How Much Does a WordPress Website Cost? Prices and Rates
What a WordPress website costs in Germany: every item with a price source, self-built from about €60 a year, commissioned from €1,500, plus hourly rates.
Contents
WordPress itself is free. What you pay for is hosting, a domain and, if you want them, premium licences: built yourself, from about €60 a year, or closer to €250 with a few premium licences. If you have the website built, providers on the German market usually state from about €1,500 for a one-pager up to around €15,000 for a multi-page company website with its own design. Agency projects with a strategy phase come in at €15,000 to €30,000 and above (ranges that providers on the first page of Google Germany publish themselves, as of October 2026). According to the Freelancer-Kompass 2026, freelancers in Germany charge an average of €103 per hour. Where your project lands within the range depends on five things: the number of page types, the design, the content, the languages and whether a store is part of it.
What WordPress itself costs
The software is free: WordPress is released under the GNU General Public License, so there is no licence fee. The money goes into what WordPress needs to run. I read the prices below on the providers' pricing pages on 5 November 2026. They are examples from the German market, not recommendations and not my own prices.
| Item | What it costs |
|---|---|
| Domain | about €12 a year |
| Hosting | €5 to €20 a month |
| Theme | €0 or $60 to $100 a year |
| Plugins | €0 or from €50 a year |
| Maintenance | €10 to €60 a month |
The ranges come from these pricing pages, as of 5 November 2026:
- Domain: the .de domain at STRATO costs €1 a month, €0.05 a month in the first year. The hosting packages from All-Inkl and IONOS include at least one domain.
- Hosting: All-Inkl €4.95 (Privat) or €7.95 (Privat+) a month, IONOS WordPress hosting €5 to €20 a month after the promotional period, Raidboxes (WordPress only) €18 a month plus VAT on the Mini plan.
- Theme: free in the theme directory, paid examples are Divi at $89 or GeneratePress One at $99 a year, optionally the page builder Elementor Pro from $60 a year.
- Plugins: free in the plugin directory, which is often enough to start. Paid examples are Borlabs Cookie for the cookie banner from €49 and WP Rocket for caching at a regular $60 a year.
- Maintenance: you do it yourself or hand it over. Providers state €10 to €60 a month for updates, backups and monitoring, see WordPress maintenance: costs and what is included.
IONOS prices include VAT; taxes may apply on top of the dollar prices. At the ECB reference rate of 4 November (€1 = $1.1267), $60 is about €53 and $89 about €79.
Budget for the price from the second year on
IONOS advertises WordPress hosting at €1 a month. On the Grow plan that applies for 12 months, after which it is €10. The .de domain at STRATO jumps from €0.05 to €1 a month after the first year, and the €9 a month Raidboxes currently states for its Mini plan applies for 12 months at most. All of this is stated openly on the pricing pages. What counts for your budget is still the follow-up price, because a website runs for longer than a year.
Premium licences are usually paid every year as well. With Borlabs Cookie, the price covers one year of updates and support. When a licence expires you normally stop getting updates, and security holes stay open. How to install updates safely is covered in Installing WordPress updates the right way.
WordPress.com or WordPress.org
The prices above apply to WordPress.org: the free software you install at a host of your choice. WordPress.com is a hosting service built on the same software, with plans of its own. According to its pricing page, you can start for free, but with an address on wordpress.com and without your own plugins. With your own domain (included in the first year) and plugins, it starts at $4 a month, and the Commerce plan costs $45, both billed yearly and excluding tax.
