How much does a website made in WordPress cost – .com

When someone wants a website and starts asking for quotes, the most likely thing is that they end up hallucinating due to the disparity in prices. How much does a website cost?

How much should I pay, how much should I collect

One of the questions I get most often comes in two forms. On the one hand, there are small agencies and freelance developers who ask me “How Much Should You Charge to Build a WordPress Website?”. On the other hand, many clients, overwhelmed by the crowd and disparity in budgets, ask me “How much should I pay to have a website built on WordPress?”.

Those of you who know me will already know the answer. Depends. I myself have made WordPress-based websites ranging from €500 to €50,000. But obviously they have nothing to do with each other. So I’m going to try to give some guidelines to help both agencies and clients, so they know what they can ask for or should pay.

In addition, in most cases the client has a lower budget than what he wants. Surely you have already noticed it on more than one occasion. In fact, the client usually has a budget that is 2 or 3 times less than what he wants to achieve.

Obviously I am not one to say at what price things should be charged, everyone has their pricing strategy and quality levels. I will simply give you some numbers based on my experience and the projects I have directed or collaborated on. I hope to be helpful 🙂

The value you bring

The first factor to take into account is the value you are contributing (or receiving). Let’s notice that I’m talking about worth, and not the hours you dedicate to it. Of course you have to know how many hours you spend on each project, but you shouldn’t base your budget on it.

Imagine the case of a client who comes and asks you for a website with various features, which requires WordPress, several plugins and some code modification. And that in total you spend 100 hours at a certain price that you consider fair.

What would happen if the next day another client asked you for exactly the same thing? Since you already have experience, it no longer takes 100 hours, but 50. What happens now? Do you charge half of the other client, with the consequent damage to the first one? Or do you charge the same to be more “fair”, even if that implies that you are charging twice the price for the hours?

Sometimes it is not so obvious, but it is clear that as an agency or professional you will improve your development speed and efficiency. So what should you do? Charging cheaper because you go faster is as inconsistent as charging the same for half the work.

So it is best to think in value key. What value are you bringing to the customer? And put the price based on that. Do you think that Apple takes into account the manufacturing costs of an iPad to calculate the price of each unit? Of course you know about them, but you don’t use them to calculate the sales price. That is calculated from other demographic and socioeconomic data.

The long term relationship

On the other hand, we have the type of relationship that exists with the client. A client who only wants a website and that’s it is not the same as someone who also wants to contract its maintenanceor even online marketing services for it.

Be very careful here because I am not talking about those clients who promise you that “if this goes well, many more projects will come”. Normally these promises are carried away by the wind, especially in cases in which the client assures you every two by three. I’m talking about clients who hire these entrance services, or even current clients who have been working with you for a long time.

In certain cases in which the client has contracted a high-priced service, it should even be considered to include a renewal of the website from time to time in that price. So, when calculating the price, we must take this variable into account.

Start with low prices

Another key point to keep in mind is how busy you are. Are you not working on any other projects, or do you have 4 more projects in parallel? Do you have a client waiting list or do you not know what you are going to work on as soon as you finish this?

When someone starts out in this world, they tend to grab on to a straw. Especially if you have financial responsibilities to face. And the easiest thing is to lower prices, thinking that this way it will be easier to get more customers.

Big mistake.

Although it may seem like a lie, you should know that on average, only 14% of buyers are inclined towards one product or another just because of the price. Other factors such as quality, security and trust are far above the simple price.

If it were not so, we would all have a KYA or a TATA. But we buy Ford, Seat, Opel or BMW. Why don’t we buy the cheapest? The KYAs take you the same way, right? Well, we don’t do it precisely because we value other attributes above price.

Type of provider (freelancer VS agency)

Usually (though not always) If you ask for several estimates, you will see that freelancers, that is, lifelong self-employed workers, are usually cheaper than agencies.

This is usually the case because agencies normally have more fixed and administrative expenses that affect their prices. On the other hand, it is easier for freelancers to settle for less, which is why we mentioned before, something that some agencies cannot afford.

