How Much Does it Cost to Start a Self-Hosted WordPress Blog?

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Cost to Start a Self-Hosted WordPress Blog
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Everyone knows that hosting your blog can become a costly affair, and the question of cost arises in every new blogger’s mind.

How much is it going to cost to create a self-hosted WordPress blog?

There is no upper limit when it comes to blog investment, and in this guide, I will share the minimum amount you need to spend to create a professional blog that you can proudly share with the world.

How much does it cost to start a WordPress Blog?

With WordPress, you can start a blog with very little money.

The WordPress software is free. You can download it from the WordPress.org page.

Still, there are some other necessary elements that you will have to pay for (such as a domain name and a hosting space). These extra costs will depend on your specific requirements.

You may also choose to invest in customization, SEO, or other factors along the way. These things may also cost money.

If your intent is simply to start a blog on WordPress, you can start with a minimal cost of $60 for unlimited hosting and a free domain with Bluehost hosting. The best part, Bluehost will auto-install WordPress software for you.

Domain Cost for running a WordPress site: $8 every year

The first element you need to shop for is a domain. Having a domain name is like buying property and giving an address for your new website.

You need to ensure that your domain name is brandable or, at least, keyword rich.

You should choose a domain with either .com, .org, or .net.  If you purchase through Bluehost, you will get a free domain, which saves you a decent amount.

In case you need to buy additional domains, Namesilo is one of the better cheap domain registrars.

Here are some guides which will help you in selecting your domain name:

WordPress Web-Hosting Cost: $56-$100

WordPress Hosting
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This is one major investment that you will be making in the process of starting your own WordPress blog.

I would suggest that you do not compromise on the quality of your hosting service. You should try to get reliable (yet affordable) web hosting. For a new blog, shared hosting is best.

Here are some recommended WordPress hosting services along with prices for one year:

WordPress Set-up cost: Mostly free

Technical Setup
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There are many tutorials and resources available on the internet that will let you learn how to install WordPress.

Here are some of the tutorials I’ve written which you can use to guide you through the process of installing WordPress and setting up your blog:

You can easily follow our DIY guides above to get everything done.

However, if you find that this requires too much technical knowledge for you at this point, or you don’t have the time, you can take advantage of ShoutMeLoud’s WordPress services.

You can also refer to our WordPress guide page for more WordPress resources.

WordPress Theme Cost: (Free to $400)

From my experience, the toughest task is to choose the right theme for your site in terms of speed, price, and functionalities. There are many free WordPress themes, but they are missing some of the important aspects of premium WordPress themes.

If you are looking for a low-cost solution, I suggest Genesis Theme or Astra theme.

WordPress Premium Plugins: ($47-$200)

WordPress Premium Plugins
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One of the major benefits of WordPress is its great list of free plugins, many of which can be found at the WordPress plugin repo.

There are also many premium plugins that are available at varying costs.

Technically, as a new blogger wanting to start your blog with minimal investment, you may not need any premium services or plugins. But if you don’t have an investment issue, you can grab some of the premium plugins to help you increase your site’s functionality (like boosting your on-page SEO optimization).

Now let’s figure out  how much WordPress blog costs (where you will be doing everything on your own):

  1. Basic setup with the free theme:  $70
  2. Basic setup with the premium WordPress theme:  $110
  3. Professional setup with Astra theme: $399
  4. Professional setup with various premium elements: $499-$1499

As a new blogger, you can consider using a basic setup with a premium WordPress theme.

Here is a FAQ related to WordPress costs:

Do WordPress plugins cost money?

WordPress is the cheapest way to put your website or blog up. Especially for anyone looking to build a business online, WordPress’s cost is minuscule compared to other platforms.

Can you pay monthly on WordPress?

Yes, there are many monthly hosting where you can pay monthly. However, pre-payment for a year or more helps you save a significant portion of the money. I discussed this in-depth in my earlier guide on saving money on WordPress hosting.

Can you accept payments on WordPress?

Yes, there are many ways you can accept payments on WordPress. Be it PayPal or Stripe, there are many WordPress plugins out there.

How much should I pay someone to build a website on WordPress?

Apart from WordPress hosting cost, you should consider paying between $100-$500 for building a website on WordPress.

How much is WordPress cost per year?

Once your website is up and running, the only cost you would pay is:
Hosting Renewal
Domain name renewal
And if you are using any Premium plugins, renewal for that.

Let me know if you have any other questions regarding the setting up of your new self-hosted WordPress blog!

Feel free to share this post with your friends and followers on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest!

For further reading:

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Authored By
A Blogger, Author and a speaker! Harsh Agrawal is recognized as a leader in digital marketing and FinTech space. Fountainhead of ShoutMeLoud, and a Speaker at ASW, Hero Mindmine, Inorbit, IBM, India blockchain summit. Also, an award-winning blogger.

77 thoughts on “How Much Does it Cost to Start a Self-Hosted WordPress Blog?”

  1. Laasya Adusu

    Brilliant advice from a brilliant blogger. 😉

    A very thorough guide, Harsh, thank you! We’ll link it from our blog as soon as we touch the topic again (and great resources deserve being linked to!).

    Hostgator has been a great host to us so far. Where are you currently hosted at?

    One of our team hosts her websites at a small reseller hosted by a friend of hers and she seems to appreciate the quality of the uptime and support. Perhaps we’ll talk more about small resellers sometimes; they may hide gems.