What providers charge for a website
On 19 October 2026 I read the price information on the pages that rank on the first page of Google Germany for the German search “Website erstellen lassen Kosten” (cost of having a website built): agencies, a freelancer, a hosting company and a comparison portal. The table sums up what these providers state themselves. These are published figures, not a study and not my own prices.
| Type of website | What providers state |
|---|---|
| One-pager, digital business card One page, contact form, legal notice and privacy policy | from €1,500, usually up to €2,900 |
| Small company website based on a template 3 to 10 pages, a theme adapted to your brand | €2,000 to €6,000 |
| Multi-page company website with its own design 10 to 20 pages, design from scratch, SEO basics | €5,000 to €15,000, some providers up to €20,000 |
| Website with an online store Products, payment methods, shipping, legal texts | from about €8,000, considerably more with integrations |
| Agency project with strategy and workshops Concept phase, design, development and support from a team | €15,000 to €30,000 and more |
The ranges are wide because “website” can mean almost anything. Two quotes of €3,000 and €12,000 for “the same website” usually describe two different projects: one adapts a template, the other designs every page from scratch and includes the copywriting. Which one you need only becomes clear through the five points further down.
Build it yourself or hire someone: three calculations
The calculations use the prices from the two tables. “Built yourself” means ongoing costs per year, not counting your time. “Commissioned” means the one-off price according to providers, with the ongoing costs on top.
- Blog or club website. Built yourself, about €60 a year: All-Inkl Privat with a domain (12 × €4.95), theme and plugins in their free versions. Commissioned as a one-pager, from €1,500.
- Small company website. Built yourself, about €250 a year: All-Inkl Privat+ with a domain €95, Elementor Pro €53, Borlabs Cookie €49, WP Rocket €53. Commissioned on the basis of a template, €2,000 to €6,000.
- Small online store. Built yourself, about €500 to €1,000 a year for hosting and licences, plus payment fees. The calculation is in How much does a WooCommerce store cost? Commissioned, from about €8,000.
The biggest item in a self-build is on no price list: your time. Let's assume the small company website takes you 40 hours and an hour of your time is worth €50 to you (both assumptions, not measurements). That puts €2,000 into the website, which is the lower end of a commissioned project based on a template. You are also left with everything a provider would otherwise check: the legal notice under section 5 of the German DDG, the privacy policy, the cookie banner, backups and updates.
My view: for a blog, a club website or to learn, building it yourself is worth it. If the website has to bring enquiries or sell, hiring someone usually pays off, because mistakes then cost money. That comes from someone who makes a living from such projects, so check it against your own numbers.
What a WordPress freelancer costs per hour
The largest freelancing study in the German-speaking region, by its own account, is the Freelancer-Kompass 2026 by freelancermap. Around 5,400 self-employed people took part between November 2025 and February 2026. The average hourly rate in Germany is €103; for IT and software, freelancermap's overview of freelancer rates lists €95. For the first time since the study began in 2016, the average has gone down.
The hourly rate alone says little about the invoice, though. Someone who charges €60 and needs twice as long for the same task costs more than someone at €100. What matters is how many hours a quote assumes and whether those hours are realistic.
Five things that determine the price
1. Number of pages and page types
Ten service pages with the same structure are quick to build once the first one is done. Ten pages with ten different layouts are ten times the work. For the quote, the number of different page types matters more than the page count: home page, service page, case study, blog post, contact.
2. Design from scratch or a theme
Adapting a good theme to your corporate design is the cheaper route and is enough for many businesses. A design from scratch pays off when your website has to stand out clearly from competitors or your content does not fit any template. It needs its own design phase with drafts and feedback rounds.
3. Content
The most underestimated item. Texts that are “almost finished”, images with unclear rights and approvals from three departments hold a project up longer than any technical question. If you supply the content yourself, you save money. If texts have to be written, or taken over from an old website and reworked, that belongs in the quote as a separate item.
4. Multiple languages
Every additional language means translation, separate addresses, correctly linking the language versions for Google and double maintenance with every change. This website has a German and an English version itself, and every text change here means: change it twice, check it twice.
5. Online store
A store turns a website into an application: products and variants, payment methods, shipping rules, taxes, legal texts and often a connection to inventory management or an ERP. That is why stores sit well above company websites in the published prices. What a store costs upfront and every year is covered in detail in How much does a WooCommerce store cost?, and how I build such projects on the page about WooCommerce stores.
On top of that come features that fall outside the five categories and still cost hours: booking systems, member areas, an intranet behind a login wall, integrations with a CRM or newsletter tool, and an accessible build under Germany's Accessibility Strengthening Act (BFSG) if it applies to you.
