How much does it cost to hire a WordPress Developer?


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Most businesses and eCommerce store owners are afraid to hire a WordPress developer because they believe that hiring a WordPress developer will cost an arm and a leg. This is as far from the truth as it can be. In fact, the cost to hire a WordPress developer depends on multiple factors including his skills and years of experience in the field.

In this article, we are going to bust the myth of the high costs of hiring a WordPress developer and tell a more accurate picture of the WordPress development budget, and WordPress developer hourly rates for entry-level and senior levels.

Table of Contents

WordPress Developer Costs

WordPress is a free, open-source and one of the most popular content management systems. That means it doesn’t cost you any money to download and use the software itself. And there is no licensing fee for WordPress.

And if you want to do it yourself, you can certainly get online support, read online articles, watch videos and build yourself too. However, if you are time-poor and looking for a WordPress developer to build it for you, it will cost you money.

The cost of a website developer depends on many factors. If you want to use a theme, that can be cost-effective but it won’t give you the customised outcome based on your goals and objectives.

On the other side, if you are looking to build a custom website for your business and don’t want to compromise on quality, that will cost you anywhere from $7k to $20k in Australia. Most WordPress freelancers are on the lowest end of the price, however, they won’t be able to deliver end-to-end projects like designing UX/UI to custom development. You will find WordPress developers being specialists in one thing or jack of all.

And the agencies are on the mid-to-high end and they have all the expertise you need to build your project in a professional way from branding, UX/UI, copywriting, and development to ongoing tech support.

Freelance WordPress Developer Hourly Rate in Australia

On average, a WordPress developer costs from $55 to $250 per hour in Australia. Junior Freelance WordPress Developers rates in Australia somewhere from $55 to $80 depending on their skills. While senior WordPress developers charge from $150 to $250 depending on the type of work they are doing for your website.

Generally, it all comes down to the problem you are trying to solve.

If you are trying to solve simple WordPress issues, then you can find the right Freelance WordPress Developer or WordPress Development Agency that can help you on an ad-hoc basis to resolve it quickly. That won’t cost you much.

On the other side, if you are looking to build a new custom website or rebuild your existing website, it can cost you from $7000 to $20000. E-commerce websites can cost you more because of their complexities and the nature of work.

Full-time WordPress Developer Charges in Australia

If you are looking to hire a full-time WordPress developer for your business, the first thing you need to consider is the clarity of the role. Most of the WordPress developers who are good at the backend and programming might not be able to do UI and front-end dev work. General web development salaries start from around $40k.

So, you need to find out what role you are looking for. If you are looking for a full-stack developer who can do everything for your business, first, it’s hard to find them. Second, WordPress developer work as freelance at that point. Third, if you are able to find it, you need to be clear with the expectations. Most of them can cost you from $150k to $200k per year for a full-time role.

Looking for WordPress development services in Australia? We offer web design services in Adelaide, Canberra, Blue Mountains, Penrith, Hobart – Tasmania and all other locations in Australia.

Factors Affecting Cost to Hire WordPress Developers

The WordPress development cost will depend on many factors like the complexities of your project and urgency. If you are looking to build a new website on WordPress, most developers will give you a fixed cost to build your site or online store.

If you are looking for maintenance and support work for your websites, most WordPress developers and dev agencies work on a retainer model. On this, the freelance WordPress developer charges you a fixed fee every month with a fixed amount of development hours to do your work.

Here are a few questions that will help you think about and compare the cost:

  • Are you looking for a fixed quote or an hourly rate?
  • Do you have a fixed budget for your project or flexible?
  • Is it ongoing work or ad-hoc support?
  • Is it a website development from scratch or is it regular site maintenance?
  • Is it a freelancer or a remote worker or a local WordPress development agency?
  • What is the deadline or the turnaround time for the project?
  • Is the WordPress development task urgent?

Hope that gives you an idea about the fee of a WordPress developer. If it’s still confusing for you, please reach out to our WordPress experts to discuss your needs and get clarity around the fees.

Read our detailed WordPress Maintenance guide to know about what it involves to maintain and run your website smoothly.

Why hire a WordPress Developer?

If you are creating your website on WordPress for the first time, there are many challenges that you will have to go through. WordPress out-of-the-box is not a launch-worthy platform. You will have to add custom themes, better design, a proper marketing funnel, and lots of appealing content before it is ready for the market.

Unfortunately, this requires some level of web development process ideas, and if you are not a WordPress developer, you will have to find one.

Before you get into the nitty gritty of cost and the type of developer you need, you want to be sure whether you really need to hire a WordPress developer in the first place. I guess there are a few situations.

First, let’s say you build the site yourself, and now you are stuck at the technical complexities and need help. If that’s the case, yes it’s a good idea to hire a developer to meet your requirements.

