How much does a website cost: WordPress, Next.js, and the part of the invoice nobody mentions first
The price ranges that actually repeat in the market for WordPress, a Next.js landing page, and a headless-CMS site, and why today's price isn't the real cost.
When someone asks "how much does a website cost?", the honest question to send back is "built with what, and for how long?". The same site, with the same visible design, can cost three times as much depending on the stack, and that difference is rarely in the initial quote. It's in what you pay afterward.
The three typical paths
WordPress. It's the most common choice because it has the largest agency and freelancer ecosystem in the market. A basic few-page site is quoted between $200 and $750 (roughly 800K–3M COP); with a premium theme, a page builder, and some customization, between $750 and $2,000 (3M–8M COP). Larger agencies, especially outside LATAM, quote corporate sites between $1,200 and $5,000 or more.
Next.js + Vercel, a simple landing page with no CMS. The typical range runs from $300 for a landing page with a few sections, up to $2,000–$2,500 if the site is larger or needs more visual polish and interactions. Vercel's free tier comfortably covers the traffic of a site this size, so there's no monthly cost attached.
Next.js + a headless CMS (Sanity or similar). When the client needs to be able to edit content without touching code, a headless CMS wired into Next.js lands, for a small-to-medium scope, between $2,000 and $6,000. Sanity's free tier covers the vast majority of small sites; it only starts charging once content volume or traffic actually grows.
What the WordPress quote doesn't include
The initial price of a WordPress site isn't the total cost, it's the cost of entry. After delivery, these keep showing up:
- Recurring hosting, which in WordPress almost always needs more resources than a static site, because every visit executes PHP and queries a database.
- Premium plugins: page builder, security, backups, SEO, forms. Easily $200–500 a year in licenses if the site is going to stay functional and protected.
- Active maintenance: by market share, WordPress is the most attacked CMS in the world. 2025 security reports recorded thousands of new vulnerabilities that year, and the overwhelming majority aren't in WordPress core but in the third-party plugins almost every site ends up installing. A site without constant updates gets exposed within hours once a known exploit is published.
None of this is a flaw in WordPress as a tool — it's the direct consequence of its model: a system designed to be extended with third-party plugins, where every installed plugin is additional attack surface and one more dependency someone has to keep updated indefinitely.
Why my recommendation is almost always Next.js with a headless CMS
It isn't an aesthetic preference for newer technology. The architecture differs in a way that matters long-term: a Next.js site is generated as static files or rendered on the server on demand, with no database to query on every visit and no publicly exposed admin panel for someone to try to compromise. That removes, at the root, the entire category of problem that makes WordPress need permanent security maintenance.
The second reason is control. With WordPress, the site depends on whichever plugin staying maintained, staying compatible with the next core version, and the company charging for it by subscription staying in business. With Next.js and a headless CMS, the code is yours, there's no monthly license you can stop paying and lose functionality over, and switching hosting providers or CMS doesn't mean rebuilding the site from scratch.
This doesn't mean WordPress is never the right choice. If the budget is strictly the lowest possible entry cost and there's no intention of investing in maintenance down the line, WordPress is still a reasonable option. The question that actually decides it isn't "what's cheaper today?" but "what am I willing to pay, in money or in risk, over the next three years?".