| WordPress Cost Breakdown | Required? | Price | More Info |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monthly Subscription |  | $500 - $1,000 per year | You may end up paying an ongoing fee, but this depends on your contract with your designer, and how much maintenance you need. |
| Apps / plugins (optional) |  | $0 | Your designer will include these in your site if you’ve asked for certain features, meaning it’s included in their quote. |
| Themes | | $0 | If your designer is building from scratch, then this cost is included in their quote. Alternatively, you can buy a theme and ask a designer to customize it for you, in which case you need to pay for a theme yourself first. |
| Hosting | | $2.95 - $50 | Hosting is an essential cost. Some designers handle this for you, but others don’t, so always check. Remember that hosting is usually charged per year, so expect to pay at least $35 per year upfront. |
| Security | | $0 - $200 per year | Security can come built into your hosting plan, but it’s worth investing in extra security measures. There are free security plugins you can use to keep costs low. |
| Professional help | | $5,000 - $30,000 upfront cost | You’re paying an expert to design and create your website for you. If the site is super complex, you’ll also need to hire them on an ongoing basis to make edits to your site. |
This is possibly the hardest cost to estimate, because different web designers will charge different rates depending on the project and their own experience. You might choose an agency or a freelancer, and this will also affect the cost.
On the whole though, you’re looking at a cost between $5,000 and $30,000 to get someone to create your website for you.
What Affects the Cost Of Hiring a Web Designer?
Cost of Building a Website: Web Designer Breakdown
So, what exactly are the costs involved in hiring a web designer? The table below breaks down the different factors that you pay for, to give you a better idea of exactly what you’re paying for, and the average costs involved:
| Factors | Hiring a Web Designer |
|---|---|
| Setup | $160 |
| Design & Building | $5,000 |
| Content Creation | $500 |
| Training to Use it | $600 |
| Maintenance | $500 |
| Total | $6,760 |
This highlights some of the often unseen costs of using a web designer, such as having to train to use your own website after they’ve made it. The average cost of hiring a web designer to build your website is $6,760.
You’ll likely find there’s some overlap here with the WordPress building method, because many designers and developers use WordPress to create their sites.
In fact, one way of cutting down the cost of hiring a web designer is to buy a premium WordPress theme and then ask the designer to customize it for you, rather than getting them to build you a site from scratch. If you’re looking to save where you can, this is a good middle-ground, which we’ll discuss in more detail next!
How to Reduce the Cost of Hiring a Web Designer
Okay, you might be thinking you can’t afford to spend over $6,000 for a web designer to create your site. What you mustn’t do is find a designer with dirt-cheap prices to save funds – you won’t get value for your money this way.
If you’re super tight for cash, the reality is you should probably head to either the website builder or WordPress section of this article, because a web designer is supposed to cost thousands of dollars. You usually get what you pay for when it comes to hiring a designer!
However, there is a way to slightly lower the cost of hiring a designer to create your site. And that’s to buy a premade WordPress theme, and ask a designer to customize it for you.
This option is “in-between” a DIY website and a fully custom built website design.
You can hire a designer to help customize a premade template into something unique just for you.
This is a good option if you are not ready for an entirely custom website, and if pre-made templates are not exactly what you want.
You can pay by the hour or by the project for design customizations.
Expect to pay between $300 and $1,000 for template customization – the average is around $600 for this sort of service.
The cost varies depending on how much work you want to be done, such as adding a header image, moving the logo, creating a fixed navigation bar, changing the overall layout design etc.
However, for a full, custom job from a capable designer, you’re looking at at least $10,000.
How Much Does It Cost to Create Website Content? $50 – $80 per hour
| Type of Work | Time and Cost |
|---|---|
| Website Setup Costs | Hosting Cost: $5 – $250/month Hiring a Pro to Set Up: $50 – $200 (1-time fee) Time: 1 to 6 hours |
| Website Builder Software Learning Costs | Paid Tutorials: $50/month Time to Learn Basics: Few hours Time to Learn WordPress: Weeks |
| Website Design Costs | Basic Templates: $35 – $50 Premium Templates: $80 – $200 Template Alterations: $300 – $1,000 Custom Design: $5,000 – $10,000+ |
| Website Building Costs | Free if you do it yourself (but will cost you time) Hourly Costs of a Designer: $50 – $80/hour Average Cost of Content Population: $500 – $5,000* The range is wide as it depends on how much content you have, and how many pages. |
| Website Maintenance Costs | Developer Cost: $100 – $180 per hour Estimated Annual Cost: $500 – $1,000 |
Overall, the most expensive option is to hire a web designer to build you a site from scratch. This will cost you somewhere around the $10,000 mark. There are certain things you can do to bring the cost down, such as keeping your site to a minimum number of pages and being ruthless with the features you need.
You can save some money by buying a premade theme, and then asking a designer to customize it for you – this customization usually costs around $600.
However, what you mustn’t do is try to save money by hiring a web designer on the cheap. You’ll still end up paying a few thousand, and chances are you’ll end up with a website you’re not 100% happy with!