Second, you want to build a new website and don’t know how. It’s good to speak with local WordPress professionals to find out how they work, and what they charge so you are not doing the guesswork.

Third, you have a website and need help with the maintenance and support, and may be an overhaul. You are in a good position. It’s not a critical situation so you can take your time and find the right partner who can help you for the long-term growth of your business.

Last situation, your site is running fine. If everything seems running fine, it’s a bit confusing situation. However, we recommend finding a WordPress developer and speaking with them to test out the site and plugins and stuff to make sure they are running fine in the background. And it’s always good to have a network with someone who you might need in the future.

Whatever situation you are in, if you are running a website on WordPress, it’s highly recommended that you have someone expert on your side who can help you when needed.

How to hire a WordPress Developer?

If you have been looking to find WordPress experts in Australia, there are many places you can search for i.e. freelancing sites, Google, LinkedIn, Facebook Groups and WordPress agencies. There are many staffing agencies that also offer WordPress Developer outsourcing. However, based on our experience, we recommend using a WordPress development agency like WP Creative that specialises in WordPress and can not only offer a backend developer but also a team of dedicated WordPress developers.

WordPress Themes

You can hire WordPress developers through the following ways.

  1. Freelance hiring websites
  2. B2b rating platforms
  3. Agency Websites
  4. Recommendations

If you are hiring a dedicated WordPress developer for the first time, it is important to ask for recommendations from top WordPress developers in your network. This way you can hire developers that your network has already worked with.

I would also like to warn you that there are many scammers on the internet who work as WordPress developers but are only after your money.

So, when hiring top WordPress developers for your business, make sure that you ask them about:

  1. Past Clients
  2. Website Development Portfolio
  3. Services
  4. Cost of each project
  5. Client Testimonials

Hire a WordPress Development Team

If you are ready to scale your business and need help with all sorts of technical skills to ramp up your marketing campaigns, it’s a good idea to build a web team inhouse that includes, a UX/UI designer, a front-end developer, a backend WordPress developer, QA tester, System admin and Project managers.

But bear in mind, building a team of web army costs you a lot. Another option you can consider is hiring a dedicated team using a WordPress Development agency like WP Creative for a fraction of the cost. Please feel free to give us a call to discuss your needs if you are looking to hire WordPress developer in Melbourne?

Hire a Freelance WordPress Developer

If you have been thinking to try out freelancers work, you can look for Codeable, Toptal or Upwork platforms. They offer freelance web development at a cheap rate. However, you need to do due diligence yourself and choose the right one for you. It’s an expensive exercise and can cost you a lot of time and resources.

Common WordPress Freelancer hiring website platforms in Australia:

  1. Upwork Australia
  2. Freelancer.com
  3. Codeable.io
  4. Toptal
  5. Airtasker
  6. HiPages

Important Questions to Ask Before Hiring WordPress Developer

The problem with many website owners today is that they don’t know what questions to ask the WordPress site developers. There are millions of WordPress developers available in the market today, each with a varying degree of experience. Each of these developers has a portfolio and a tariff plan. However, it is difficult to choose any of them and for obvious reasons.

First of all, how will one know if these WordPress developers are experienced? And, if they offer the same services and for a lower price? These are just some questions that you need to ask upfront before hiring any WordPress developer for business.

To help you ask actual questions from your potential WordPress developers, we have created a complete list. Let’s go through the whole list and see how and what type of questions you should ask.

1. How much experience do you have in creating WordPress websites?

This is the most important question anyone should ask a WordPress developer. You need to understand that WordPress is changing continuously. Developers who are creating websites for a good amount of time in WordPress platforms have the experience to make core changes to the theme for customisations.

If the developer you are hiring has only a couple of years of experience, find out if they work on core customisations before you hire them. The best way to go about it is to check out their portfolios. They should have worked on different niches, industries, and website types such as blogs, affiliate websites, WooCommerce stores, and headless WordPress.

You can also check out the portfolios to see what type of websites they have designed in the past. If they don’t have any significant websites, it is better you look for other options.

2. Do you offer ongoing support and maintenance?

Another critical question to ask the WordPress developers you want to hire is the support and WordPress maintenance services they offer. If you are hiring a freelancer, they will be offering ongoing support and maintenance services for a price. Usually, the price is the number of hours they spend on your project.

However, agencies don’t have a fixed price when it comes to ongoing support and maintenance. Often, these charges are part of the total plan they quote for the project. So, ongoing support and maintenance are a given.

It is still a good practice to ensure that you get ongoing support and maintenance before you hire the freelancer/agency for your WordPress project.

3. Can you optimise the website for performance?

Performance is one of the major factors for site performance in 2021. Google has updated Core Web Vitals with better features to check the site performance and user experience. They are also part of the Google search ranking algorithm. Therefore, indirectly they play a crucial role in what pages rank higher and what pages don’t.