On the other hand, agencies usually have a designer and a programmer, sometimes even a project manager, so it should be more certain that deadlines are met, even if they are a little longer. Or at least that is what the end customer perceivesthat sometimes you may have the feeling that a freelancer can “disappear” at any time.

This, which seems to be irrelevant to the prices, is actually totally related. A client pays an “agency” price because he wants more stability, security, solvency, etc. Although that may not be true, it is what he perceives. He prefers to pay more in exchange for all that.

On the other hand, there are those who prefer to work with a single person who takes the project from start to finish, with whom they can talk about prices, design, programming and marketing, without having to deal with 4 different people.

Types of client (easy vs difficult)

Other factors that you must take into account when calculating a budget for a client is, obviously, the type of client he is and his circumstances.

For example, the client may have various contact persons. In other words, she is not a single person, but you have to talk to two or three. Maybe the general manager, the marketing manager and the product manager.

Sometimes there is only one interlocutor, but he or she does not have decision-making power, but rather is a intermediate control he should talk to his boss, his boss’s boss, or even a committee (horror!). In those cases you should also consider the time and laps that you will have to give.

The client who does not know what he wants, but who does not like any proposal is also dangerous. You may find yourself in the situation where you have already put in all the hours you planned to put in, and not a single design proposal has yet been approved.

Many times the client is coherent and practical, but you can also get a very perfectionist customer who is willing to exchange 25 emails for every tiny detail. This should also be considered within your possibilities. And sometimes not only emails, but also calls or even meetings (danger!). In this case, it is usual to increase the overall price by 10% to 20%. After all, if someone wants perfectionism, he must pay for that quality.

Website Type

Finally let’s talk about the type of web. To ask “How much is a website worth?” It’s the same as asking “How much is a car worth?”. It depends on the car. Let’s try to do a little sorting.

An option that makes a lot of difference is to make a website from a theme or existing template, or make it right from the start.

In the case of using a theme, the entire process and the time dedicated to the project are greatly simplified. But we must be very careful because the themes are what they are, and in most cases the client must adapt the content to what is there. It is true that there are themes with design flexibility, but Murphy’s law says that the client will want to change something that this theme does not allow to modify. And that’s when you’ll discover that modifying those things in a pre-built theme is a pain in the ass of code and time.

On the other hand, there is the possibility of making a theme from scratch. In other words, design from scratch with Photoshop, then layout and finally integrate it with WordPress PHP. That requires a lot more time, and consequently, a bigger budget.

Another factor to take into account is what type of website we want. A blog is not the same as a corporate website, an eCommerce or even a website with an intranet for employees or clients. These parameters can greatly increase the basic budget.

So… how much does a website cost?

Alright, time to get wet. Considering all the theory that I have just released, we could say that some approximate numbers would be these:

A Basic corporate website based on a predesigned themewithout design modifications (ie basically make it look like the “demo”, but with the client content) made by a freelancer is under €1,000, and if it is made by an agency under €2,000.
A basic corporate website starting from scratchwith personalized design made by a freelance it should be between €3,000 and €5,000, and if it is made by an agency between €5,000 and €10,000.
A website with extra functionalities, (Intranets, directories, purchase and sale systems and non-standard functionalities) that implies applying certain plugins or even modifying them, would range between €5,000 and €10,000 for freelancers and €10,000 to €20,000 for agencies.
A website with custom development, (Intranets, directories, buying and selling systems and other functionalities) that implies to create plugins, would range between €10,000 and €15,000 for freelancers and €20,000 to €30,000 for agencies.
The big projects that use WordPress purely as a framework to build a completely custom project, be it a website, an application, an API or any other unique and singular information management system, can move in a range of €30,000 to €100,000.

Once again, these are just approximate figuresWell, depending on everything we have talked about at the beginning of the post, these prices may increase or decrease.

Also take into account that in this case I am talking about the market of WordPress professionals. Obviously you can find someone who “sets up a WordPress” for €300 with one in one morning. But here I am talking about freelancers and agencies specializing in WordPresswho know and work with the best themes and frameworks (such as Genesis, underscores, Hybrid, roots or bones, among others), who know the best and worst…