What a WordPress store actually costs to run

WordPress with a commerce plugin is often chosen because it looks cheaper than a hosted platform. Frequently it is. But “free software” is not the same as “free to run”, and the costs land in different places than people expect.

What you actually pay for

Hosting — the one people under-buy

A brochure site runs happily on cheap shared hosting. A store does not. Every product page, cart update and checkout is a database query that cannot be cached the way a static page can. Under-specified hosting shows up as a slow cart, a checkout that times out under load, and admin screens that crawl when you are trying to process orders. Budget for hosting that suits a store rather than the cheapest plan on the page.

Plugins and extensions

The core commerce plugin is free. The things you will want — a decent shipping calculator, a payment gateway for your market, subscriptions, bookings, better search, a backup tool — are frequently paid, usually annually, usually per site. Individually modest, collectively a real line item. Price these before the build, not after.

Domain, SSL and email

Small and predictable. Most hosts include SSL now. Use a proper mailbox rather than a free address on your own domain — it affects deliverability and it affects how you look.

Maintenance

This is the honest one. WordPress updates, plugins update, and occasionally an update breaks something. A store that goes down on a Friday night is a store not taking orders all weekend. Someone has to apply updates, check nothing broke, keep backups, and act when a plugin is abandoned by its author. That is either your time or somebody's invoice — but it is never nothing.

Where the money quietly goes

• Plugin sprawl. Twenty-eight plugins to do the work of eight. Every one is a subscription, a security surface and a speed penalty.
• Themes with everything. Multipurpose themes bundle a page builder, a slider and a dozen features you never use, then charge you in page weight forever.
• Abandoned plugins. A plugin whose author stops updating it becomes a security problem on a timer. Replacing it later costs more than choosing well now.
• No staging site. Testing updates in production is cheap right up until the once it is very expensive.

How it compares to a hosted platform

A hosted platform bundles hosting, security, updates and checkout into a monthly fee. You pay more per month and think about it less. WordPress usually costs less in fees and more in attention. Neither is wrong — the honest question is whether you would rather spend money or time, and whether anyone in your business will actually do the maintenance if you choose the one that requires it.

We have written a fuller comparison in Shopify vs WordPress.

How to keep it low

1. Buy hosting for a store, not for a leaflet.
2. Keep the plugin count deliberately small, and audit it once a year.
3. Choose a lean theme, or have one built, rather than a bundle of features you will never switch on.
4. Put maintenance on a schedule and a budget from day one, instead of discovering it after the first breakage.
5. Keep a staging copy. It is the cheapest insurance in this list.

We build WordPress stores this way — the MK Repairz store is one — and we tell you the running cost before you commit, not after. Get a fixed quote.