DEVIQO vs WordPress
DEVIQO vs WordPress: free to download, and someone still has to run it
WordPress powers more of the web than anything else and the software costs nothing. What costs something is the hosting, the theme, the plugins, the updates and the week someone spends building the site. Here all of that is $1 once and then $8.99 a month, with the upkeep on our side of the line.
wordpress.com/pricing, country set to US read September 3, 2026Today you pay $1 for the website plus your first month of hosting. After that hosting is $8.99 a month, billed on the same date each month until you cancel, and you can cancel in any month. The .com is included on the Complete plan at $18.99 a month. On Basic at $8.99 a month the name is registered in your own name and run for you, and the registry’s own annual fee for it, about $12 a year, is billed separately at cost.
Side by side
The six questions that decide it
The WordPress.com column is the hosted product at its Personal plan. Where the answer is different on self-hosted WordPress, the cell says so, because the two are frequently compared as though they were one thing.
| On this point | DEVIQO | WordPress | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Who does the work | Our team designs it, writes it and builds it, and it’s live in seven days. | You do, or someone you pay. WordPress is software; nothing in the download chooses a theme, writes your services or lays out a page. | wordpress.com/pricing, country set to US read September 3, 2026 |
| Two years of fees | $240.76$1 for the website + 24 × $8.99 hosting + 2 × $12 registry fee, at costThe build, the hosting and the registry fee for the .com. | $10812 × $4 a month, first term, billed yearly + 12 × $5 a month, at renewalWordPress.com Personal, billed yearly. This is the platform only, with the build still to do. | wordpress.com/pricing, country set to US read September 3, 2026 |
| How it is billed | Hosting at $8.99 a month, billed monthly. Cancel in any month. | The advertised rate is billed a year at a time and renews higher, at $5 a month. Month-to-month billing on the same plan is $9 a month. | wordpress.com/pricing, country set to US read September 3, 2026 |
| Updates, plugins and security | Ours. Core updates, patches, the SSL certificate and a nightly backup kept for thirty nights, all inside the monthly. | On WordPress.com the platform handles it. On self-hosted WordPress it’s yours: core, theme and plugin updates, compatibility, and whatever breaks at two in the morning. | wordpress.com/pricing, country set to US read September 3, 2026 |
| What the build costs if you hire it out | $1 once, with the design and the words included and nothing billed by the hour. | Website Builder Expert puts a WordPress build at $11 to $1,000 up front. Elementor puts a freelancer’s custom WordPress build at $2,000 to $8,000. | websitebuilderexpert.com, page updated December 5, 2025 read September 3, 2026 |
| The .com | Included in the monthly on Complete; registered in your own name and billed at cost, about $12 a year, on Basic. | A domain is a separate purchase with its own renewal, and on the annual plans the first year is commonly bundled. Not verifiedrenewal price not read on the date shown | wordpress.com/domains read September 3, 2026 |
Every figure above was read from the vendor’s own public pricing page on September 3, 2026, in USD, and the source is printed in the row. Prices move, and a vendor can change one the day after this was written, so check the source before you rely on it. Anything we couldn’t read from a United States connection is marked not verified instead of guessed at. The WordPress.com cells are read from its own pricing page with the country set to US. The build ranges are from Website Builder Expert and Elementor, both of which publish them as ranges rather than as prices.
The part nobody prices
Four jobs that arrive with a self-hosted WordPress site
None of these are hard. All of them are recurring, and every one of them is someone’s responsibility from the day the site goes live until the day it comes down.
01
Core, theme and plugin updates
A dozen or more moving parts, updated on their own schedules by people who have never seen your site. Most of the time it’s a click. Occasionally it’s a broken layout on a Friday.
02
Backups you have tested
An untested backup is a theory. Ours runs nightly and is kept for thirty nights, and putting a site back is one message instead of a support ticket with a host.
03
Security, because it’s the biggest target on the web
Popularity is a liability here. An unmaintained WordPress install with three abandoned plugins is the most common way a small business site ends up serving someone else’s content.
04
Someone to write the pages
The one everybody forgets. Website Builder Expert prices that labor at $50 to $200 an hour when you buy it separately. websitebuilderexpert.com, page updated December 5, 2025 read September 3, 2026
If you have a developer, none of this is an argument. In the hands of someone who knows it, WordPress is the most capable option in this whole comparison and we would tell you to use it. The case we’re making is narrower: for a small business with no technical person and no appetite to become one, the free software turns into a running job, and that job needs a price before you choose on the license fee. Our hosting page sets out what we do with that job instead.
The published ranges
What other people say a WordPress site costs to build
Two published sources, quoted as the ranges they publish.
