Building a Personal Website: How Much Does it Really Cost?

Personal Website Visualized

There are over 1 billion websites. That makes building your website a little daunting especially if you are trying to make your website stand out.

If you want your website to stand out, you need to know what it takes to build a website. You need to especially know the costs associated with a domain name, a host site, the design, and more.

The more you understand the costs of building a personal website, the more knowledge you have of what freedom you have to create a website based on your budget.

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If you’re determined to build a personal website and want to know every penny behind it, here’s a guide that can help you understand the cost of creating a website.

Hosting vs. Paying for a Service

When you decide to build a personal website, you will need to decide if you will be hosting your own website or paying for a service. There are different costs for each service.

You can use sites like DreamHost that allow you to host your website for anywhere between $16 and $75 a month. It just depends on what kind of website you are building.

You will also need to consider the cost of an SSL certificate, which ranges between $7 and over $200.

In addition, if you decide to host your own website, you need to pay a theme builder, which basically allows you to build your website on a site like WordPress.

If you want to hire a web designer, it will typically be a one-time fee. Depending on what kind of design you want to your website and the experience of the web designer, you could be looking at paying a web designer a couple hundred to a couple thousand.

Paying for a service is a different kind of cost than if you were hosting.

Paying for a service to create your website and make your life much easier. You don’t have to worry so much about the design or the backend of what to plug into your website.

A service like Squarespace, Wix, WordPress, and others means you don’t have to worry about hosting, security, or performance. These services take care of that for you.

Depending on the sophistication of your website and what you want to use it for, your website could potentially be free or it could cost upwards toward $300.

Ultimately, it depends on what your personal site is used for.

Premium Themes

If you decide to pay for a service, you’ll find that there are options website themes to choose from to design your website.

A theme is the style of your website. It’s how the website is organized with pictures, shopping, blogging, or something else.

You can pay between $12 and $40 for website themes on Squarespace and a similar price for website themes on WordPress, Wix, and other website services.

While you can pay for a theme, you can also find a lot of themes for free. It just depends on the aesthetic you are looking for on your website.

Website Design

If you want somebody to design your website from a site like Squarespace, you need to be prepared to pay on the level of website complexity.

If your website is very complex, you may need to look at hiring a project manager, marketing strategist, copywriter, web developer, and more.

For basic website design, you can find a web designer that may cost around $75 to $200 per hour. It depends on their experience and how much time it will take to design the website.

If you want to find out more information on website design, you can check out the best WordPress website builder.

Other Costs

Beyond the cost of the website design and the cost of the website service, you will also have other costs when it comes to building a personal website.

For example, if you have an e-commerce website and sell products on this website, you may have to pay for e-commerce tools. You may need financial tools to see how your business is performing.

You may also need marketing tools to generate leads. Other tools may involve integrating Shopify, e-commerce research tools, and more. It’s important to stick with a budget and extend beyond your financial means if you are trying to build an e-commerce website.

There are also costs with starting a blog on your personal website. You may need to pay for plugins that show you analytics of how well your website blog is performing.

For instance, you may have to pay for plugins that optimize your articles. Some of these plugins are free while others you have to pay for.

These plugins can, however, provide a faster mobile experience, some of the best security, and customization tools.

Another cost of building a website is email marketing. If you have a personal website and want to build an email list, you will need to email campaigns.

For instance, Squarespace has email campaigns, but you will need to pay for higher tier website service of Squarespace if you want to send emails.

One of the most important things to remember when you build a website is to figure out step by step what you want on your website and how much it will cost to get that level.

The Benefit of Building a Personal Website

One of the best benefits of building a personal website is that it’s your personal website, regardless if you are hosting or if you are paying for a site. The cost behind your website is dependent on what you want on it.

If you want to sell products on your website, have e-commerce tools, and desire to blog on your website, it will probably cost more than it would if you just had it as a portfolio. Either way, this guide can help you understand the costs of creating a website.

For more information on websites, you can visit our blog.