How much should a professional WordPress website build cost?

Well, how much time do you have? (If you have 10-12 minutes, depending on how fast you read, we have an answer.)

When it comes to hiring an agency or freelancer to boost your company’s visibility, some costs feel pretty straightforward. But when you’re hiring someone to build your website, things can get a bit more convoluted, with all sorts of factors to consider and price ranges that aren’t always easy to navigate.

Never fret: Tilted Chair has approximately 500 WordPress website installs under its belt, so, you’re in good hands. All that experience has equipped us with the data and knowledge to compile exactly who and what it takes to get your company’s corner of the World Wide Web to an ideal and impactful state that matches your aspirations for your brand and—perhaps more importantly—helps set you and your business up to market more efficiently.

DISCLAIMER: This pricing approach doesn’t apply to e-commerce websites. While many of the budgeting principles remain the same, because the primary conversion instance on an e-commerce website is a sale, the considerations change rather dramatically. What follows should be considered a great way to budget for a brand or marketing website with no e-commerce component.

The Who

Before we get into the nitty-gritty, it’s important to acknowledge that no one person can do it all, and you shouldn’t hire anyone who says they can. (Well, you’re free to hire them, just don’t believe them.) Different specialists focus on various parts of the process, so here’s a quick look at who’s involved in the planning, design, and development of a WordPress website:

• Content Strategist: The content strategist leads the development of the site’s information architecture. They handle the creation of the sitemap and wireframes (with the help of Relume, of course), ensuring the content flows just right. They should be well-versed in understanding user behavior, they should have experience developing user personas, and they should generally be knowledgeable about how to connect business objectives with information structures and hierarchies to maximize the odds of successful outcomes.
• (At least one) Web Designer: Web designers are the visual experts who bring your site to life, working on layouts, color schemes, typography, and all the other visual elements. Many times they’re called UI designers (especially when working on digital products rather than website designs), but at Tilted Chair, the web designers are tasked with interpreting the wireframes handed down by the content strategist and articulating what those screens should look like visually, while also taking cues from a broader brand strategy, definitions, standards, and uses document. (Which you definitely have ironed-out and documented, right? RIGHT?!) At Tilted Chair, web designers work almost exclusively in Figma.
• Web Content Copywriter: These wordsmiths create the messaging, ensuring it aligns with your brand voice and gets your point across. They should also be well-acquainted with personas, including how to answer common objections posed by the various stakeholder personas. They should be adept at headline writing—very important for making pages “scannable”—and, they get bonus points if they have at least a working knowledge of SEO concepts, including how to craft copy with descending headers, keyword density, and general copy length.
• WordPress Developers: Usually, 2-3 developers handle the front-end and back-end coding to make sure everything works properly. At Tilted Chair, co-founder Jamie Rodriguez leads the development of the front-end system, starting with a base CSS framework which has been painstakingly refined over 14 years of working on WordPress websites. In addition to the front-end developer, Tilted Chair employs a back-end specialist who helps with PHP and javascript assets which pair the front-end with the WordPress back-end. Together, this crack team of website devs bring the static Figma files to life in the form a WordPress website.
• Project Manager: This is the coordinator of it all, keeping everything on track and ensuring deadlines are met. The project manager should have excellent written and verbal communications skills paired with a penchant for organization.

When you buy a professional WordPress website design and development process, these are the people—and skills—you’re paying for.

The What

Now that you know who’s usually working behind the scenes, let’s talk about how much it’s going to cost.

Website costs can vary for every project, depending on how complex the job is and the level of expertise required to make it land. So, what exactly makes up a fair price in our opinion?

Let’s break it down.

Key Considerations

When building a WordPress website, several factors contribute to the overall cost. Below is a breakdown of key considerations and their associated costs. We’ve shared details from two previous projects below to give you a clear idea of how different scenarios can lead to varying costs.

Number of Pages

The number of pages on your website directly impacts both design and development time. Each page may need to be customized with its own structure, content, and functionality. It’s not rocket science, but it does take time. More pages = more work = higher costs.

Brand Systemization

Every client’s brand is in a different condition—some are super well-defined and others, well…not so much.

Understandably, website projects that work with rudimentary brand systems take more time to develop visuals because there’s more exploration required. Assets tend to not be as well-organized and easy to work with. So, clients with better-organized and documented brands are rewarded with lower associated costs. (We use a 5-point scale for this piece, with 5 being “super well-systematized.” Our long-time client Atlassian would represent a perfect 5 here, with any client starting from scratch being a 1 on the other end.)

*It should also be noted that, if a brand truly is starting from scratch, it often times makes more sense to perform a dedicated brand development exercise before ever even starting on a website project, because frankly, we’re not ready for web yet if the brand is truly nascent. Luckily for you, brand development and design just happens to be one of our other specialties! And of course, after our branding phase is done, we’d plop a 5 into the data field for this line item.

Unique Template Types

Each unique template (like homepage, product listings, or contact pages) requires custom design and development. More unique templates mean more work and higher costs for the design and development teams.

(Note: Standard pages like “Terms of Service” or “Privacy Policy” are excluded unless they require custom layouts.)

Blog Posts

If your website includes a blog, the number of blog posts will affect migration complexity and setup costs. If the posts are not already in WordPress, additional costs will apply for migration.

Custom Post Types (CPT)

Custom post types are used for managing unique content structures, such as events, team members, and FAQs. More custom post types mean more development resources are needed, especially in cases where additional CPTs require dedicated pages and are expected to be used as landing pages in their own right.

Custom Spot Graphics

Custom graphics, like banners, icons, or illustrations, are essential for a visually engaging website. More unique graphics will increase design costs.

We’ve found that it’s common for tech companies to require a great deal of time during the spot graphic design phase simply because most technology companies have myriad interfaces that need to be incorporated into graphic compositions. More products or solutions = more spot graphics.

Technology Integrations

Websites often need integrations with third-party tools (like CRM systems, email marketing, etc.). Each integration represents additional structural complexity, and thus, must be accounted for.

Advanced Features (like maps, custom website animations, etc.)

If your website requires maps or location pins (e.g., for store locations or events), Rive or GSAP animations, or more sophisticated javascript/jQuery features, this will require additional development and API integrations.

The Total

For those with their calculators out, you might be looking at some totals that look like this:

Why price a WordPress website build this way?

Why not just estimate hours across all of the various roles/disciplines mentioned above?

Great question.

The answer is, after 15 years and nearly 500 WordPress websites built, we’ve found that structuring the pricing of the WordPress website project in alignment without how the project itself is structured makes the most sense.

For example, charging based on the number of post types corresponds directly to the time and effort it takes to set up custom posts types within the WordPress environment. Charging based on spot graphics matches perfectly with how we set up our Figma files for graphics delivery. The time required to execute on each of the project roles and phases is embedded in the cost of each of those line items. (Time which we have data-backed ways of justifying.)

A well-crafted website comes with a price, and that’s a good thing.

If we had a dollar for every time we popped open a WordPress installation and saw this…

…we’d have a lot of dollars. To design and develop in WordPress is simple, but to design and develop in WordPress professionally is a whole other ball of beeswax.

Our process for building world-class WordPress websites—and the cost associated with it—reflects the quality and work that goes into it. Understanding the details behind its potential costs can help you make an informed decision for your business.

By recognizing factors like page count, custom designs, and integrations, you’ll be able to better assess the value of the work. This clarity lets you prioritize what matters most for your site and ensures you get the best return.

Here’s to building a site that works as hard as you do!