When getting a new website built, you have a hefty mountain of choices to make. You get advice from all sides as soon as you drop the word "website." Some are huge fans of WordPress, others abhor it and recommend you get something customs built or swear by Drupal, Webflow or Umbruco.
More on that later. Now first: what exactly is WordPress? Because if you choose a (sleek, user-friendly and profitable) website from Buro Staal, it's going to be WordPress anyway. After all, we've been working with it since 2012 and that's not going to change.
Because a site costs more than just building it, and your friends and colleagues are going to hurl vastly different amounts at your head, get a realistic look from us at what a WordPress website actually costs. Besides building it, that is.
What exactly is WordPress?
WordPress is a CMS (Content Management System). There's no doubt you've heard of it. With this software you can build a website, but also a blog, online learning environment, intranet or web shop.
Of all websites worldwide, about 43% are built with WordPress. That's 17x more than the number 2, Wix. We use WordPress for the following reasons:
- An absurd amount is possible with WordPress. The combination of always up-to-date software (we also do updates and maintenance) with 58,000 WordPress plugins (another Internet statistic), makes almost anything possible. Almost anything.
- Basically, when the site is finished, you can add, remove, modify, discard or change things yourself. The back-end is intuitive and available in over 50 languages. Much is self-explanatory. And if not, we make an explanation video.
- Our (former) customers are not stuck with us this way either. Basically, they can do everything themselves and switch to another provider, builder, maintenance contractor, etc. if they want. Should they wish to do so. And we think it's nice not to be tied to an agency.
- Another one: because WordPress is used so much, it is compatible with almost everything. Handy! Payment providers, accounting programs, translation tools, SEO tools, email marketing systems, CRM systems; almost anything can be linked.
Initial and ongoing costs for setting up a WordPress website
WordPress itself is free, but building a website with WordPress is not. In fact, you need more than just the software. In addition to hosting, a domain name or names, and an SSL certificate, a good WordPress website soon makes use of a number of paid plugins, to optimize functionality.
Exit:
A. Domain registration: the URL.
The cost depends on whether you want .nl or .com or another extension. Often hosting companies stunt with low prices for the first year. Per year, outside or after such a promotion, you can assume about 15 to 25 euros per year, which you usually pay in 1x per year.
B. Hosting
WordPress.com itself offers hosting if you want to choose your own domain name. And that's what you want. Because, of course, a free website with "wordpress" in the URL is far from professional. For $4 to $8 per month (pay per year and excl VAT), you can go with WordPress.com. However, if you prefer to pick your own host, say a company in the Netherlands, you can still choose from hundreds of hosting companies.
Costs for hosting vary widely. You often pay per month, per quarter or per year. In recent years, many smaller parties have been taken over by big players resulting in higher price and worse service. On the other hand, in our view, you never or hardly have any contact with a good host. Everything should just run flawlessly without fuss.
So don't stare blindly at cheap prices, because that can cost you a lot of hassle. Switching is really not always quick, convenient and nice. So better to get it right in 1x.
Pay attention to this when choosing a host:
- Fast, good and cheap do not necessarily go together;
- Although you would prefer never or as little contact as possible with your host, it can always happen that you have a question or problem. Good accessibility is then essential for your business;
- Scalability: suppose that new site of yours goes completely through the roof in terms of visitors (we're going for that, of course) then the servers have to be able to handle that and not flatten your site all the time. Also, if your business is going to grow significantly and you want to expand the site, there needs to be enough growth space available at your host. This is almost always the case, but still good to watch out for.
- Performance: Do you want a shared server? This is cheaper. Then you share the specs of the server your site is on with other sites on the same server. This affects performance (including load time) and makes your site more vulnerable to hackers if one of those other sites doesn't have its sH*t in order. A VPS can, but doesn't have to. There are plenty of parties using e.g. Google Cloud servers where each site has its own container with its own specs.
- Prices can range from 1 to hundreds of euros per month. For an average site, you will spend between €10 and €20 per month with a regular hosting party and between €30 and €40 with a specialized WordPress hosting party. If you have a large webshop with many products and many requests, the costs can run into hundreds of euros per month.
