How Much Does It Cost to Build A Professional WordPress Website from Scratch?

There are a few common comments that frequently pop up on WordPress design and development-related blogs and forums. These comments are usually like this:

“When people who are not high-quality WordPress designers accept the job of creating WordPress websites, they usually overpay for their services, perform poorly, and leave real WP designers a headache about correcting their bad work.” 

Or: 

“When people who aren’t top WordPress designers are embracing the business of making WP sites, they drastically lower the cost of creation to get the job done.”

Or:

“In most cases, clients are offered quick and insufficiently good solutions.” 

Well, these types of comments are ruining the relationship between WordPress professionals and clients. It also psychologically demoralizes the clients to use WordPress as their CMS. As a result, they lose the willingness to pay a decent charge to professional designers. 

It’s difficult to refute such arguments, and there’s a lot of truth in them. It’s possible to make money using WordPress, no matter what level of knowledge you’re currently on. But, you must be a great designer to survive in this industry.

On the other hand, the frustration of the more advanced part of the programmers is completely understandable. In general, the problem isn’t that WordPress users with less knowledge and experience try to make money that way, but they often overestimate their knowledge and misrepresent it to customers. That’s the problem we’re talking about here.

Also, not every new WordPress user should be deterred from non-advanced developers. In many cases, developers with ‘sufficient knowledge’ are just what clients need, so it would be unnecessarily expensive to pay more advanced developers for whom some smaller jobs and tasks would be a waste of time.

What Should Be On Your Mind Before You Set Your Prices?

Before you set prices, there are a few things to keep in your mind. Some common reasons that can affect your rate are listed below.

1. What’s the Client’s Budget?

This is the question you should ask the client right away, and be confident while doing it. Any professional client/organization will let you know how much money they wish to spend to design their WordPress website. 

Besides, you’ll occasionally come across clients who are willing to spend more than you anticipated. On the contrary, you’ll also have to face some clients with a very restricted budget or idea of their project’s worth.

You have to set the price cautiously for the clients who fall under the second category. There are some crucial factors that you should make them understand before the budget estimation.

i) What do the clients really need?
ii) Is there any modification possible for the greater good?
iii) What’s the future of this project?
iv) What’s the future scalability of their proposed website?

Only then, you can opt for that price negotiation with your client. In short, educate your client before negotiating the budget.

If they are still willing to bargain with you, it’s a hint that they are potentially uninformed about their target audience or the market competition. If they stick to their ‘guns,’ it could be a clue that you’re dealing with a stubborn client who isn’t a good fit.

2. What Type of Website Are You Gonna Design?

It’s an excellent predictor of how much you should charge if you know how your client will utilize their site. Simply put, you’re basing your fee on the anticipated value you provide to their project.

Lemme clear the concept with an example. Suppose you generally charge $1,000 for a website. So, will you charge the same for re-designing a popular e-commerce website with hundreds of pages?

Nope! You shouldn’t.

An eCommerce website with this size is worth a lot more than $ 1,000 if the client can earn $ 5,000 each month through this site. 

Some people may find this challenging to implement. But, you should keep this factor in mind, even if it appears to be opportunistic. E-commerce is a popular trend right now, and if you’re searching for a WooCommerce theme that’s optimized for mobile conversions, WoonderShop is the theme for you.

3. How Much Do Other Designers Charge?

Take a peek around to see what other professional designers/freelancers charge for services similar to yours. This is a fantastic resource, and you won’t be driving the market value down either if you charge equal rates to one another.

4. What Do You Have to Offer?

The type of service you provide will also have an impact on how much you charge. 

For example, you can’t charge thousands of bucks if you only do basic WordPress maintenance, such as installing updates and ensuring a backup solution is in place. It would be best to offer more technical functionalities, such as designing standard themes with clean code and reusable functions. 

Similarly, while not every website owner requires complex WordPress software or a full-fledged e-commerce business, your ideal client avatar will play a part.

5. Understanding the Technical Costs 

The part with pricing services could be useful to those potential clients who aren’t sure if they need any help with the budgeting. 

We all know that WordPress itself is free. But its operation and third-party plugins aren’t free of cost. So, you must keep in mind the price of a custom domain, hosting, themes, and some functional plugins while making your budget. 

The usual list of costs for creating and launching a WP page looks like this (the average price creation):

• Domain: $15 per year
• Hosting: $5 – $50 per month
• Premium themes: $50 – $200
• WordPress Theme Bundle: $89 per year
• Premium plugin: $15 – $200 individually (Some are charged only when they are embedded, while a monthly or annual license is paid for some)

In total, the overall price will be between $200 – $1,000 for designing a small to medium-sized WordPress website.

This is, of course, assuming that you’ll use a new domain for your client’s website. If the client desires an expired domain, the domain cost may increase to several hundred or thousands of dollars depending on that domain.

Key to WordPress Setup and Maintenance

As WordPress evolves and progresses, it becomes both easier and harder to maintain. It’s easier from the aspect that the basic things are simpler and more accessible to general users. 

