Ask any small-business owner what their WordPress site costs and they will tell you the hosting bill. Twenty bucks, maybe forty. That is the number on the invoice, so that is the number that comes to mind.
It is not the number that matters.
A live WordPress site is a piece of software, and software costs you time. Every plugin has its own update cycle. Every theme has its own bugs. Every page builder ships a breaking change a couple of times a year. Hosting bumps the PHP version and a plugin that has not been touched since 2022 quietly stops working.
You do not run software. You run a business. But you keep running this software anyway, because the alternative is a rebuild, and a rebuild costs money you do not want to spend.
Where the money actually goes
A typical 10 to 20 page brochure site, the kind a clinic or a regional business runs, costs roughly this much in a year:
- Hosting and SSL. $200 to $500.
- Premium theme and plugin licences (forms, security, backup, SEO). $250 to $750.
- Your time on updates and triage, two hours a fortnight at any value you put on your own hour. Conservatively $1,500.
- The developer you ring when something breaks badly. Once or twice a year, $400 to $1,500 a call.
- The rebuild you book every few years when the page builder is two generations behind. $4,000 to $15,000, amortised over four years.
Even on the kind end of those numbers, a small WordPress site is a $3,000-a-year operation. The hosting bill was always the small line.
What you are paying for
You are paying for flexibility you do not use. WordPress runs a third of the internet because it can do anything, and the price of “can do anything” is the maintenance load of a system that can do anything. For a site that shows your services, lists your hours, and has a contact form, you are paying tax on capabilities you will never touch.
The other number
WPGone charges $19 a month. That covers hosting, security, and every change you email us. No plugin updates because there are no plugins. No PHP upgrades because there is no PHP. No staging site to rebuild because there is no staging. The site loads in under a second on a phone and stays that way without anyone doing anything.
Twelve months of $19 is $228. Most clients save that in the first quarter, just on the time they used to spend keeping the lights on.
Get a free preview of what your site looks like rebuilt. We do not invoice you until you have seen it.