A WordPress build
$11 to $1,000 up front, which is the widest band on this page and tells you how much of the number is labor rather than software.
websitebuilderexpert.com, page updated December 5, 2025 read September 3, 2026A freelancer, custom WordPress
$2,000 to $8,000 up front, from the company that makes one of the most used WordPress page builders.
elementor.com, "How much does a small business website cost" read September 3, 2026An agency
$10,000 to $35,000, for the same underlying free software.
elementor.com, "How much does a small business website cost" read September 3, 2026Here
$1 once, designed and written by hand and live in seven days, then $8.99 a month for the hosting. The same build is openly sold at $1,500, which is what a US agency charges for a small business site of this size.
our own price tableThose ranges are quoted in full, with the rest of the market beside them, on what a small business website costs. If the monthly is the part you’re comparing, pay monthly websites is the page for that.
Questions
What people ask next
Is WordPress not free?
The software is. The website isn’t. Nothing in a free download pays for hosting, a domain, a theme worth using, the plugins that make it do anything, or the week someone spends turning all of that into eight pages about your business. Website Builder Expert prices a WordPress build at $11 to $1,000 up front. websitebuilderexpert.com, page updated December 5, 2025 read September 3, 2026
What is the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org?
WordPress.org is the free software you install on hosting you rent, where everything is yours to run and yours to fix. WordPress.com is a hosted product built on the same software, sold as plans: Personal is $4 a month for the first term billed yearly, renewing at $5, or $9 a month if you pay monthly. wordpress.com/pricing, country set to US read September 3, 2026 People compare the free one to the paid one and conclude WordPress is cheap. They’re two different purchases.
Who keeps a WordPress site updated?
On self-hosted WordPress, you. Core releases, theme updates, plugin updates and the occasional plugin that stops working with the version of PHP your host just moved you to. It isn’t hard work but it’s regular work, and letting it lapse is the most common way a small business website gets defaced. Here that job is ours and it’s inside the $8.99 a month, along with the SSL and a nightly backup.
Do I own my website either way?
On self-hosted WordPress, completely: it’s your database on your hosting. Here you own the domain, the words, the photographs and your customer data, and you can ask for your files at any time and we’ll send them, with no exit fee. What you don’t get from us is the WordPress codebase, because the site isn’t built on it. If having a WordPress database you can lift and move is the requirement, say so early and we’ll tell you that we are not the right supplier.
Can I move to WordPress later?
Yes, and the domain moves with you because it’s registered in your own name. Be realistic about what moving means, though: going from any platform to any other is a rebuild rather than a migration, and the things that carry over are the domain, the words and the photographs. Those are yours from the first day here. The domains page sets out how the name is held.
Which is right for me?
WordPress, if you publish constantly, need a plugin ecosystem for something specific, or have a developer already. It’s the most capable option on the market and we won’t pretend otherwise. Us, if you want a small business website that exists, is well written and is live next week, for $1 and then the hosting, with nobody having to remember to run an update. Different jobs.
The offer
The website, without the running job
Our team designs it, writes it and puts it live in seven days for $1, then hosts it at $8.99 a month with the updates, the SSL and the nightly backup on our side. You still edit anything you like from the dashboard, and there’s nothing to keep patched.
Today you pay $1 for the website plus your first month of hosting. After that hosting is $8.99 a month, billed on the same date each month until you cancel, and you can cancel in any month. The .com is included on the Complete plan at $18.99 a month. On Basic at $8.99 a month the name is registered in your own name and run for you, and the registry’s own annual fee for it, about $12 a year, is billed separately at cost.
The same build is openly sold at $1,500, which is what a US agency charges for a small business site of this size. No contract, no minimum term and no exit fee: cancel in any month from the dashboard.
The other comparisons
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What a website costs
The real US range, sourced, against a build here for $1.
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Pay monthly websites
Who charges what per month, and which "no contract" offers have a term underneath.
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The .com, year one and year two
Whose included domain lapses after twelve months, and what ours does instead.
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DEVIQO vs Wix
A builder you drive yourself, against a site drawn for you.
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DEVIQO vs Squarespace
Templates and an annual bill, against seven days and a monthly one.
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DEVIQO vs GoDaddy
What we can verify, what we can’t, and where the upsells sit.
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DEVIQO vs UENI
Two done-for-you services, compared on the setup fee and the monthly.
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Wix alternatives
Seven of them, sorted by whether you want a better tool or want to stop building.
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Squarespace alternatives
Six of them, judged on the year instead of the advertised month.
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GoDaddy alternatives
Six of them, counted at renewal rather than at the introductory price.
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Our own price list
The build, the two hosting plans and the charges that won’t appear later.
All of them are indexed on the comparisons page, together with every source we read and the date we read it.