How Much Does It Cost To Start A Self-hosted WordPress Blog?
Every newbie blogger is anxious about how much it costs to start a self-hosted WordPress blog.
Though there’s no upper limit to speculate in a blog. You can start a blog with the price of a burger or a piece of gold, too. It depends on you, the way you wanna start.
Starting a blog with a high price means you get a website name, web hosting, and other paid resources like themes, plugins, and SEO tools. These will help you create a successful website easily.
Starting a blog with the price of a burger means you’ll start a blog simply with the name and web hosting.
It’s become very easy and cheap to create a website with WordPress.
Starting a blog with a price of gold means you’ll start your blog with a website name, web hosting, and other paid resources like themes, plugins, and SEO tools, which will make it easy to create a successful website.
This will cost you some extra bucks, but make sure you will get a secure, SEO-friendly, and delightful website.
Without further ado, let’s see how much it costs to start a self-hosted WordPress blog-
Starting Small: Blogging on a Tight Budget
If you’re new to the blogging world, I understand the hesitation. Many beginners worry that they can’t afford the extra costs. But honestly, you can start a self-hosted blog for the price of a coffee or burger.
At the very minimum, you’ll need:
- Domain registration (your website address—think
yourblog.com) - A reliable hosting service (where your site lives online)
That’s it. With these two essentials, you can begin writing blog posts, sharing your thoughts with the world, and building your online presence.
WordPress, as a content management system,, is completely free. And if you stick with free themes and plugins in the beginning, your initial costs could be under $50 per year.
Going Bigger: Investing in Your Blog
If you see blogging as a business (and you should), then you’ll want to invest in tools that give your blog an edge. Here’s where the extras come in:
- Premium themes for professional design and mobile responsiveness
- Premium plugins for advanced features like SEO optimization, website security, and social sharing buttons
- A professional email tied to your domain for credibility
- Tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console for tracking performance and monitoring SEO, and analytics
- Email service providers (like ConvertKit, GetResponse) for building an email marketing system and running automated email campaigns
- Marketing tools like social media scheduling apps, content syndication platforms, or writing assistants to help with your blogging activities
These resources aren’t mandatory in the beginning, but they’ll save you time, improve your site’s performance, and help you grow faster.
How Much Does It Cost To Start A Self-Hosted WordPress Blog
As I mentioned above, there is no upper limit to starting a blog. It’s a good idea to start a blog with all the resources if you have enough budget. It’s okay if you want to start a blog somehow at a minimum cost.
There are tons of examples on the internet that started their blogging journey with zero and have become heroes. To succeed in blogging, you don’t need a well-designed blog.
All you will need is to create a platform where your audience will find their answers.
I recommend starting a blog at a minimum cost. (Only when you do not have enough budget). You should start investing in your blog once it becomes resourceful with in-depth content.
Let’s see how much it costs to start a self-hosted WordPress blog-
Calculation of Cost To Start A Self-Hosted WordPress Blog
WordPress is a free interface that will give you the best blogging experience with its thousands of free and paid plugins and themes.
You can increase your blog functionality and design your blog with their free tools easily, without having any coding skills.
Web Hosting Cost ($38-$100)
I have tried to mention how much the hosting will cost to start your blogging journey with different leading hosting platforms-
Blogging cost with Bluehost
You can simply start your blog with Bluehost web hosting for only $72/year. That means it will cost you $6/Month.
If you try for three years, you can enjoy their hosting for only $3.95/Month. That will cost you overall $142/Three Years.
You will also get a free domain with their shared hosting. The best benefit you will get they will install WordPress for you automatically.
Note: You can also grab Bluehost’s Black Friday offer to save more money on your hosting.
Blogging cost with HostGator
If you wanna start their blog with Hostgator. You can start for only $69/one year. With a free domain for one year.
I recommend buying a plan for three years. It will minimize your cost by only $2.78 per month, and the total cost for three years will be $106.
Note: Don’t forget to use the ”FacileWay” as a coupon code to get a 60% discount. Only FacileWay readers will get this discount. If you have to use the mentioned affiliate links to get a discount.
The most amazing deal of buying hosting from Hostgator is that you will get a Free Gator Website Builder worth $55.
Gator website builder will make your website customization insanely easy. As HostGator is the oldest and the award-winning hosting provider, I recommend this one the most.
Blogging with Hostinger
You can start your blog for the price of a burger with Hostinger. This amazing hosting provider will cost you only $0.80 per month.
You will get a free SSL certificate for a lifetime with a 30-day money-back guarantee. But you have to buy their plan for four years.
That means it will cost you only $38.40 for four years. They only provide a free domain with their premium and business plans.
If you are confused about Hostinger they are not offering the free domain. I insist on not worrying so much and just grabbing their deal. Because there are many domain registrars that are offering domain names at a cheap rate.
You can buy your domain name from NameCheap at a very cheap price. They will cost your domain name only $8.88/year.
Huge savings on Black Friday on Web Hosting,
Setup Cost ($0-$100)
There are many tutorials on YouTube on How To Install WordPress. You can also hire a freelancer from UpWork, which may cost you $100 at most.
