What Does Your WordPress Site Really Cost Per Year?
Hosting is the small part. Add plugin licenses, maintenance, emergency fixes, your own hours, and downtime, and the real number is usually much higher. Adjust the inputs below to see your true annual WordPress spend. Everything runs in your browser.
Your inputs
Your real annual WordPress cost
$0
about $0 / month — your "WordPress tax"
5-year projection
$0
Assumes today's run-rate held flat for five years; real costs usually rise.
WordPress vs a rebuilt site
Comparison baseline: a static or headless rebuild on roughly $20/mo hosting ($240/yr), excluding the one-time build cost shown below.
Rebuild payback period
| One-time rebuild | Payback |
|---|---|
| $3,500 | — |
| $9,500 | — |
| $15,000 | — |
Payback = rebuild price / monthly savings, where savings = (current annual cost − $240) / 12.
Run the numbers for your site.
If your number is over $300/month, a WordPress exit usually pays for itself in 16 to 27 months. SiteLift is the productized exit: sitelift.toledotechnologies.com — it starts with a paid Fit Check ($750, 50% credited if you proceed).
Where these defaults come from
The default values are mid-range figures drawn from published 2026 pricing guides. They are starting points, not quotes; replace them with your own numbers for an accurate result. Ranges below reflect typical small-business sites.
| Input | Default | Typical range | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Managed hosting | $30/mo | $25–$60/mo (up to $150 at higher tiers) | Bluehost, Elementor |
| Plugin & theme licenses | $400/yr | $300–$600/yr | Elementor, DreamHost |
| Maintenance retainer | $150/mo | $50–$300/mo (agencies higher) | Codeable, FatLab |
| Emergency dev rate | $100/hr | $50–$150+/hr | Codeable |
| Downtime per incident | $750 | hundreds to several thousand $/hr | UpTickNow, USM Technology |
| Static/headless hosting baseline | $20/mo | $0–$20/mo (CDN/static tiers) | Bluehost |
Your own hourly value and the hours you spend are personal inputs; there is no market default for them, so the calculator uses conservative placeholders.
Frequently asked questions
What does WordPress maintenance actually cost per year?
It is rarely just hosting. Managed hosting commonly runs $25 to $60 per month, premium plugin and theme licenses $300 to $600 per year, and a maintenance retainer $50 to $300 per month. Add emergency developer fixes, the value of your own update hours, and downtime, and the real annual figure is usually several thousand dollars.
Why include my own time?
Time spent on updates, testing, and fixing breakage has an opportunity cost even when no invoice is involved. Valuing those hours makes the total comparable to a lower-maintenance alternative.
How is downtime cost estimated?
Downtime cost varies widely by business. Small-business estimates range from a few hundred to several thousand dollars per hour. The calculator lets you set your own per-incident figure and incident count instead of relying on a headline number.
What is a static or headless rebuild?
It serves pre-built pages from a CDN instead of generating each page from PHP and a database on every request. There is no plugin stack to patch and far less to break, so hosting often drops to roughly $20 per month or less.
How is the payback period calculated?
Payback months equals the one-time rebuild price divided by monthly savings, where savings is your current annual WordPress cost minus the $240/yr baseline, divided by twelve. If your cost is at or below the baseline, there is no payback.