A custom WordPress website for a small-to-mid-size company typically costs €3,000–€15,000 in 2026, depending on scope. A simple professional brochure site sits at the lower end; a site with e-commerce, integrations, or automation sits at the upper end — and complex builds can exceed €25,000. Agencies charge roughly 2–3× these figures for comparable work.
That’s the short answer. Here’s how to know where your project falls — and where the money actually goes.
WordPress website cost breakdown by project type
| Project type | Typical range (senior freelancer) | Typical agency range |
|---|---|---|
| Professional brochure site (5–10 pages) | €3,000–€6,000 | €8,000–€20,000 |
| Business site + blog + lead generation | €5,000–€10,000 | €15,000–€35,000 |
| WooCommerce store | €7,000–€18,000 | €20,000–€60,000 |
| Site + automation (payments, CRM, email flows) | €8,000–€20,000 | €25,000–€70,000 |
| Membership / programme / booking platform | €10,000–€25,000 | €30,000–€80,000 |
What actually drives the price
1. Custom design vs. premium theme. A tailored design adds €2,000–€5,000 over a customized premium theme. For most companies under 200 employees, a heavily customized quality theme delivers 90% of the value.
2. Integrations. Every system the site must talk to – Stripe, your CRM, your email platform, booking software – adds build and testing time. A typical payments + email automation layer (e.g., Stripe → Make.com → Brevo) adds €1,500-€4,000 but routinely saves hours of weekly manual work. This is usually the highest-ROI line item in the budget.
3. Content migration. Moving 20 pages is trivial. Moving 500 posts with preserved SEO is not – budget €500–€2,500 depending on volume.
4. SEO foundation. Proper technical SEO at build time (schema, site architecture, Core Web Vitals, metadata) adds €1,000–€3,000. Retrofitting it later costs more and you lose the ranking time in between.
5. Who you hire. The same scope priced three ways: offshore team (cheapest upfront, highest rework risk), senior freelancer (best value-to-quality for mid-size companies), agency (highest price; worth it mainly when you need a large multi-disciplinary team).
Ongoing costs people forget
- Hosting: €20-€100/month for quality managed WordPress hosting.
- Plugin licenses: €200-€600/year for a typical professional stack.
- Maintenance/retainer: €150-€1,500/month depending on how actively the site evolves. A site nobody maintains degrades in security, speed, and rankings.
Red flags when comparing quotes
- A quote with no discovery questions — they’re pricing a template, not your project.
- “Unlimited revisions” — signals the scope was never defined.
- No mention of speed, schema, or SEO in the proposal.
- A price that’s 70% below the others. You’ll pay the difference in rework.
Why do WordPress quotes vary so much for the same brief?
Why do WordPress quotes vary so much for the same brief? Because “a website” hides 90% of the scope: integrations, content volume, SEO, performance targets, and who’s responsible for what. Two quotes can differ 5× and both be honest — they’re pricing different deliverables.
Is WordPress still the right choice for a mid-size company in 2026?
For content-driven and lead-generation sites, yes — it remains the most flexible, ownable platform with the lowest vendor lock-in. The cases to look elsewhere: pure web apps (custom development) or very simple sites a founder will edit (website builders).
How long does a custom WordPress build take?
A brochure site: 3–5 weeks. A site with e-commerce or automation: 6–12 weeks. The most common delay is content not being ready — not development.
Can I start smaller?
Yes — the smartest sequence for most companies is a fixed-price audit of the current site first, then a scoped build. You spend a little to find out exactly what’s worth spending on.
