When it comes to how much a church website costs, it really depends on the route you take in having it built. Building it yourself versus hiring a developer or agency will determine the total amount you have to spend.
While building a church website yourself may be cheaper, it does require a fair amount of time and a bit of technical prowess. Hiring someone to build your site may cost more, but you won’t have to worry about the end result.
That being said, in this article we’ll evaluate the cost of both scenarios and hopefully help you decide which route is best for you. The pricing scenario for building it yourself will be based on building your site with WordPress – the same platform all of our church sites are built on.
Building the Site Yourself
If you choose to build the site yourself, you’ll have to pay for the following items:
- Domain name
- Hosting
- Theme
- Plugins
Lets take a look at these items individually.
Domain Name
You can’t have a website without a domain name. And domain names aren’t free.
Depending on where you purchase your domain name from, you’re likely to spend around $10-20. This is a per year expense.
Some hosting companies, like Bluehost, include a free domain for the first year of service. However, you’ll have to pay for it in the following years.
Additionally, you may want to purchase an additional service called Domain Privacy. This feature keeps others from being able to find the personal information associated with the domain name owner such as name, phone number, email address, physical address and so on. Without it, anyone can search for, and find this information. This service usually costs an additional $10-15 per year.
Domain Name Cost – $10 – $35 per year.
Hosting
Hosting costs vary per provider and the type of hosting you want. Basic shared hosting typically costs around $3-8 per month while more advanced hosting, such as that provided by Cloudways, can run upwards of $20 per month.
That being said, most church websites don’t receive enough traffic to justify paying for higher tier hosting. Most of them will do just fine on a shared hosting plan.
To give an example of what hosting costs can look like, here’s a picture of Bluehost’s latest prices.
Keep in mind that although the prices are advertised as a monthly rate, you pay for your entire term upfront. So the basic package which is $2.95 per month will cost you $35.40 for a 12 month term. That being said, if you want to upgrade to their Pro package, you’d be looking at $167.40 for a 12 month term. As I stated earlier though, in most cases you’ll be fine with the Basic plan. I run a number of blogs on this very package and have never had an issue.
Hosting Cost – $35 – 167 per year (w/ Bluehost)
Themes
The theme of your site is what’s responsible for dictating its overall appearance. There are literally thousands of WordPress themes to choose from and finding one that’ll give you the design elements you want isn’t all that difficult. In fact, there are WordPress themes specific to certain industries such as dental offices, or automotive repair shops.
Themes vary in price, but you can generally expect to pay around $30-60 for your sites theme. Some companies charge this as a one time fee but others charge yearly.
When it comes to building church websites from scratch, I like to use GeneratePress, Flatsome, or the Elementor Pro page builder. Their prices are $59 per year, $59 lifetime, and $59 per year respectively. Each of these options requires experience with web design, as none of them are made specifically for churches.
Theme Cost – $30 – $60 per year or lifetime
Plugins
Plugins are like apps for your website. They provide additional functionality for your site that neither WordPress or your theme can.
For example, if you want to add a contact form or be able to accept donations on your website, you’re going to need a plugin for that. In most cases, there are free options available. Oftentimes, however, they’re limited in what they can do.
In some instances you’re going to want to purchase a premium plugin in order to achieve whatever functionality you’re looking for. The cost of plugins range. WPForms, for instance, the most popular forms plugin for WordPress, costs $50 per year while Perfmatters, a performance enhancing plugin, costs $25 per year.
There’s no way to definitively state how much you’ll spend in plugins because it really comes down to what you need your site to do. With regards to church websites specifically, however, there are some premium plugins that you may be interested in.
Advanced Sermons Pro, for example, is a plugin that allows you to display your sermons in a beautiful, well organized layout directly on your website. And Prayer Engine is a plugin that allows you to create prayer walls where users can submit their prayer requests and pray for others. These plugins cost $60 annually and $100 for lifetime use, respectively.
That being said, unless there’s no free option available for the specific functionality I need, I rarely ever pay for plugins.
Plugin Cost – $25 – $100 per year
The Grand Total
When we tally up the total costs for building a church website for yourself, we come to a grand total of $100 – 362 per year, roughly.
Keep in mind that this number can and will vary depending on exactly what you need. Let’s now move on to the costs associated with hiring a developer or agency to build your site.
Hiring a Professional
Hiring a professional to build your church website is a great option if you don’t want the hassle of doing it yourself. Not only do you get to keep focusing on what you’re doing, but you know the website is going to look and function as it should.
So, what’s it going to cost you to have a professional build your church website?
It depends.
Some agencies, like 434 Marketing, charge $250 per month for their starter plan, with custom sites starting off at 10k! Assurewp starts their pricing at $399 for a single page site and $2000 for a multipage site. Neither of these options are realistic for churches with small budgets.
In this scenario, its definitely cheaper to build the site yourself. And not just marginally cheaper either.
Cost to Build Yourself
$100-362 per year
Cost to Hire a Professional
$2000 -10000 +
The Best Option
Instead of building your church website yourself, or hiring an agency with outrageous prices to do it, let us build your site instead.
At Church Site Designs, we pride ourselves on building amazing church websites for prices that every church can afford.
Currently, we offer two different plans. Our Essentials Plan costs $30 / month and our Professional Plan costs $50 per month.
For $360 – 600 a year, you can have a professional church website that’ll help you establish an online presence, grow your church, and increase your outreach capabilities. Plus, we take care of all the technical stuff.
So, what are you waiting for? Get started today!
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