We are fans of Kinsta and Servebolt. Many parties claim to specialize in WordPress hosting, but they really are.
As a reseller, we are happy to help you pick the right host and an appropriate package, should you wish to purchase hosting through us.
C. Security
Please don't underestimate the security of your Web site. "Then I'll just restore a backup," is not security. If your site processes any data at all, you are obviously - morally and legally - obligated to protect it, but anyway, you want to prevent your site from being hacked.
What does good security entail?
- SSL certificate: a Secure Sockets Layer encrypts (sensitive) information between a site and the visitor. Every modern site needs an SSL certificate to be trustworthy, to protect data (even something as simple as a contact form) and to contribute to your findability. The last thing you want is for people to get a warning from their browser that your site is untrustworthy and click away, startled. The costs are usually around 50 - 100 euros per year, but can vary depending on your host and your needs. Do it, though.
- Good hosting: a good host, which maintains its servers impeccably, and where your website does not share space with unreliable, poorly maintained sites, is indispensable for security. See above.
- An important part of good hosting is backups. Under no circumstances assume that your host will make them! Or that you can access them at no extra charge. We have experienced many times when a hosting party "charges" a not lenient fee to have a backup restored. Or that you have to wait a few days for it. That's the last thing you want when your site is down.
Important questions to ask a hosting company:
- How often is my site backed up? The answer should be at least once a day, for web shops preferably every hour or real-time.
- What time is the backup run? The answer should be: at night.
- How far do the backups go back? The answer should be at least 2 weeks.
- What will it cost me if I want to have a backup restored? The answer should be: of course we will arrange this free of charge.
By the way, we recommend that you make your own backups as well, so you don't have to listen to your host's waiting music for an hour or sit with your hands in your hair because this kind of thing always happens on Friday night at 10 p.m., when everything is closed. Unless you have an easily accessible host with an emergency help desk. But even then, an extra backup is worth considering.
With an additional plugin like Wordfence keeps your site completely secure. There's a free version that already does a lot, but the $119/year paid version stops hackers (and bots), you can manually add IP addresses to the blacklist, you get emails with alerts when the attack rate increases, if someone has logged into the site, and you can set and view mega things. The paid version of this plugin reacts a lot faster (real-time) to unsafe situations. Depending on how important keeping your site secure is, this is really recommended.
D. WordPress theme
A great advantage of working with WordPress is the huge variety of themes available. And yet -- and yet -- we prefer to work with a handful of themes. Because they are always updated (yes, even a theme needs regular updates to stay compatible with the software/plugins used), because there are a huge number of possibilities within the theme and because we know the theme inside out. Works nice and fast.
Many themes are free, such as Hello Elementor (specifically for Elementor), Ollie (specifically for Full Site Editing = FSE) and Astra. If you want to switch to the paid versions of these themes, for example, because your site is growing, you should think about 50 to 200 euros per year.
A good theme into which you can implement (almost) all your wishes for the look&feel, and which grows with your business, is the foundation of any site. Switching to a different theme at a later date is certainly possible, but often involves a lot of piling on.
You can also go for the default WordPress builder Block Editor in combination with a default theme. Your theme will then largely determine the layout of your website, giving you much less freedom. We do not recommend this. You choose a new site for a reason!
The Block editor in combination with an FSE theme gives you maximum freedom, but also requires more knowledge. Not for everyone.
There are several page builders such as Elementor, Divi, Oxygen and Bricks, all of which come with their own costs and their own themes.
We ourselves currentlywork with the Full Site Editor. The builder, in combination with a good theme, in our view offers all the freedom you need to build a good site.
E. Plugin
Plugins: many plugins use a "fremium model." The basic functionalities are free, but if you want more, you have to buy the premium version, at very different costs.
Most paid plugins we see are for forms, SEO, email marketing and optimization. Some plugins charge a one-time fee (lifelong), but others charge annual recurring fees. Pay close attention to this when purchasing a plugin!
