Free.

This is, of course, true. The files necessary to install WordPress on a server and run it are indeed free.

A casual content producer could even sign up at WordPress.com and run their entire website for free, never paying a dime if all they wanted were the most basic features.

But you are no casual content producer. Right?

You use WordPress like we use WordPress: as a serious business tool to drive serious revenue.

You understand — like we do — that the true cost of running WordPress is far from free.

So what is that true cost?

And how can you minimize the total cost of WordPress ownership while maximizing its potential to manage the online content that drives your business?

WordPress Total Cost of Ownership Analysis

To use WordPress as a tool for building a business online or off, it needs to be viewed not as “free blogging software”, but as a legitimate business acquisition.

A Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) analysis is a time-tested model of cost assessment for important business acquisitions that has been in use in the IT world since the early days of computers.

In IT, as with vehicles and other complex goods, total cost can vary greatly from purchase price.

There are obvious costs to consider (like purchase price and regular maintenance), but there are also other “real costs” that often get overlooked; and if a real cost will indeed follow the decision to acquire or use something, it needs to be taken into account.

Just how many real costs can there be to consider? Potentially, a lot.

What are some of the hidden costs associated with WordPress management?

• Domain registration
• Hosting
• Premium theme
• Developer fees
• Security services
• Storage and backups
• Personal time

The key is to understand and assess each of these real costs and how it is impacted by different WordPress management strategies. This will allow you to make choices that will maximize the potential of WordPress for your business, while minimizing your costs along the way.

What are the different ways you can manage your WordPress-backed website?

• WordPress.com
• Self-Hosted
• Managed WordPress Hosting
• Premium Managed WordPress Hosting

Since WordPress itself is always free to acquire, let’s analyze the real costs of each of the options above.

Note: to keep this relatively simple, we’re sticking with the hidden costs as listed above. There are surely others based on individual circumstances, and the comment section of this article will be a great place to break these out.

Hosting Your Site on WordPress.com

If you run your site on WordPress.com, you receive a basic level of shared hosting free. However, to have your own domain (as opposed to yoursite.wordpress.com) it’ll cost you between $18-25 per year.

Additionally, if you choose to go with a premium theme, you’ll have to use one of the WordPress.com-only premium themes, which will run somewhere around $70 and cannot be transferred should you choose to self-host at a later date.

You won’t have to worry about any security costs because Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com will manage this for you.

In total, consider a simple TCO of roughly $95 for the first year, with a recurring charge for the domain.

Though WordPress.com is a great option for the casual content producer, you’ll be limited in configurations, themes, plugins, and other aspects of content management that could impact your ability to connect with your audience, achieve maximum SEO benefits, and commercialize your site.

The Self-Hosted Option

If you want to host your site yourself, rather than on WordPress.com, you can go to a generic hosting provider and get very “affordable” shared hosting for as little as $4.24 per month. Granted, your site will live on a massive shared server, so performance will suffer, but your site will be up and running.

Unlike WordPress.com, self-hosting your website gives you unlimited theme options. You can choose a free one from the WordPress themes repository, purchase a premium theme, or develop your own. Most serious small business owners do not find free themes to their liking for numerous reasons, and most also do not have the know how nor the capital to pay a developer for a custom theme. This makes premium themes a great choice.

Our AgentPress theme from StudioPress, for example, runs $99.95. Others can be had for $79.95. For the purposes of this analysis, a $79.95 figure seems like a reasonable splitting of the difference between a free theme and the developer costs of a custom theme.

How about security?

Fortunately there are free options like Sucuri’s WordPress monitoring plugin. However, unless you are paying for a VPS, your site will be on a shared server with scores of others. Each of these sites is a potential security risk to the server, and therefore, to you.

If you get hacked or the server goes down, there will be costs associated with downtime, the de-hacking process, and recovering lost files. And if you are not well versed in these processes, you’ll have to hire someone to help you.

You’ll also be responsible for storing your own backups. In the case of a catastrophic hacking or data loss event, these are handy to have. There is, of course, a cost associated with it though.

Just with fees for bare-minimum hosting and the price of a theme, the total cost is around $125 per year, bare minimum. Consider additional costs for security and storage, and the total cost of self-hosting a WordPress blog that will not be anywhere near high performance is easily $150 with the potential for it to be a lot more.

And, this does not figure in intangible costs like time and peace of mind.

“Regular” Managed WordPress Hosting

The next step up from self-hosting is a managed hosting provider. This allows you to “self host” but with help and guidance from people who should be able to help you manage areas you know nothing about so you can manage your business.

Rates can vary, but most small businesses can get a WP-optimized managed plan for somewhere around $50 per month. You will still be on a shared server, but in a shared environment where they tend to understand WordPress security and support much better than a generic hosting provider that does it all.

If you want to be on a dedicated VPS or run WordPress Multisite, these plans will usually not cover you, so you’ll have to bump to a next level plan that can run between $125-150 per month.

As for themes to design your site, you will still need to purchase one separately, so consider roughly $79.95 for this expenditure.

