Why your WordPress site costs more than you think
“WordPress is free.” That’s the first thing you hear. And it’s true — the software itself costs nothing. But running a WordPress site is like adopting a “free” puppy: the acquisition is free, but the vet bills, the food, the training and the chewed-up furniture are not.
The visible costs
Let’s start with what you pay regardless:
- Hosting: €5 to €30 per month for decent hosting. Cheaper options are slow and unreliable.
- Domain name: €10 to €15 per year.
- Premium theme: €50 to €200 one-off (but often with annual licence fees for updates).
- Plugins: The average business WordPress site runs on 6 to 12 paid plugins. Count on €200 to €600 per year in licences.
Total visible: €500 to €1,500 per year. That’s already considerably more than “free.”
The invisible costs
But the real costs aren’t in the invoices. They’re in your time and your risk:
Updates
WordPress, your theme and your plugins must be continuously updated. Not once a year — every week. A missed update is an open door for hackers. But an update can also break your site: plugin A isn’t compatible with the new version of plugin B, and suddenly your contact form stops working.
Professional WordPress maintenance packages cost €50 to €200 per month. Do it yourself, and you’re spending a minimum of 2 to 4 hours per month on updates, checks and resolving conflicts.
Security
In 2025, thousands of security vulnerabilities were discovered within the WordPress ecosystem. A full 91% of those vulnerabilities weren’t in WordPress itself, but in the plugins business owners add. (Patchstack, 2026)
A hacked site means: downtime, reputational damage, potentially a data breach notification to the authorities, and recovery costs (€500 to €2,000 with a professional).
Speed
WordPress is inherently slow. Every page is reassembled from a database, a theme and dozens of plugins with every visit. Without caching, optimisation and a good host, the average WordPress site loads in 4 to 8 seconds on mobile.
And every second of delay costs you 7% in conversions. (Colorlib, 2026)
Downtime
Cheap hosting goes down. Plugin conflicts break your site. Updates go wrong. The average small WordPress site experiences unexpected downtime multiple times per year. Every time your site is offline, you lose visitors, trust and potential clients.
The time investment
Let’s make it concrete. A business owner managing their own WordPress site spends on average:
- Updates and maintenance: 2–4 hours/month
- Troubleshooting (conflicts, errors, hacks): 2–6 hours/month
- Adjusting and publishing content: 2–4 hours/month
- Monitoring security: 1–2 hours/month
Total: 7 to 16 hours per month. At an hourly rate of €50, that’s €350 to €800 per month of your own time. Per year: €4,200 to €9,600.
For a website.
The real cost over 3 years
| Cost item | Per year | Over 3 years |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting + domain | €200–€400 | €600–€1,200 |
| Plugin licences | €200–€600 | €600–€1,800 |
| Theme + updates | €50–€100 | €150–€300 |
| Own time (conservative) | €4,200–€9,600 | €12,600–€28,800 |
| Security incidents | €0–€2,000 | €0–€6,000 |
| Total | €4,650–€12,700 | €13,950–€38,100 |
And you still have a site that’s slow, vulnerable, and costs you hours every month.
The alternative
A static website has no database, no plugins, no updates that conflict. There’s nothing to hack, nothing to update, nothing that can break.
It’s the difference between an old car that needs to go to the garage every week for software updates, and a brand-new, perfectly tuned car you just get in and drive. Both get you from A to B. But one costs you a fortune in maintenance, and the other costs you nothing after purchase.
A professional static site is built once, built well. After that, it runs — fast, secure and without hassle. Month after month. Year after year.
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