number that varies most between quotes, and usually because two quotes are not describing the same job. These are the things that genuinely change it.
- Who writes the content. The single biggest hidden cost. A site cannot launch without words, and "we will send you the copy" is the most common reason a build stalls for months.
- Whether anything is being migrated. Moving an old site with years of posts, and keeping the URLs so search rankings survive, is real work.
- How much is custom. A ready-made theme configured well is cheap. A design built to your brand is not, and the honest question is whether the difference will earn its keep.
- What it connects to. A site that feeds your CRM, your calendar and your accounting package is a different job from one that emails a form submission. That is workflow automation work sitting on top of a website.
- Who has to run it afterwards. If your team will edit it, that needs building for and training on.
The cost nobody budgets for
WordPress powers a very large share of the web, which makes it the most attractive target on the internet for automated attacks. Its plugins are written by thousands of different people, and they update constantly.
A site nobody maintains does not degrade gracefully. It sits fine for a year and then something breaks, or worse, it is quietly compromised and you find out when your host suspends it or Google flags it.
Budget for updates, backups and someone paying attention, or accept that you are running the site until it fails. Our ongoing maintenance service exists for the same reason we monitor automations: the failure that costs money is the silent one.
When WordPress is the wrong tool
WordPress is a genuinely good answer for a content site: pages, a blog, a contact form, things that need editing by a person who is not technical. If that is what you need, buy it and stop reading.
It is the wrong shape when the thing you are describing is an application. If it has users with accounts, a workflow with states, or logic that has to be right rather than approximately right, you will spend the project fighting the platform and pay more than a purpose-built app would have cost.
That is what AI app development is for, and it is a different question with a different answer. We would rather tell you which one you are asking than sell you the one we happen to be discussing.
What we charge
We quote per project after a free call, for the same reason we do on every other cost question: two businesses asking for the same website can need very different amounts of work depending on content, migration and what it has to connect to.
What we will always do is separate the build from the running costs, so you can see which numbers are ours and which are the platform's. If a quote you have received does not do that, ask it to.
If the question behind this one is really about automating what happens after somebody fills in the form, what AI automation costs breaks that down the same way. More cost and timeline answers sit on the answers page.
Common questions
Is WordPress really free?
The software is, and always has been. Everything around it is not: hosting, a domain, most decent themes, and the plugins that give the site the features you actually wanted. Free describes the licence, not the project.
Can I just buy a theme and do it myself?
Yes, and for a simple brochure site that is often the right answer. It stops being the right answer when the site has to do a job, such as taking bookings, syncing to a CRM or handling payments, because that is where the plugin stack and the maintenance burden start compounding.
Why do quotes for the same site vary so much?
Usually because they are not quoting the same thing. One includes content, migration, training and a year of updates; another is a theme installed on your hosting. Ask any quote to separate the build from the running costs and the difference usually explains itself.
What are the ongoing costs after launch?
Hosting, the domain, any paid plugin licences, and maintenance. The first three are predictable. The fourth is the one people skip, and it is the reason most abandoned WordPress sites end up broken or compromised rather than simply old.
Do you build WordPress sites?
We do, but we would rather tell you honestly whether you need one. If the thing you are describing is really an application, WordPress is the wrong shape for it and we would build it properly instead. If it is a content site, WordPress is a sensible choice and we will say so.
If you are weighing WordPress against something custom, what WordPress does well is worth reading alongside this, and AI app development covers the other side of the decision.
