WordPress website development typically costs between $1,500 and $15,000 for a small business site in 2026, with most Alberta businesses landing somewhere in the $3,000 to $8,000 range. DIY builds run a few hundred dollars. Enterprise WordPress projects run into six figures.
That range is so wide it is nearly useless without context — so here is the context. Below is what actually moves the number, what you keep paying after launch, and the questions that determine which end of the range your project sits at.
What WordPress itself costs: nothing
Worth clearing up first, because it causes real confusion. The WordPress software is free and open source. There is no licence fee, no per-seat cost, and no contract with a company called WordPress.
What you pay for is everything around it: hosting, a domain, a theme, plugins, and — the largest line by a wide margin — the human being who designs, builds, writes, and configures the thing. When someone quotes you $7,000 for a WordPress site, essentially none of that is the software.
One thing that trips people up: WordPress.org and WordPress.com are different products. WordPress.org is the free, self-hosted software you install on hosting you control. WordPress.com is a hosted commercial service built on top of it. Most agency-built "WordPress sites" are the self-hosted kind.
The three ways to get a WordPress site built
| Approach | Typical cost | Realistic timeline | Best suited to |
|---|---|---|---|
| Do it yourself | $200 – $800 (mostly hosting, domain, theme) | 40 – 100+ of your own hours | Very early stage, no budget, someone on the team who genuinely enjoys this |
| Freelancer | $1,500 – $6,000 | 3 – 8 weeks | Clearly defined small sites where you already know what you want |
| Agency or studio | $3,000 – $25,000+ | 4 – 12 weeks | Businesses where the site has to generate leads, not just exist |
The DIY row is the one that misleads people most. The cash cost is genuinely low. The time cost is not — and for most owners, sixty hours spent fighting a page builder is sixty hours not spent on the work that actually pays.
What drives the price up or down
Page count and content complexity
A five-page brochure site is a fundamentally different job from a forty-page site with service areas, a resource library, and gated downloads. Page count is the single most reliable predictor of build hours.
Whether the design is a template or built for you
A premium theme costs $50 to $200 and gets you a layout somebody else is also using. Custom design costs thousands and gets you something that looks like your business. Between those sits the most common option: a solid theme customized until it stops looking like a theme.
Who writes the copy
This is the cost most quotes hide. If the quote does not say "copywriting included," you are writing it. Professional web copy for a small business site is frequently $1,000 to $3,000 on its own, and it is the part that determines whether the site converts.
Functionality beyond pages
Contact forms are trivial. Online booking, payments, memberships, multi-location logic, CRM integrations, and customer accounts are not. Each one adds setup, testing, and something that can break later.
E-commerce
WooCommerce is free, and that fact has misled a lot of budgets. A real store needs product data, payment and tax configuration, shipping rules, inventory handling, and a checkout that has been tested properly. WordPress e-commerce builds start meaningfully higher than brochure sites and climb fast with catalogue size.
Whether search visibility is in scope
"SEO-friendly" in a proposal usually means the developer installed a plugin. Actual search optimization — keyword research, page structure, local signals, technical fundamentals, ongoing content — is separate work with a separate budget. Assume it is not included unless it is itemized.
The costs that never stop
A website is not a purchase, it is a subscription with a large setup fee. Here is the recurring side, in Canadian dollars except where noted.
| Item | Typical ongoing cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Domain name | $15 – $30 / year | Renews forever; watch for first-year promo pricing that jumps on renewal |
| Shared hosting | $5 – $20 / month | Fine for low-traffic brochure sites, slow under real load |
| Managed WordPress hosting | From roughly US$30 – $35 / month | WP Engine's entry plan starts at US$30/mo and Kinsta's at US$35/mo; both include backups, staging, and WordPress-specific support |
| Premium plugins | $0 – $1,000+ / year | Forms, SEO, backups, security, booking. Most sell annual licences that gate updates and support |
| Theme licence | $0 – $200 / year | Some are one-time, most renew for updates |
| Maintenance and updates | $50 – $500 / month | Core, theme, and plugin updates, backups, security monitoring, small content edits |
Add it up and a modest self-hosted WordPress site costs somewhere between $500 and $3,000 a year to keep running properly. Budget for it before launch, not after something breaks.
What WordPress.com costs instead
If you go the hosted route rather than self-hosting, WordPress.com publishes its own pricing (USD): Personal at $9/month billed monthly or $4/month billed annually, Premium at $18 or $8, Business at $40 or $25, and Commerce at $70 or $45. The Business plan is the first tier that allows installing your own plugins — which matters, because plugin freedom is usually the reason a business chose WordPress in the first place.