On the other hand, it’s becoming more complex from the point of view of the possibilities and flexibility of use. As WordPress has evolved a lot and offers many more functionalities, the technical part is becoming more complex and confusing for beginners. 

WordPress is evolving at an accelerating speed.

Ironically, the combination of maturing the platform and its development has pushed WordPress beyond the boundaries. Being a designer, you must know every ins and outs of this platform to provide the best result to  your clients. 

The complexity of WordPress has given advanced users an extremely valuable ally. Photoshop offered something similar to its experts.  They may not be able to develop it further, but with its help, they can do impressive things. 

So, in that, we see the key to the WordPress offers. It may not provide the possibility of independent development and design, but it offers a high level of possibilities within itself with the help of various tools.

A good example of this would be the WordPress newsletter plugins. Needless to say, an email newsletter is an excellent starting point for any marketing strategy. This is due to the fact that an email is still a useful tool. 

More than that, selling a product isn’t the only activity for which a newsletter can be used. It can be used for marketing purposes too. You may promote your website, blog, podcast, or anything else you have up your sleeve to the target audience via newsletter.

You can presume that if someone subscribed to your newsletter, they are interested in what you’re saying, selling, or promoting. Make sure they see a form where they can give you their name and email address to subscribe to your newsletter. 

Before that, you need to install, activate, and configure the Newsletter WordPress Plugin. Then, the next step is adding a newsletter sign-up form into the sidebar or footer of your WordPress site. 

Here, we’d like to stress that creating a newsletter can be done through third-party services, such as Benchmark, which provide an abundance of options for collecting and setting up an email campaign.

If you go in that direction, you can become an expert in creating blogs, portfolios, or web pages dedicated to private business, etc. You can learn the basic rules and frameworks within themes that combine with certain plugins so you can put someone into action within a few days, as opposed to weeks or months. 

You can also resell hosting or domains, you can provide site maintenance services, marketing strategies, content strategies, offer WordPress tips, and training to the potential clients.

We’ve seen certain billing models such as:

• Charging per hour: $10 – $100
• Flat fee: $200 – $1,000 or even more
• Monthly charge: $10 – $50 (added to the initial flat rate or hourly charge)
• Extras: $100 to $200 for various courses and tips
• Rough estimate: $500 – $2,500 (with possible monthly additional payment or additional payment for extra services), and even more.

Realistically, not everyone’s needs are the same. You may need to customize the price for each client according to their custom preferences. 

WordPress Development and Design to Your Liking

This is where things are getting really interesting. This is unequivocally a domain of work only for WordPress experts.

Only skilled WordPress designers can do so if a client wants a custom-designed website. By a skilled designer, I mean someone with sound knowledge of HTML, CSS, SAAS, PHP, JavaScript, SQL, etc. 

Their skills are reflected in the ability to create themes and plugins using external tools. They will deliver codes that are easy to use, as well as a design determined by the client’s taste. In any case, this is a great service that is worth every penny if you need it and can afford it.

Many developers falling into this group will charge for their services in the following framework:

• WordPress theme charge: $1,000 – $6,000 (design and development)
• WordPress site charge: $2,000 – $10,000 (design and development with functional plugins)
• eCommerce website: $3,000 – $20,000
• WordPress web application: $10,000 – $60,000 and even more

This approach works best with a combination of vision, expertise, and a solid budget. 

Tips for Potential Clients: Understand Your Primary Goals

As a client, if you are planning to use WordPress CMS on your website, try not to make any mistake by hiring an unprofessional freelancer or designer. Hire a good one and instruct him/her with appropriate requirements. 

Your instruction set must cover –

• What are you expecting from the website?
• Which technologies the designer should use?
• How many sections and pages will be on your website?
• Other custom requirements. 

Remember, there are no shortcuts to getting a professional website. If you don’t want to waste your valuable time and hard-earned money, you must carefully choose your designer with to-the-point instructions. 

Tips for Providers: Classify Customers, Be Honest, and Develop Your Own ‘X Factor’

One of the biggest mistakes of the designers is accepting every client without any background checking. It results in inconsistent changes, budget problems, or something like that. 

That’s why you must perform a background check and choose your clients wisely. After all, you know exactly what type of client suits you and try to convince them with a lucrative offer. 

Remember, excessive expectations, unrealistic promises, and unfinished product delivery will not only ruin your reputation but also reduce the possibility of getting upcoming works from that client. So, develop your qualities to the maximum range possible and approach a client only when you are 100% confident about your task.

Key Thing: Quality First

In the end, it doesn’t matter how much something costs as long as the client is impressed with your work. Try your best to deliver a good product and you’ll be definitely rewarded with handsome remuneration. 

Remember, never sacrifice quality to keep the costs down!

You May Also Read

1. 40+ Ways to Increase E-commerce Revenue
2. A Guide to Integrate WooCommerce with Amazon
3. Top WordPress Website Development Trends for 2022