What does a WordPress website cost? Honest answer: somewhere between €250 and €35,000, and that huge spread is exactly the problem with the question. A simple site a freelancer drops onto a standard theme over a weekend and a custom site on WordPress with links to your systems are both called a “WordPress website”, yet they are two completely different projects. One team that handles both the design and the build, without clinging to tech that gets in the way later, keeps the price at the lower end of these ranges. What you pay depends on four things: who builds it, how complex the site is, which integrations you need and how much maintenance it takes. This article is the WordPress deep-dive under our broader guide on what a website costs, and it shows the real prices per type and per builder, including the running costs most quotes leave out. If you doubt whether WordPress is even the right choice, read our comparison of WordPress, custom or headless.
What does a WordPress website cost per builder?
The most useful way to look at prices is per builder and per type, not per agency. WordPress runs around 43 percent of all websites, according to W3Techs, so you have plenty of choice: from a freelancer to a specialised agency. Below are the realistic ranges in the Dutch market in 2026, per type of site and per kind of builder.
| Type of website | Build it yourself | Freelancer | Agency |
|---|---|---|---|
| Simple (5 to 10 pages) | €0-€300 | €250-€1,500 | €2,000-€4,500 |
| Extended (10 to 25 pages) | €100-€500 | €1,000-€3,000 | €3,500-€7,500 |
| Webshop (WooCommerce) | €200-€800 | €1,500-€4,000 | €4,500-€12,000 |
| Complex with integrations and custom features | not realistic | €5,000-€15,000 | €10,000-€35,000 |
Building it yourself is cheapest, but you pay in time: design, copy, tech and maintenance all land on you. A freelancer is fine for a manageable site, as long as you find someone who stays reachable after launch. An agency costs more, but delivers design, build, SEO and maintenance as one package. A WooCommerce webshop on WordPress is its own discipline with its own transaction fees and maintenance. what a webshop costs. For the build itself, see our website service.
What do the costs of a WordPress website consist of?
A WordPress quote is the sum of separate items, not one fixed number. Below are the nine building blocks that together set the price, with what each costs on its own in 2026. That way you see exactly which dial you can push or release to stay within budget.
| Cost item | Price indication | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Domain name | €10-€35 per year | Your address on the internet, e.g. yourcompany.nl |
| Hosting | €5-€50 per month | Where the site runs; cheap shared hosting up to fast managed WordPress |
| Theme | €0-€200 one-time | A free theme or a premium theme from, say, ThemeForest |
| Design | €500-€6,000 | From a standard theme in your colours to a unique design per screen |
| Plugins | €0-€50 per month | Forms, SEO, security, cache; free or with a licence |
| Content and copy | €40-€125 per hour | Write it yourself or bring in a copywriter |
| Integrations | €750-€4,000 each | Accounting, CRM, payment or stock system |
| SEO setup | €500-€3,000 | Tech, structure and findability at launch |
| Maintenance | €25-€100 per month | Updates, backups and security after delivery |
Not every item is mandatory. A simple brochure site needs no integrations; a webshop or member portal does. The biggest variable is almost always the design and the number of integrations. A standard theme in your brand colours costs little, a unique design a designer draws screen by screen quickly adds €1,500 to €6,000.
What does maintaining a WordPress website cost?
This is the item cheap quotes hide most often, and with WordPress it weighs heavily. WordPress is a core plus a stack of plugins that all need updating separately. Skip updates and you run a security risk. According to Sucuri’s Hacked Website Report, WordPress accounted for around 95 percent of the infected CMS sites they cleaned up, not because WordPress is insecure, but because neglected maintenance and outdated plugins make the most popular target. With WordPress, maintenance is not a luxury but a fixed cost.
| Cost item | Small site | Extended site | Webshop / complex |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hosting | €5-€15 | €15-€40 | €30-€80 |
| Maintenance and updates | €25-€50 | €50-€100 | €75-€200 |
| Premium plugins and licences | €0-€25 | €15-€50 | €30-€100 |
| Security and backups | €0-€15 | €10-€30 | €20-€60 |
| Total per month | €30-€105 | €90-€220 | €155-€440 |
The WordPress software itself is free, but as the table shows, keeping a site running and secure is not. Count on around €30 to €105 per month in running costs for a small site; for a webshop it climbs to €440. Anyone who ignores this maintenance pays it back sooner or later in a hacked site or a rebuild. For the technical side of a fast, healthy site, read our article on website speed and Core Web Vitals.