Nowadays, starting a blog is easier and faster than you think. Any newbie can start a WordPress blog without any coding skills. You can do it by yourself, which will not cost you a single penny.
WordPress Theme Cost ($0-$89)
There are tons of free themes on WordPress. You can start your blog with any of them.
If you have a little budget, you should go for the premium to enjoy the premium features. You can try the Elegant Divi Theme. Only at $89/Year, you can avail of the following features-
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42+ WordPress responsive themes
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12 WordPress plugins like Post Type Builder
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25+ add-on builders
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Photoshop mockup files of all WordPress Themes.
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5+ Pot-type builders
I recommend you try the Divi lifetime Deal that will save you thousands of recurring expenses.
It’s okay to start your blog with free themes, but you must try premium themes if you have the investment budget.
Read Also: Best WordPress Lifetime Deals
Recommendations
- If you have enough budget, go with Themify or Elegant Divi. Because you will get access to tons of tools that will make your website successful.
Note: Once your license expires, you can continue using their plan. However, you will miss the updates and support from them. If you subscribe to their lifetime plan, you will be able to avail yourself of their services for your entire life.
Reasons why you should try premium themes
Every new blogger thinks about starting a blog with a free theme, as they may have some investment issues. I support the enthusiasm of simply starting their blog with a free theme.
But I insist that if there is an ability to start their blog with the premium plan, they should try the premium plan.
You don’t have any investment issues, but you are waiting to move to the premium theme once you start making money from your blog. Then make sure you are going backwards instead of upward.
Let’s check why you should try the premium theme on your blog-
Enjoy pro features
Offering something for free attracts the customer. But the main deal is enjoying the pro features. Pro features are pro because they add value to your site. Without a value-added site, you are going to backwards your success.
Increase security
Millions of sites are getting hacked because of a lack of security. Using free themes from unauthorised websites risks your site’s security. Most of the themes are free because they can contain malicious code installed in their scripts and files.
On the other hand, premium themes offer you full customer support and authenticity.
Mobile responsiveness
More than 53% of visitors visit a website through mobile phones. So, it’s very important to have a mobile-responsive website. The mobile-friendly website gets a higher priority in Google SERPs.
So, if your site is not mobile-friendly, you will lose tons of traffic. That will decrease your conversions.
You can make your site mobile-friendly using WordPress plugins like WPtouch. However, it is better to use a WordPress theme that is mobile-responsive by default.
Elegant Divi Theme is the best for having a mobile-responsive WordPress theme at a reasonable price.
SEO improvement
Free themes are free because they are not bound to you to offer you the best services. Free themes may have a very bad impact on your SEO.
The free theme can experience slow website loading times, which will definitely harm your SEO. Their poor architecture and bad navigation issues may have a bad impact on your SEO.
On the other hand, paid themes will ensure your high-speed website loading time. Great architecture and navigation that will improve your SEO.
Free themes are free as they use backlinks on your site. When you are using a free theme, it uses a backlink in the footer of our site to their site. That causes bad SEO and harms the ranking in SERPs.
If you are focused on your domain authority, you should not give any backlinks to another website. Using a free theme means you are giving backlinks to their site. That is gonna affect your domain authority.
Customer support
Free theme users can not get any customer support as the theme provider is not bound to support them.
If you use a paid theme, they are bound to serve whenever you need it.
If you use a free theme, you will face a great problem when you need to patch your new theme with an existing theme or when releasing a new version of the theme.
Because you will not get your customer support, as you are just a free user. So, to make sure you have 100% customer support, you should go for the paid theme.
WordPress Plugins Cost ($0-$200)
WordPress is awesome for its great source of free WordPress plugins. A plugin is so an important element of WordPress that you can not deny it at all. The functionality of your blog depends on its plugins.
As a starter, I recommend using free plugins. If you don’t have any investment issues, you may go for the Premium tools.
Wrapping up
Now let’s calculate how much it costs to start a self-hosted WordPress blog.
- Simply start a blog with the free theme; it will cost you the highest $70 per year. This is a basic setup cost.
- A basic setup with the premium theme will cost you $159 for a year.
- You can try the Astra Premium theme if you have a low budget. It will cost you only $59 annually. That means the basic cost with the Astra Theme will be only $129.
- A professional set-up by freelancers with many premium elements may cost you $250-$1500.
As a newbie, you can go for the basic setup. You can also consider the basic setup with premium themes. It will help to make your website look beautiful. (If you don’t have any investment issues).
Don’t hesitate to let me know your comments via comments about these cost calculations. Feel free to ask anything related to blogging.
I hope you have loved this post, and you know how much it costs to start a self-hosted WordPress blog. Please let your friends know by sharing on social media.
Affiliate Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links that will earn me a little commission without any extra charge to you.
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Hi Sayem
This is very helpful advice and article for bloggers who want to start a self-hosted blog. It is always good to have a source that compares what is available and guides through the process.
You did a great job to help your fellow bloggers especially newbies.
Thank you
Erika
Hi Erika
Thanks for your kinda appreciation. Yeah you are right. I have written this post especially for newbies.