Most WordPress developers offer website performance optimisation services. You need to ask the developers what checks they have in place to ensure that the website is properly optimised for search results. They should use speed testing tools like GTMetrix, Google Page Speed tool, and various others to ensure that the site performance remains optimal.

4. Do you offer a WordPress Theme customisation service?

There are two types of WordPress developers. The first type only offers page building services. They will use a page builder plugin to create your website pages or any specific landing page just like you want. The second type of WordPress development service includes complete theme customisation from scratch. These types of developers work closely with designers to create a design from scratch and implement it on the website. These designers can create any design that the client has approved and get them coded as a theme on the WordPress website.

Searching for a reliable WordPress web design services in Hobart Tasmania.

Later, when the clients want changes to the theme, the theme is customised by the developers. Not all WordPress developers offer theme customisation services from scratch and that is because they are inexperienced in theme or core WordPress customisation. It is better to get services from only those WordPress developers that offer complete theme customisation services.

5. Do you follow the latest WordPress coding standards?

Good WordPress developers correctly follow WordPress coding standards. WordPress provides a coding standard by default for its developers so that they can minimise bugs, errors, and web development crashes on-site. WordPress developers need to keep the code clean, semantic, and follow the latest technology standards. This will allow them to pass W3C validation for their code. If the developers don’t provide W3C validation for their codes, you can ask them to do so.

W3C validation ensures that the site code is properly written and there are no major glitches in the code that can lead to problems in the future.

Bonus Question: Do you offer site or coding backup by default?

Most WordPress developers offer a post-development service of three to six months to ensure that the website works properly. Three months is ample time for a WordPress business owner to find out if their website is bug-free. A service that is also part of the post-development service plan is a coding backup. This ensures that even if cyber criminals try to sabotage the service, digital business owners can restore their coding infrastructure by default.

You need to ask your developer if they offer a backup service for the code they have written and published on the website. If not, ask them to offer this service for the first three months within the development plan that you are considering.

When hiring WordPress developers for your business, don’t settle for a single one. Interview a few to see their working tactics, responsibilities, prices, and professionalism.

Similarly, don’t only search for freelancers but also search for WordPress development agencies that can work on your business. This way, you will have more options to choose from.

WordPress Website Design Cost

As we have discussed earlier the cost of WordPress website development varies, let’s learn in detail about the total site costs for each type of website. This outline will give you exactly what you need to allocate for WordPress website development costs.

  • Low-budget WordPress Website Cost

Low-budget websites like blogs and affiliate websites don’t cost a lot. You can even create one yourself by following YouTube videos or reading online articles.

However, if you want to hire a WordPress developer, the cost will be around $5,000-10,000 for a brochure website that is specifically designed for you. If you need additional landing pages or extra functionalities for website marketing campaigns or eCommerce, the cost can be a lot higher.

  • Established Business WordPress Website Cost

Many businesses use WordPress to create their WordPress websites. Most small business WordPress websites usually have a homepage with banners and folds that tell about the different services the business offers. Similarly, each service page has a form where the business can squeeze leads from incoming visitors. If they have case studies and use case pages, the design of these pages can vary from the homepage.

These small business websites also have a blog where they add blogs, press releases, and other relevant content to boost organic marketing efforts. Since all pages are made using page builders, the cost of a small business website can be high. On average, the cost of a small business website is somewhere between $7,000 to $15,000. These websites also require the integration of email marketing software or a CRM, premium forms, and paid page builders and themes.

  • Fully-Featured WordPress Website Cost

If you plan to create a fully-featured WordPress site, like a news website or membership site, the cost would be from $10,000 to $20,000 depending on the type of features needed in the website.

  • WordPress eCommerce Website Cost

WordPress eCommerce website development services are costly because they require a lot of store integrations like payment, inventory, checkout processes, scalability, better landing pages, and faster performance. A WordPress developer has to focus on all these things when they are working on an eCommerce website of this scale. Building WooCommerce-based websites also requires custom development, a checkout page, payment gateway integration, email automation, and quality landing page.

The cost of a basic WordPress-based eCommerce website can be between $10,000 to $30,000.

  • Custom WordPress Website Cost

A custom WordPress costs more than theme-based websites because it needs to be made from scratch and involves a developer, designer, QA tester and even a project manager.

In most cases, custom WordPress development projects are not handled by a single WordPress developer but by a WordPress development agency that has a designer and a developer onboard.

Customised websites first need to be designed and then the design needs to be approved by the client. Once the design is approved, the WordPress designer creates a theme for the website and customises it properly. All this requires manual programming which takes a lot more time in comparison with installing a ready-made WordPress theme.

That is why the cost of a custom WordPress site can be somewhere between $10,000 to $40,000. The cost can go even higher if the project is complex and requires more duration to complete.