What does a web designer or WordPress developer cost per hour?
This is one of the most asked questions, and the answer often surprises. A freelance WordPress web designer in the Netherlands typically charges €50 to €90 per hour, a specialised agency €90 to €150 per hour. A copywriter or SEO specialist sits at €40 to €125 per hour. Does the agency rate sound high? Look beyond the hour.
The hourly rate says little about what you end up paying. A cheaper builder who takes twice as long on the same work, or who stalls halfway on an integration, is more expensive on balance than an experienced builder with a higher rate. What counts is the project price and what you get for it. So always ask for a fixed price per project or per phase, with a clear breakdown of what is and is not included. Then you compare apples with apples instead of hourly rates without context.
WordPress or custom: which is cheaper long term?
This is the question that causes most budget arguments. WordPress is almost always cheaper than custom in year one. The question is whether that still holds after two years. Below is a worked example for an extended WordPress site of €6,000 in build cost, run across two years, so you see where your money goes after launch.
| Cost item | Year 1 | Year 2 | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| One-time build cost | €6,000 | €0 | Design, build, delivery |
| Hosting and domain | €360 | €360 | Managed WordPress hosting plus domain |
| Maintenance and updates | €900 | €1,080 | Updates, backups, small changes |
| Premium plugins and licences | €360 | €420 | Forms, SEO, security |
| Total | €7,620 | €1,860 | 24-month TCO: €9,480 |
The build cost here is about 79 percent of year one and zero in year two. Anyone comparing on the build quote alone misses the running costs that, over two years, add up to almost a third of the build price again. With WordPress those running costs climb faster the more plugins you stack, because every plugin is a licence, an update and a potential security hole. Custom costs more up front, but keeps the running costs low and is tied to nothing.
Our rule of thumb: WordPress is fine for a manageable site with standard features where you do not bolt heavy integrations on top. Choose custom the moment you need your own logic, want to link several systems, or want a site that grows with you without a plugin stack. To see that trade-off backed by the tech, read WordPress, custom or headless and our comparison of Astro, Next.js and WordPress. The underlying question, who actually owns your site, we cover in website ownership without lock-in.
Why is a cheap WordPress website sometimes false economy?
A €399 WordPress website exists, but you pay the difference back somewhere else. Usually in one of these forms. A slow site that loses visitors before they do anything. A stack of plugins that clash with each other after an update. A security hole because the maintenance was left undone. Or a rebuild after eighteen months because the foundation does not scale.
Speed is no detail here. According to research by Google, the probability of a visitor bouncing rises 32 percent when load time goes from 1 to 3 seconds. A WordPress site crammed with plugins and a heavy theme is exactly the kind of site that loads slowly. You save €1,000 on the build and lose double that in missed customers. For the full picture of what a too-cheap choice costs later, read our article on the hidden costs of cheap websites.
What is the first step?
- Write down what your site has to do, not how it should look. How many pages? Which integrations? Are you selling something, or is it a brochure site? That sets your category in the table above.
- Choose your builder deliberately. Testing an idea? A freelancer or self-build is enough. Already know you will integrate or scale? Count on an agency and weigh right away whether WordPress is still the right base.
- Ask every quote split out: theme, design, plugins, integrations and monthly costs separately. That way you compare on substance, not on a teaser price.
Book a free intake call. In thirty minutes we look at what your website needs to do, give an honest price indication and tell you whether WordPress or custom is the right choice for you. For the full decision path around your online presence, read our complete custom website guide.
