How much do WordPress websites cost — and what’s included in the price?

A WordPress website created for a small Finnish business typically costs between 700 and 3,000 euros as a one-off fee, with maintenance costing 20–60 euros per month. The same work from a digital agency costs several times as much. This article explains where the difference comes from, what should be included in the monthly fee, and what is the one contract clause you should check before signing.

Short answer

Finnish creators publish their prices quite openly. When these are collated, the price ranges look something like this:

Implementation method	One-off payment	Monthly
Build your own website using the website builder	0 €	10–30 €
Freelancer or sole trader	700–3 000 €	20–60 €
Digital agency	3 000–10 000 €	50–300 €
Customised, integrations	10 000 € →	varies

These figures have been published by Finnish companies themselves; they are not based on market research. No one in Finland collects statistics on what websites actually cost — so all price figures on this topic, including ours, are published price lists rather than measured averages. It’s worth bearing this in mind when you see a specific figure somewhere.

Why does the same website cost €700 and €8,000?

The difference usually lies not in the quality, but in how many people are involved in the work. At a digital agency, a project involves a sales representative, a project manager, a designer and a coder, and each person’s hours are billed. With a one-person business, the same work is done just once.

The rest of the difference can be explained by four factors, and it’s worth asking about these when requesting a quote:

• A purchased theme or a custom-built one. A ready-made theme costs €50–80 and saves you days of work. It also comes with code that your site doesn’t use, and ties you to the theme creator’s update schedule.
• Who writes the content? This is usually the point where the project gets held up. If the quote states ‘the client provides the content’, the price is lower but the work is down to you.
• How many plugins are installed? Each plugin consists of code that is maintained — or not maintained — by someone else. Of the 11,334 vulnerabilities in WordPress in 2025, 91 per cent were in plugins — six were in the core. See WordPress vulnerabilities.
• Should mobile be part of the design, or should we simply scale down the desktop version? The latter is quicker and displays immediately on a mobile phone.

That one contract clause you should check

Some providers sell websites with no set-up fee, or for a very small set-up fee, and recoup the cost of building the site through monthly payments. This isn’t a scam — building a website is a job, and it costs money. But there are two things that are worth knowing in advance:

• The contract term is binding, typically 24–48 months. Termination before the end of the term incurs a charge for the remaining months.
• The website rarely comes with you when you move on. If it’s built on the provider’s own platform, when the contract ends, all you’re left with are the text and images — not the website itself.

So ask two questions before signing: how long is the contract term, and what do I get if I cancel? If the answer to the latter is unclear, that’s your answer.

What should be included in the monthly fee?

It’s easy to collect a monthly payment without having to ask what it’s for. These are the things that someone has to do anyway — if they aren’t included, they’re your responsibility:

What	What happens if it’s missing?
Server and domain name	The website is not online
SSL certificate	The browser warns the visitor
Updates to WordPress and plugins	A known vulnerability remains unpatched
Daily backups	Once there’s been a breach or an error, there’s no going back
Emails with your own domain name	Enquiries are sent to a Gmail address
Minor changes to the content	Every text change is invoiced separately

It’s particularly worth asking for a specific figure regarding the latter: how many hours of changes are included in the monthly fee? Without a figure, the answer is effectively zero.

What we charge

Our prices are displayed on the website, so we can state them clearly here too:

Package	Home	Month
A single page (1–3 pages)	990 €	€29 per month
Homepages (5–12 pages)	1 490 €	€39 per month
Online shop (≤ 100 products)	from €2,900	€69 per month

All prices are exclusive of VAT (0%). The development cost is covered by the initial payment, so there is no need to reclaim it during the contract period: there is no fixed contract term and the notice period is three months. The website is built on WordPress and can be transferred elsewhere, including away from us.

The total costs of an online shop, including payment processing, are calculated separately in the article ‘WooCommerce or Shopify: the cost of an online shop in Finland’.

When is the cheapest option the right one?

We’re not saying that a designer is always needed. Do it yourself if all of the following apply:

• The site is essentially a business card: what you do, where you are and who to contact
• You don’t wait for the website to generate enquiries; instead, customers come from elsewhere
• You’ve got a few evenings to learn how to use the tool
• You do not sell online, nor do you collect personal data via a form

If, on the other hand, you expect the website to generate enquiries, the price ceases to be a cost and becomes an investment whose return can be measured. In that case, the right question isn’t ‘which is the cheapest?’ but ‘how many enquiries will this generate per year?’.

In demand

Is WordPress free?

The software is free and open source. You pay for the server, the domain name, the theme and the work involved. The confusion arises because wordpress.com is a paid service and wordpress.org is the free software — the same name, two different products.

How much does website maintenance cost per year?

The essential costs alone — server, domain name and certificate — amount to around €100–250 per year for a small website. When you factor in updates, backups and support, the cost rises to between €250 and €700. With us, €39 per month – or €468 per year – covers all of this, plus one hour of changes per month.

Is it cheaper to update an existing website than to build a new one?

This is often possible, and it’s worth checking first. If the site is built on WordPress, its structure is sound and the problem lies with the design or speed, fixing it is typically cheaper than rebuilding it. We don’t start by suggesting a new site — we first check whether the current framework is still viable.

Why do quotes differ by thousands of euros?

Usually because they aren’t part of the same project. Ask each one for the same list: how many pages, who will write the content, how many add-ons, does mobile design form part of the package, what the monthly fee covers in terms of hours, and how long the contract period is. Once these details are recorded, the quotes become comparable — and the price difference often narrows considerably.