The stinking cost of WordPress is keeping small businesses from having a great website! In this video, we break down exactly why WordPress can be a massive investment over time:

Upfront costs – Finding someone to build a site for $100? Not happening. Expect at least $1,000 to set up.
Ongoing maintenance – $500+ per year just to keep it running!
Hosting, security, updates – It all adds up FAST!

Key Takeaways:

• WordPress websites can be a financial burden for small businesses due to high upfront costs and ongoing maintenance.
• Upfront costs for WordPress websites typically range from $2,500 to $10,000.
• Ongoing costs (maintenance, plugins, hosting, etc.) can add $1,000 to $2,500 annually.
• A simpler alternative: Mighty Local offers a flat rate of $99/month, which includes all necessary services for a professional, functional website.

Video Transcript

Here’s what keeps most small businesses from having a good website: the stinking cost of WordPress. WordPress websites cost a ton of money over time, and they are turned into actually a money pit for most small businesses. Let me show you exactly why, and I’ll share this article because I think it breaks it down really nice.

So how much is a WordPress website going to cost? $100 to over $100,000? Well, that is quite the range, right? So let’s break down what I’ve actually seen in my 15 years of working on small business websites and what it is. I really like how this website lays it out.

So, upfront cost: You’re not going to find anybody who’s going to build it for a hundred bucks. That’s not going to happen. What I typically see is $2,500 is usually the upfront fee for building a WordPress website. Then, you can see $50,000 to $100,000 for ongoing maintenance. That is things breaking, security updates, plug-in updates, and making sure the website basically doesn’t crash. You are going to see at least $1,000 a year in ongoing maintenance after you put $2,500 in to get the site—that’s not even including domain hosting or website hosting yet.

So, here’s what it looks like (last updated May 2024):

• Domain: 99 cents to 40 bucks. It’s usually 99 cents the first year, 40 bucks after that.
• Web Hosting: This is monthly. $3? No way. Not unless you want a website that takes forever to load, and no customers can use it. Google’s not going to rank a website that slow. You’re probably going to be paying at least $50 a month to host your WordPress site.
• You’ve got to pay for a theme. You’ve got to pay for all the plugins—those are monthly or annual charges, very few of them are one-time charges.
• So now we’re talking $50 for hosting. We’re talking $40 a year for domain. We’re talking any plugins you need are now costing anywhere from $5 to $25 a month. Then, you’ve got to pay for security, like SSL certificates, things like that. That could be looped into your hosting, or it could be an extra thing.
• Then you’re paying hourly, probably between $25 and $100 an hour, or you’re paying just for a built-in maintenance fee.

So, this is actually what it ends up looking like for a small business: Let’s just say $1,000 to $2,500. I’ve always seen it on the high side unless you want some real cheap-skate version. So, we’ll even go in the middle here and say $1,000 bucks to get it set up, and then you’re talking about $500, we’ll call it, for ongoing maintenance. To me, that’s not even including the cost of hosting or it’s grossly undervaluing it, right?

So, you’re talking about a pretty big investment: a few thousand dollars in the first year, and then you’re talking about a couple thousand dollars after that for a WordPress site. That’s why we created Mighty Local—to have an alternative. We don’t charge an upfront fee. It’s just $99 a month. That includes your hosting, that includes your secure certificate, that even includes the customer service and maintenance, and it includes building it in the first place.

See, we want small businesses to succeed online. $99 a month, all included. Click on the link below, contact our sales team, and find out how we can set up a professional, simple, clean website for your local business for only $99 a month. Talk to our sales team, have a U.S.-based team create a clean, professional website for your small business. We’ll catch you in the next video!