    Thanks for a great post, Harsh. 🙂

    – Laasya & The BloggingLogin.com Team

  2. Ankita Agrawal

    Hi Harsh,
    you are a great inspiration for a lot of newbie bloggers like us. I have stated my new blog referring your other article creating blogs on niche keywords.
    I find your site on page 1 for anything to everything I want to for all blogging aspects.
    great work
    Thanks a Ton.

  3. Sudipto

    Harsh I must tell you that you are indeed doing a very good job. Most of the time when we gain certain level in any criteria we often forget to help any body who is new to it and in the meantime we overlook the difficulties we face during that time. Coming up with a post to help the new comers is indeed very noble of you

  4. Gaurav

    Thanks Harsh you articles are awesome and really helping newbies like me. I have one qustion. I’m starting a blog and my budget is $350. Till now I have decided to go with,
    Godaddy($10), bluehost($70 for one year), thesis theme($197), Plugins( EasywpSEO and SEO smart link plugins for $116)
    but It’s going out of my budget so where should I compromise? Is it enough or I’ll need anything more? any suggestions?

    1. Rajesh Soni

      Can I start with free theme and plugin’s from wordpress?

      1. Harsh Agrawal

        @Rajesh
        Yes, you can! 🙂

  5. Nilantha Jayawardhana

    Really amazing and useful post.

    When someone begin to blog, he think that how much I should spend for my blog. Every newbie have this same question. Total cost of his/her depends on his/her blogging purpose.

    Thank You harsh. You explain about the cost of self hosted WordPress blog. Definitely, this is really useful post for every newbie who hope to start professional blogging.

  6. Md. Ibrahim

    Hi Harsh, thanks a lot for this great post. I am a new blogger, running WordPress on Byethost free hosting. As I am a newbie I’ll spend money on domain & hosting later when I’ll earn some money from my blog. But my question is, is there any risk to continue blogging on free hosting like Byethost?

  7. beverly

    so if I am just starting out what is the total cost for self hoast blog for basic setup premium theme?

  8. Zero Cost Business

    I think for a newbie who does not have enough budget, domain and web hosting are enough for expenses. You can find good looking themes related to your niche for free and plugins like Platinum SEO or All in One SEO take care of most aspects of SEO anyway. Other than that, it always helps that you are aware of SEO and learn more about installing and promoting a blog.

    If you are blogging for business, it is better to know about selecting a niche, keyword research, how to get organic search rankings for your keyword, etc before selecting a domain name and web hosting.

    Ultimately, it is always a question of time against money. If you are not willing to spend money, you have to spend time.

    Considering that, building a business is never really free or even cheap.

  9. Rajeel

    Hey,
    Great post and you have considered everything that a blogger have to pay for. But you can cut-off the prices if you want. Domain+Webhosting costs only about $42 in Just host. Setting up of a wordpress blog is a very simple task. Just do read some nice tutorials and you can do it yourself. Premium theme from elegentthemes are great and cheap. I recommend to use them and there are a lot of GREAT free themes outta there. You need to keep an eye on it. For the SEO part, if you are somewhat experienced, you can cover almost major parts without a pro. But you can hire one and ot won’t be a lose at all.

    So if you do like this, you can easily start a WordPress blog for about a $100 budget. Just to cheer up the newbies who want to come to WP 🙂 … Don’t get upset after reading the calculations……You can cut it down to a great extend, if you want to ………. Just to let you know it 🙂

  10. Baby BrownFox

    Thanks for the info. I’ve been using Canvas theme from woothemes, it works great. I’ve looking into Keyword Winner, hope you could write a short tutorial about it. Thanks.. more power..

  11. Suraj

    Nowadays starting blogs became very easy, lots of competition in hosting so we can get hosting at cheap prices, personally I recommend to go with JustHost for first year, because of 50 off with coupon.

  12. Tho Huynh

    For me, it takes only 9.99 to start your self-hosted WordPress Blog
    Domain: Namecheap – 9.98$
    Hosting: 0.01$ for 1st month at HostGator (Or you can sign up Hostable account for FREE)
    Wordpress Theme: 0$ – Some beautiful themes out there like: Obscure, FreemiumTheme…
    Plugin: Instead of investing your money on Expensive Plugins, you can try other free ones with affordable prices

  13. Basant

    It’s a good ‘practical’ guide for any one who wants to start a new or migrate to WP self hosted.

  14. Jasmine

    It’s really not expensive to start a self hosted WordPress blog, in fact, it is so cheap eespecially when you use coupon codes to get instant discounts! Really, these days everyone can setup their own hosted blog!

  15. HackTik

    Good post on cost breakup. It is always better for a newbie to start with the minimum possible cost and gradually expand as per the traffic growth and hence revenue.

  16. antodoms

    hey harsh , if someone is looking for a cheap paid host then unlimitedgb.com is the best one , as i have hosted my site there for just 20$ / year plan…… Hope this information help others , thanks… 🙂

  17. Adesoji Adegbulu

    Harsh… This is well explanatory. It will help newbies budget ahead for a blog that would be of benefit to them.

    Regards

  18. Sanjan Bikram

    Currently same questions are arising in my mind finally u have wrote the article on it. Thank u very much Harsh.

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      I’m glad Sanjan that you find the post useful.

  19. Nihar

    I feel initially one can be away from Theme cost and think of investing on theme after the blogger get well averse of blogging platform.

  20. hamarasathi

    Thanks Harsh For this Information, It will help newbies, When I was new blogger, and want to migrate from blogger to wordpress, I asked the same question on a site but did not find the right answer at that time, But your post will help new fellows.

    1. Harsh Agrawal

      Thanks for your comment and I know what such information meant for newbie bloggers. I remember I was searching for same info when I was moving to WordPress.

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