Are you looking for a WordPress developers in Brisbane, Queensland, please reach out to one of our WordPress specialists. We offer website design and development in Brisbane and Australia-wide.

Factors Affecting WordPress Website Design Cost

Similarly, the cost of the WordPress developer will also depend on the project that they are working on. A blogging WordPress project will cost a lot less than an eCommerce store. Similarly, an eCommerce store for small businesses will cost less while an eCommerce store marketplace based on WooCommerce will cost a lot more.

Here are some factors that can directly impact the cost of a WordPress development project.

Need WordPress Support?

Fixed Rate vs. Hourly Project

Fixed-rate projects usually have a one-time cost attached to them. This cost can be paid at once or in milestones.

On the other hand, the hourly rate projects will be paid on a weekly basis to the WordPress developers.

The cost of a fixed-rate project can vary from $5,000 to $20,000 for basic projects and $10,000 to $50,000 for an eCommerce store.

Similarly, the cost of WordPress hourly pay projects is from $55 to $250 depending on the site requirements.

cost to hire a WordPress Developer
How much does it cost to hire a WordPress Developer in Australia?

Freelancer or Inhouse Developer

Similarly, In-house and freelance developers working on WordPress development projects have different rates, as you can imagine. Freelance WordPress developers work on a one-time gig or a single project. They charge on an hourly basis or on a fixed rate.

In-house developers work on a contract or permanent basis that can last for a few months or even years. The pay rate for in-house contract developers is usually weekly or monthly basis. And there is a commitment for you to employ an in-house developer.

From the outside, an in-house developer can look cost-effective if you have a long-term project. But most of the time, you need multiple resources to do a job. For example, a freelance WordPress developer may not be able to solve UX/UI issues or design your website and perform QA testing or manage the project altogether. So, you may need to find other talents at the same time.

It all comes down to what you want to do and how you want to get it done. We recommend reaching out to a freelance WordPress developer or dev agency like us to discuss your need and find the best options out there in the market.

Deadlines

Deadlines also directly impact the WordPress development project. If a project is needed urgently, WordPress developers will charge more for building website.

In general, WordPress developer cost can even increase by 50% if the deadline is in just a few days. And some development agencies don’t charge any additional fee as they might have resources available to take on the new project.

WordPress Pricing

WordPress has two aspects of it. One is WordPress.com which is more like a DIY platform where you can build websites on your own like Shopify, Squarespace, Weebly, and Wix. And they will charge you a monthly fee to host your website and provide you with support. And another part is WordPress.org which is a free and open-source version of WordPress.

That’s the most popular Content Management Systems used by business owners, marketers and website developers in the world. To use the free version of WordPress, you can download and install it yourself or hire an expert to build it quickly and professionally.

How much does WordPress CMS cost?

WordPress is completely free if you download it directly from WordPress.org. It’s open source and free. But you will need to pay for the hosting and might need to hire an expert to build a professional website for you. Many businesses, owners and marketers prefer to have a technical partner to assist with this process so they don’t waste a lot of time learning new tools and tricks. If you are looking to hire a WordPress developer to build your site or redesign it, please reach out to us.

If you are looking to build yourself as a DIY, you can directly build on WordPress.com. You can see WordPress.com’s pricing here. The personal plan for WordPress.com starts from $5 per month and they offer CMS platform and hosting for you. If you are looking for the cheapest option without investing too much money at the beginning to build a custom-designed website, WordPress.com is the best option for you.

What’s the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org pricing?

WordPress is a free publishing platform. If you want to download the software and build it yourself, WordPress.org is the place you want to go. You can download the file and host yourself on any hosting platform that supports WordPress. However, if you don’t want to take the hassle and utilise a platform that offers everything, WordPress.com is the right place for you. See WordPress.com and WordPress.org differences written by a WordPress team. Are you still wondering, WordPress.com and WordPress.org: Same or different?

In conclusion, WordPress.org is free software. WordPress.com’s pricing plans start from $5 per month for a personal blog or site and you get free hosting.

Ready to Hire Top WordPress Experts for Your Project?

At WP Creative, we have some of the best WordPress development experts on onboard. Whether you want to get your website developed or want a full-fledged eCommerce store, our experts can get the site developed for you.

Conclusion

Building a website WordPress can be confusing with a lot of costs involved. But it’s not that complicated. It mainly depends on what you are looking for. If you want to build a flexible and custom website, then it’s better to contact a WordPress expert and get pricing upfront. Most WordPress agencies and developers offer free quotes.

Get In Touch Today to Discuss Your WordPress Project


Updated on: 5 September 2022 |


Nirmal Gyanwali, Director of WP Creative

Nirmal Gyanwali

With over 16 years of experience in the web industry, Nirmal has built websites for a wide variety of businesses; from mom n’ pop shops to some of Australia’s leading brands. Nirmal brings his wealth of experience in managing teams to WP Creative along with his wife, Saba.