These are our must-haves:
- Gravity Forms: for custom forms.
- Yoast: the most widely used SEO plugin (from Dutch founder Joost de Valk).
- Perfmatters: for better performance.
- Shortpixel: for image, CSS and JS optimization.
- Images to WebP: for automatically converting images.
- Mailgun: for your email marketing.
When choosing a plugin, paid or free, pay attention to this:
- When was the plugin last updated? In itself, it is not a disaster if it has been a while, because something that works well does not need an update very often, but it does say something.
- Is the plugin compatible with the latest WordPress version? This information is more important than the latest update.
- What languages is this plugin available in? Is a Dutch version important to you? Then you can look it up here. Is there no Dutch version? Then make sure you can translate/customize the parts manually or use another plugin for this.
- What is the cost of premium and is it charged annually or once?
- Choose wisely from more than 58,000 WordPress plugins. Compare extensively on functionalities, read reviews and if you really can't figure it out, you can always ask us for advice.
F. Website maintenance
Website maintenance: sure, you can hit the update button yourself from time to time, but do you know what to do if there are compatibility issues and your site is down? Possibly not. Without wishing to underestimate you, we often see it go wrong in practice.
Ask a specialized party to keep a close eye on your site and make those extra backups.
Costs: a maintenance subscription can vary considerably and depends on your needs. Daily, weekly or monthly updates, extra backups, website or webshop, it all adds up. Depending on the provider, you pay monthly, quarterly or annually. On average, you should think about € 50 per month for an average website and € 100 per month for an average web shop.
G. SEO and SEA
SEO and SEA are optional. How important is it for you to be visible in Google search results? And how important is it really for your business? How high do you want to get and what is realistic given your activities and budget?
You can throw endless money at SEO and SEA. But be realistic in your expectations. Patience and budget, those 2 things you need. And third: someone who is knowledgeable about SEO.
We can't say anything about the cost here because that really depends entirely on your needs. In any case, the Yoast plugin is a free base. So is WordPress itself. And a good copywriter will also get you a long way.
A realistic example
We often see that only the cost of having a website built is considered and the monthly costs are forgotten. When the costs become too high, plugins licenses are cancelled or maintenance is stopped. This affects the performance and security of your site. Therefore, we think it is important to create a realistic picture in advance.
If you were to take care of everything yourself:
- Domain: €1.50 per month converted,
- Hosting: €30 per month,
- Ollie Pro: €5.25 per month converted,
- Kadence Blocks Pro: €7 per month converted,
- Gravity Forms: €4.40 per month converted,
- Perfmatters: €2 per month converted,
- Shortpixel: €0.75 per month converted,
- Maintenance: €55 per month.
Total: 105.90 euros per month
By the way, if he wanted to arrange the theme and plugins through us, we came to €86.50 per month, because the theme and the above plugins are included with us in the maintenance subscription.
Key findings and advice as you start working with WordPress
We love WordPress and most likely always will, unless very crazy things happen. Within this most famous and widely used CMS, the possibilities are endless. No 2 sites we create are the same.
These are our main findings and advice if you are going to work with WordPress:
- Write down over a long period of time what features you want and need for your new site so you can search for the right solutions with the best value. Or let us do that for you, lol. That's what we're here for. Take a very critical look at your old site for a month or two when working with it and ask your customers/employees/colleagues: what are you missing?
- Distinguish between the short term and the long term. Just quickly picking a (cheap) plugin may be a quick solution to an emerging problem, but if you're then stuck for a year with something that doesn't fit your needs anyway, it's still a waste of money. Plus all the time it took to set up the software, of course. A shame!
- Think carefully about how you want to build and make sure your choices are compatible with this.
- Choose a hosting provider that specializes in WordPress and look carefully to see if the packages offered fit the growth you anticipate over the next 5 years.
- Of course, building a website is not a stand-alone step. To best reach your target audience, you'll obviously also employ SEO (and perhaps SEA), social media and email marketing. So make sure that marketing mix is well integrated into your new website.
Good luck!