Where the maintenance budget actually goes
WordPress powers a large share of the web, which makes it a large target. Outdated plugins are one of the most common ways small business sites get compromised, and the cleanup costs far more than the maintenance would have.
Beyond security, plugins conflict with each other, updates occasionally break layouts, and a site nobody is watching slowly gets slower. A maintenance arrangement is not an upsell — it is the difference between a site that works in year three and one that quietly stopped converting in month eight.
The cheapest WordPress site is the one that gets abandoned. The second cheapest is the one that gets maintained.
Is WordPress the right choice for your business?
Straight answer: sometimes, and less often than it used to be.
WordPress makes sense when you publish a lot of content, when you need a specific plugin ecosystem, or when your team is already comfortable in it. It is genuinely excellent as a content platform.
It makes less sense when you want a fast, secure marketing site with a handful of pages and no appetite for ongoing plugin management. Modern site builds can deliver better performance with a fraction of the maintenance surface — no plugin conflicts, no update treadmill, dramatically less to attack. For most local service businesses, that trade is worth making, which is why we build most client sites that way rather than defaulting to WordPress.
The honest version: pick the platform after you know what the site needs to do. Picking WordPress first and figuring out the requirements later is how projects end up over budget.
What we charge, for comparison
So you have a real benchmark rather than a range scraped off the internet:
- Fast fixed-price build — from $2,500. A clean, modern, professionally designed site, usually live in about two weeks.
- Fully custom site — typically $3,000 to $8,000. Custom design, copy written for you, local SEO foundations, conversion-focused layout.
- More complex designs — $10,000 to $25,000, with e-commerce from around $20,000.
Every quote is fixed up front. You approve a scope and a number, and that number holds unless you ask for something outside it.
How to keep a WordPress project from going over budget
- Write the page list before you ask for quotes. Scope creep is the number one budget killer, and it almost always starts with "can we also add a…"
- Decide who writes the copy, in writing. Unwritten content is the most common reason projects stall for months.
- Ask what happens after launch. Who updates plugins? What does an emergency cost? Get it in the proposal.
- Confirm you own everything. Domain, hosting account, and site files should be in your name. This is non-negotiable and it is astonishing how often it is not the case.
- Separate the build from the marketing. A site that exists and a site that ranks are two different investments. Budget for both or be clear you are only doing the first.
- Be suspicious of the cheapest quote. Not because cheap is bad, but because a quote far below the others is usually solving a smaller problem than the one you described.
Frequently asked questions
How much does a WordPress website cost per month?
Ongoing costs for a small business WordPress site typically run $50 to $300 per month once hosting, domain, plugin licences, and maintenance are all counted. Bare-minimum setups can sit under $30 a month, but that generally means nobody is maintaining it.
Can I build a WordPress website myself for free?
You can build one for close to free — WordPress.com has a free tier and self-hosting costs only hosting plus a domain. Whether you should depends on what your time is worth and whether the site needs to compete for search traffic. Most owners who try it either finish something that underperforms or stop partway.
Why do WordPress quotes vary so much?
Because they are rarely quoting the same work. One includes copy, images, SEO setup, and testing; another includes design and build only. Compare inclusions line by line before comparing dollar figures — the spread usually disappears once you do.
Is WordPress cheaper than a custom-built website?
Cheaper up front, frequently not cheaper over five years. WordPress lowers the initial build cost and raises the ongoing maintenance cost. Which one wins depends on how long you plan to keep the site and how much plugin management you want to be responsible for.
Do I need to pay for WordPress plugins?
Many essential plugins have capable free versions. You typically start paying when you need advanced forms, proper backups, e-commerce extensions, or booking functionality. A realistic small business site runs $0 to $500 a year in plugin licences.
How long does a WordPress website take to build?
Four to eight weeks is typical for a small business site, assuming content is ready. Projects that run longer are almost always waiting on copy and photos rather than on development.
The bottom line
WordPress website development costs $1,500 to $15,000 for most small businesses, plus $500 to $3,000 a year to run. The platform is free; the price is entirely in the design, the content, the configuration, and the ongoing care.
Before you compare quotes, get clear on what is actually included in each one — and get clear on whether WordPress is the right platform for what you are trying to accomplish, rather than the default because it is what everyone names first.
Want a fixed number for your specific project? Get in touch with Grizzly Agency for a straight quote with no obligation, or browse our recent work to see what we build. We work with businesses in Sylvan Lake, Calgary, and across Alberta — and the first 30-minute call is free.
