WordPress Website Build Cost Analysis (Base Cost Breakdown)

At WPlaybook, we create WordPress websites for individual business owners. To celebrate the completion of a recent project—the Ain Clinic website—I’d like to talk about the pure cost involved when a business owner tries to build a WordPress site themselves.

I try to be as accurate as possible when writing blog posts, but sometimes there are errors in the information. If you find one, please comment and I’ll correct it. If you make a purchase using a link on this blog, I may earn a small commission.

Important Points When Creating a WordPress Website

When building a website, the essential components you must have are:

• Domain address (required)
• Hosting cost (required)
• Theme cost (required)
• Paid plugins (optional)

You need to purchase each of these items with real money. Here are some precautions and my personal experiences and thoughts when deciding on these purchases:

Why You Should Purchase Your Own Domain Name

If you’re setting up a website for your personal business, buying a domain name is a must. Your domain is essentially the first impression your customers will have of your brand. While you might hear that some hosting providers offer free domains, the truth is, you rarely find a free domain that perfectly fits your brand or vision. Also, be careful when purchasing—I’ve personally bought domains on impulse only to abandon them later.

• Domain addresses are a must! Use .com. .co.kr is also a no-no. It’s a no-brainer!

Where to Buy a Domain

Many people buy domains through Korean services, but I recommend purchasing from foreign sites like Namecheap. The price difference between Korean and international domain registrars can be as much as twice every year.

For example, when creating the Ain Clinic website, I purchased the domain through Namecheap. The initial cost for the first year was $5.98 (about 8,200 KRW), and the renewal fee is $16.06 per year (around 22,000 KRW).

WordPress Hosting Costs

To build a house, you need to buy the land to put it on. In the WordPress world, the server is that land, and the companies selling it are hosting providers. For building a business website, I recommend two hosting providers. The choice depends on the industry your business belongs to.

When Competition Is Not Fierce

If your business is located in a small provincial city where competition is not intense, you don’t need to invest heavily in hosting. You just need enough space to put your site on! In such cases, I recommend the hosting provider ChemiCloud. There are several reasons for this, but the two main ones are as follows:

• Great value for money
• Low monthly maintenance fee ($4.95 – 6,700 for 3-year contract

  )Polylang placeholder do not modify

However, assuming you’re only paying for one year, that’s $83.4 ($114).

When Competition Is Fierce

For highly competitive fields like dermatology clinics in Seoul’s Gangnam district, you need to invest more in hosting. Server response speed is one of the factors that affect Google ranking. Building a solid foundation from the ground up makes it easier to improve your ranking.

In such cases, I recommend Rocket Hosting. Their performance is excellent, and among premium hosting providers, their pricing is honest. It costs $30 per month (about 41,000 KRW), with no hidden fees, making it easy to anticipate costs. For reference, if you pay annually, you can get it for $25 per month.

For the Ain Clinic website, we used Rocket Hosting, and the total cost for WordPress hosting for one year was $250 (about 342,000 KRW).

Paid WordPress Themes

Although WordPress offers many free themes, I strongly recommend using a paid theme. There are various reasons for this, but the most important one is that free WordPress blogs have limited functionality. For example, a sticky sidebar on the right side of blog posts plays a crucial role as an ad space that visitors can easily see, directly affecting your revenue. Paid themes make it easy to implement such features. (Which directly impacts your earnings, right?)

In my case, I purchased and use the paid Kadence theme. The two themes I considered most seriously were GeneratePress and Kadence, as they are among the lighter WordPress themes.

However, I chose Kadence because it allows easier implementation of complex website functions compared to GeneratePress. For instance, for the Ain Clinic website, it’s important to check visitors’ devices, whether they come from mobile phones or PCs, and Kadence felt much more convenient for designing responsive websites.

For reference, I built the WPlaybook website using both themes. The current website you are seeing is the Kadence version of the WPlaybook website.

• WPlaybook homepage (Kadence version)
• WPlaybook Homepage (Generate Press version) – After two years, we have now closed it down.

Using the Kadence theme costs $116.10 (about 156,000 KRW) per year. It’s more expensive than you might expect, right? But personally, I don’t regret it at all. 😊 Looking at the quality of the Ain Clinic website, don’t you agree? Choosing a good theme shortens the website development time and makes maintenance easier.

Other paid plugins

Here are the paid plugins I use

• SEO plugin (required): Rank Math
• Optional Cache Plugin: FlyingPress
• Optional affiliate link management plugin: Lasso

I will write a separate blog post explaining why I use paid plugins. To summarize briefly:

• Rank Math plugin: the one that made it possible for you to see this article.
• Lasso plugin: a friend who makes beautiful boxes for product recommendations and manages links for you
• FlyingPress plugin: A plugin that speeds up your website, a must for highly competitive homepages.

All of these plugins have free versions available, so you can start with the free version and upgrade to the paid version if you need more features.

I’m currently using the Rank Math plugin for $83.88 per year, the Lasso plugin for $289 per year, and FlyingPress for $60 per year.

Summary of WordPress Website Production Costs

Let’s summarize what we’ve discussed so far.

Basic WordPress Website Production Cost (No plugins, basic hosting)

The most basic WordPress website, without using any plugins or paid themes and with basic hosting, costs about 278,000 KRW per year. This doesn’t seem like a lot for initial WordPress setup costs, mainly because the hosting fees are quite affordable. For a detailed review of the hosting services I use, please refer to my next blog post.

Converted to a monthly cost, it amounts to roughly 23,000 KRW per month.

Premium WordPress Website Production Cost (Paid Plugins, High-End Hosting)

This is the actual monthly operating cost of the Ain Clinic website. Considering the cost of paid plugins, the total WordPress blog cost is 703,000 KRW per year, which breaks down to about 58,000 KRW per month.

Website Performance Update (March 2024)

By using good hosting and optimized SEO, you can secure a high ranking on Google for your business website. In the case of the Ain Clinic website, the Google ranking for the keyword “Geomdan Internal Medicine” started at 13th place and it took about three months to achieve this ranking.

In the case of Ain Clinic located in Geomdan, Incheon, many people naturally visit the website because it ranks #1 on Google when searching for “Geomdan Internal Medicine” (Geomdan Internal Medicine). This brings in customers organically without the need for separate advertising costs. Of course, to maintain this long-term, the quality of the clinic’s services and products must be good.

Closing Remarks

Today, we discussed the costs involved in creating a business website using WordPress. When starting a business, I believe the most important things are having a good product and a website that can effectively sell it. Please consider carefully and make wise choices.