If the regular small business plan works, consider the total cost to be around $679.95 for the first year.

Premium Managed WordPress Hosting

With premium managed hosting (like what we provide here at Synthesis), access to the Genesis framework comes as part of the package.

In addition — even in the Starter plan — all security, storage, and support are included and delivered at top of the line levels. This is where the value of premium managed hosting, like what we provide here at Synthesis, really shines through.

There is immense value in having the backing of experts who’ve specialized their servers for the idiosyncrasies of hosting and securing a WordPress website. More so, there is value in having a team of people in your corner who not only know hosting but know content, promotion, and design as well.

A generic host — and even some managed hosts — may not be able to answer an intricate question about how adding a thousand 301s will impact SEO.

They might not be able to help out in diagnosing a problematic RSS feed or give recommendations on the best way to integrate a form for capturing email subscribers.

At a place like Synthesis, the support staff can and will … because we’ve all been there.

We provide expert support and proactive advice with the empathy of experience. That’s tough to quantify into a neat and tidy value for TCO purposes, but it will certainly save you time, money, and frustration. And there is no more real a cost in business than time.

But let’s get back to the numbers, because even they paint a compelling picture with a premium WordPress hosting provider.

If you only have one site, and the regular small business plan works — as in the regular managed hosting example above — the total cost of WordPress ownership in that first year is just $324, which is essentially half.

The Value of Premium Managed WordPress Hosting

There really has not been a formalized TCO study performed for WordPress. And what you see above is far from complete. This was intentional.

What we have tried to do here is simply give you a rough idea of the real costs involved with owning and running a WordPress site. What you’ll have to do to take it the next step is figure out that number associated with your personal or professional time.

For a service provider, this is easy. For every hour they spend trying to fix, de-hack, or improve their site, the costs range from $75 (developer) to $400 (attorney) per hour.

If you are a business, the costs could be greater, even if less obviously quantitative, as your reputation could be damaged if your site were hacked with pornography links or your phones stop ringing due to the site not working.

Or you might be an independent media producer who’s looking to derive more revenue from your site, and the time you spend trying to fix your site takes you away from your family … which is, of course, priceless.

What’s it all worth to you? Let us know in the comments below …

• The passion project that turns into a full-time gig.
• The lone WordPress theme designer who created a unique product and turned it into a profitable business.
• The (formerly) single-author blog that used smart content marketing to grow into a multi-million dollar software and education company.

The history of business online is also filled with stories of failure due to ill-conceived strategy, lack of resolve, or an inability to execute and adapt.

If you follow Copyblogger, you already have a theoretical understanding of how the combination of content marketing and great design can make all the difference in your success online. The next step is putting those principles into production.

That’s what we we’ll be helping you do here at the Synthesis blog.

On a regular basis, we’ll provide strategy, advice, and tutorials to help you thrive in executing your web strategy in an actual production environment.

Which Internet Type are You?

The Internet functions due to an assortment of technologies that work together.

It thrives, evolves, and continues to experience explosive growth because human beings take that technology base and build on it, create with it, and consume from it.

When we look at the landscape of online business, we see two simple classifications of people or roles — because some people can fit both: conductors and designer/developers.

1. The Conductors

Simply put, conductors are the ones who conduct business online.

They are the driving force behind content on the Internet, and content is the driving force behind every monetary and non-monetary transaction that takes place.

Conductors start with a personal or commercial goal and use the Internet as a vehicle to achieve it.

Their activities include:

• Creating and publishing content of various types
• Engaging in social conversation and promoting the content of others
• Guiding teams of people and contractors, which can include other content creators and designer/developers

These folks may not know how all of the bits and pieces work together on the back end, but they know what the end result needs to look like to drive business.

2. The Developers

Developers (a classification that includes designers) are responsible for creating the back-end functionality and front-end design and user experience that conductors use to drive business.

Unlike conductors, who have building blocks to start with, designers and developers are capable of turning an empty text document into magic.

Their activities include:

• Developing or customizing a content management system.
• Creating a design framework and the tools to make it easily pliable.
• Using technological know how to add efficiencies to web interactions.

Whatever the activity, the output is a program or design or solution that engages human beings and allows conductors to do their work.

The Single Goal of the Synthesis Blog

Some posts here at Synthesis blog will be geared towards one of these two groups specifically, and some will be geared towards both.

Our objective though, is to help all of our customers get the most of their hosting by providing professional, useable advice, specific to the production environment.

We will gather topics from:

• Our experience
• Timely developments in the industry
• The very help desk you submit your questions to

This blog will give us the opportunity to share with you what we’ve learned over the years as both conductors and developers, as well what we learn daily by completely managing the hosting of some of the web’s most successful online businesses.

Most importantly, it’s one more opportunity for us to help make your online venture a success.

So, how can you get the most out of your serious WordPress hosting? By signing up to grab the email updates for the Synthesis blog. Drop your email address in the form below (no spam, no charge), and we’ll take care of the rest …