Fixed price or hourly: how to compare quotes
A fixed price fits when scope, features and the number of revision rounds are settled in advance. Hourly billing fits when requirements are still open or the project grows in stages. Either way, you can only compare quotes if you know how many hours are behind them.
The calculation is simple: quoted price divided by hourly rate. Assuming a provider charges €100 per hour, a fixed price of €6,000 equals 60 hours of work. If a second quote for the same brief comes to 20 hours, something is very likely missing. If a quote shows no hourly rate, ask for it or work with the market average of around €100.
My quotes list every project phase with its hours, with the fixed price underneath. That way you can see what the total is made of and run exactly this comparison.
What cheap quotes often leave out
If one quote is far below the others, check these points. Each of them costs hours, and none of them shows when you first click through the finished website:
- a staging environment where you see changes before they go live
- testing on phones, tablets and in several browsers
- redirects from the addresses of the old website, so rankings and links do not end in nowhere; in a migration this is the most important part
- spam protection for the forms
- a cookie banner and privacy policy that match the services in use
- an introduction so you can change texts and images yourself
- licences for premium plugins and themes, which usually have to be renewed every year
Ongoing costs after launch
The bill does not stop at launch. For hosting, domain and maintenance together, the providers on the first page of Google Germany usually state €30 to €150 a month. Plan for:
- hosting, depending on performance and visitor numbers
- the domain, renewed every year
- licences for premium plugins and themes
- maintenance: updates, backups and fixing errors
Which maintenance models exist and how to recognise a good contract is explained in WordPress maintenance: costs and what is included. I bill maintenance by effort, without a monthly flat fee.
Six steps to a reliable quote
- Set the goal. Should the website bring enquiries, sell products or attract applicants? That determines which pages and features you really need.
- Write a page list, with the different page types and a rough page count.
- Clarify the content. Who writes the texts, where do the images come from, who approves?
- List features and integrations: forms, booking, store, languages, connections to other systems.
- Name a budget range. A provider who knows your range can tell you what is feasible within it instead of calculating blindly.
- Convert quotes into hours and compare what those hours include.
How I plan and build a WordPress website, from the page list to launch, is described on the page about WordPress web design. With your list, you get a quote from me with hours per phase via the contact form.
Frequently asked questions
Is WordPress free?
The software is: WordPress is released under the GPL and has no licence fee. You pay for hosting and a domain, from about €60 a year in the examples in this article, plus premium themes and plugins if you want them.
What does a simple WordPress website cost?
For a one-pager, providers in Germany usually state €1,500 to €2,900; for a small company website based on a template, €2,000 to €6,000. These are published price figures from providers, as of October 2026.
What does a website with 10 pages cost?
That depends more on the page types than on the page count. For 3 to 10 pages based on a template, providers in Germany state €2,000 to €6,000; for 10 to 20 pages with their own design, €5,000 to €15,000. Built yourself, it comes down to about €60 to €250 a year plus your time.
What does a website cost at an agency?
For an agency project with a strategy phase, its own design and ongoing support, agencies state €15,000 to €30,000 and more. Multi-page company websites without a big concept phase come in at €5,000 to €15,000 in the published figures. If the website moves over from another system, such as TYPO3, add the inventory and the redirects, see WordPress or TYPO3.
What is the hourly rate of a WordPress freelancer?
According to freelancermap's Freelancer-Kompass 2026, freelancers in Germany charge an average of €103 per hour, and €95 in IT and software.
How much do WordPress plugins cost?
Many plugins are free in the plugin directory. Premium licences are usually paid yearly, for example Borlabs Cookie from €49 and WP Rocket at a regular $60 a year, as of November 2026.
Why is there no flat price for a WordPress website?
Because page types, design, content, languages and a possible store can shift the effort many times over. A reliable price only comes from a brief with a page list and features.
What ongoing costs does a WordPress website have?
Hosting, domain, licences for premium plugins and maintenance. Providers usually state €30 to €150 a month for these together; a store adds payment fees.
