How much does a WordPress website cost?

An ultimate guide to website design costs from a team with over 20 years of experience.

A website shouldn’t be considered an expense. It’s an investment in your business, and more often than not it’s the first interaction customers have with your brand.

So how much should you invest in a WordPress website?

WordPress Website Costs for 2024

It’s a a question we get asked a lot and it really depends on what you need and what you want it to do. Loaded custom builds every website we work on. We give you exactly what you’re after and because we have had so much website experience over 20 years, we’re pretty good an understanding how long things take to build.

For the uninitiated, we often say that building websites is a lot like building a house. Everyone has different expectations and needs. Some people want 3 bedrooms, some want 5. You may want a house that looks like your neighbours, or you might want an architectural masterpiece with an immediate wow factor. Similarly, with a website, you may need a single page site to promote your bricks and mortar business, or a fully customised enterprise solution. All these things are dictate the overall price of a website.

As a guide to website costs, we can segment the types of websites we build into this below categories.

Small WordPress Websites

A small, either static or basic CMS install would typically would range between $5,000 – $10,000 +

Medium sized conversion focussed WordPress website

The most common website Loaded would build would be a medium sized site, with WordPress CMS and typical integrations like forms, email marketing, social media etc. These websites range between $15,000 – $25,000 +

eCommerce website costs

An e-commerce site requires functionality such as integration with payment gateways, product databases and add-to-cart features which increases your design cost. You’ll likely need to add on extra marketing efforts like shipping integration, CRM integration, email marketing solutions and cross selling functionality.

Typically eCommerce websites would range between $15,000 – $35,000 +

Custom WordPress Website Design

These are large websites for bigger enterprises that make use of multiple integrations with your business’ backend systems, custom plugins and enhanced functionality such as client portals, CRMs, include API feeds from third parties and more.

Typically a custom enterprise site would be above $40,000 +

WordPress Website Pricing Factors

Even if you know the type of website you want, the design and build costs can vary widely. Here are some other factors that can drive up your website cost.

Number of Page Templates

It’s actually not the number of pages within a website that dictates a higher price, but moreso how many page designs there are. If you’re wanting your website to appear similar for all pages, this can be rolled out quite quickly. Conversely, if every page needs to be designed differently and it includes lots of different elements, the design and build time can be significantly more.

Integrations & custom plugins

A lot of time can be spent integrating and including third party applications, whether it’s a data feed in or a CRM integration out. API development and connection plays an important role to the success of any custom project. Similarly custom plugins or applications on a website can be lengthier to develop depending on your requirements.

Content

The type of content for your site can change the costs of website build. A lot of the time, the type of content dictates the page templates. For example, does it need to be filtered or categorised. Does it need pictorial context? If it’s already written and ready to go that’s a great start to reducing costs. If you’re in need of copy writing, Loaded can expertly assist in specific and considered content for not only the end user but for optimisation for Google. Typically web copy writing can range from $2,000 for smaller sites to $10,000 + for larger more detailed sites.

Photography

One area that can breathe significant life to a website is photography. Often new websites need dedicated images fit for purpose. Dedicated photography for a website can range from $1,500 to $3,000 + depending on the number of shot, locations needed and difficulty of shots. Another great option is to source stock photography, which offers a cost effective way to getting high quality images from approximately $15 per image.

Let’s talk about your next WordPress project

Things we avoid when developing a WordPress website

Over the years we’ve had a lot of clients coming to us to help with their existing sites and wanting new ones. One of the biggest reasons we constantly see are sites using pre-existing ‘bought’ templates and themes that have quickly become problematic, slow, out of date and ranking poorly.

It’s easy to fall into to the trap of buying a theme online and populating it with your own content. We understand and sometimes this fits the purpose perfectly. However, with it comes a lot of factors that become problematic. Most pre-built themes come with page builder frameworks that initially offer endless possibilities, but in reality are super heavy and cumbersome to use. They become out of date, very slow and painful for agencies and developers to work with almost immediately. Similarly, themes are filled with excessive numbers of plugins that can become exploited and vulnerable over time.

Thats why we never recommend using a pre-built theme.

But, thats why we love WordPress

WordPress allows us to build cost-effective flexible, scalable and light weight websites without pre-built themes. We love that it can be finely tuned, tinkered with and we can model it around your own business objectives and requirements.

The biggest advantage of WordPress it’s easy to learn, quick to use, and just makes sense.

Browse our web design projects to get a taste of what we do best.