A WordPress developer is not the same service as “someone who will make me a website” - and that distinction is exactly what decides your bill. A WordPress developer is someone who writes and fixes the code behind the site: plugins, the theme, integrations with other systems, performance, security. A small fix is usually a few hundred zloty, a real feature or an integration runs into the thousands, and a whole site or store in my model most often lands in the 5,000-10,000 PLN net range (Polish market rates), at a fixed price agreed up front. If you are looking for someone longer term, the second option is monthly technical maintenance instead of paying for every single change.
Below I break it down: what you are really paying for, when a one-off job is enough and when it is a trap, and how to check a developer before you transfer a deposit.
What a WordPress developer costs - the brackets
The market is wide, because two different professions hide behind the same job title: someone assembling pages out of ready-made blocks, and someone writing code. Hourly rates spread from a few dozen to several hundred zloty an hour and shift year to year - treat any table like this as a reference point, not a price list.
| Type of job | What it covers | Order of magnitude |
|---|---|---|
| Small fix | content change, swapping images, a minor visual correction | an hour or two of work |
| Fixing an outage | white screen, critical error, store not taking orders | usually hours, not days |
| New feature | a calculator, a custom cart field, a client portal | from a few hundred to several thousand |
| System integration | ERP, warehouse, couriers, invoicing, KSeF (Poland’s mandatory e-invoicing system) | several thousand upwards |
| Whole site or store | design, build, technical content, testing, launch | 5,000-10,000 PLN net with me |
| Ongoing maintenance | updates, backups, monitoring, hours for changes | 1,000 / 2,000 / 3,500 PLN net per month with me |
In my case projects are billed at a fixed price for an agreed scope (fixed-bid), not by the hour. You know up front what you will pay, I know what I have to build - and nobody counts minutes. I compared the two models separately in the piece on WordPress developer hourly rates.
What you are really paying for
You are paying for time and for risk, not for “a website”. The coding itself is usually less than half the job. The rest is the part you cannot see on the finished site, and the part that decides whether it still works a year from now:
- Recon - looking at the site, the hosting, the PHP version, the plugins, the backups
- Setting the scope - what exactly gets built and what is out of scope
- The actual work - code, deployment, configuration
- Testing - on a staging copy, on a phone, with real data, and in a store with a test payment
- Going live, checking afterwards, and a warranty on bugs that surface after launch
A developer who quotes only point 3 is cheaper on paper. You pay the difference later, at the first outage.
A one-off job or someone on retainer
A one-off job makes sense when the problem has a clear start and finish. Fixing a specific bug, adding one feature, speeding up the site, migrating to new hosting, cleaning up after a previous developer - that closes inside one scope, one quote and one handover. It is enough if you can describe the need in a few sentences, the site otherwise works, and somebody in the company keeps an eye on updates and backups.
Someone on retainer becomes necessary when the site earns money, or when nobody in the company watches it technically. WordPress is alive: plugins get updates every few weeks, hosting shifts PHP versions, security plugins patch holes that somebody is already exploiting. A one-off job does not cover that - once the project is handed over, the site is on its own.
Signs you need maintenance:
- money flows through the site or store and every hour of downtime costs you
- your last backup is “probably on the hosting, but I have not checked”
- you request small changes several times a month
- you are afraid to click “Update” because something broke once already
In that model you pay monthly instead of negotiating over every fix: Basic from 1,000 PLN, Pro from 2,000 PLN, Premium from 3,500 PLN net per month, depending on how many hours for changes and how fast a response you need. What such an agreement should contain regardless of who you hire, I wrote up in the piece on WordPress site maintenance.
A developer or a page builder person
These are two different roles, and confusing them is the most common reason people overpay or end up disappointed. A page builder person works inside a builder (Elementor, a ready-made theme) - they will produce the look quickly, but they stop where the plugin’s options run out. A developer goes into the code: writes custom functions, fixes other people’s plugins, connects the site to external systems, solves problems that have no off-the-shelf answer.
| Need | Who is enough |
|---|---|
| A brochure site on a ready-made theme | page builder person |
| Content change, a new subpage, a banner | page builder person |
| Custom cart field, unusual shipping rule | developer |
| Integration with a warehouse, ERP, courier, KSeF | developer |
| Store runs slowly despite a cache plugin | developer |
| B2B portal, per-customer price lists, client login | developer |
Simple rule: if the solution can be clicked together in the dashboard, you do not need a developer. If after an hour of clicking it still does not work - you do. The choice between a ready-made template and something written for your company I compared in the piece on ready-made template versus a custom-built site.
What an honest quote looks like
A quote is a document, not a number in a message. Before you pay a deposit, you should have six things in writing:
- Scope - a bulleted list of what will be built, plus an explicit “out of scope”
- Price - the net amount and whether it is fixed or an hourly estimate
- Deadline - the delivery date and what could move it (usually your materials)
- Payments - the split into instalments and when the final payment falls due
- Warranty - how long it lasts and what it covers
- Ownership - that the code, the access and the domain are yours, with no locks on the contractor’s side
Point six is the one most often skipped and the most expensive to get wrong. If at the end of the engagement you do not have full access to the hosting, the WordPress dashboard and the domain, every future change needs the previous developer’s blessing.
How to spot a developer who will not vanish
You spot them by how they behave before anything is signed. The things I check myself when someone recommends a subcontractor to me:
- They ask about the goal, not just the scope - “what is this feature for?” instead of an instant “sure, 3,000 PLN”
- They have a registered business and issue invoices - real company details, a NIP (the Polish VAT/tax ID), a contract
- They show live deployments - actual addresses, not just screenshots
- They say plainly what they will not do - nobody is good at everything
- They leave things tidy - a backup before changes, a note on what was done
Red flags: no contract, the full amount up front, no access on your side at all, a quote given without looking at the site, and an unnaturally low price for a large scope. Plus one thing from experience: if nobody asked about backups during the conversation, it means there will not be any.
Does the developer’s location matter
Practically not at all. All WordPress work happens remotely - access to the hosting, the dashboard and the repository looks identical from Krakow, from Warsaw or from the other end of the country. Searches like “WordPress developer Warsaw” or “Krakow” narrow your choice down to one city, not to better developers.
Proximity matters in two cases: when you need a photo shoot on site, or when the board wants a face-to-face meeting before deciding. Everything else - arrangements, sign-offs, training the team - is handled by a video call and a screen recording. I gathered the arguments for both sides in the piece on a local or a remote web developer.
How this works with me
I start with a free diagnosis: I look at the site, the hosting and whatever you already have, and I tell you straight whether you need a developer or whether an hour of someone cheaper will do. For anything larger you get a written quote before the start - a fixed price for an agreed scope, with a deadline and the warranty terms, usually within a day of receiving your description.
For the quote to be realistic, send me the site address, a bulleted list of needs in order of importance, and a rough budget. That last one meets resistance and saves the most time: a 3,000 PLN quote and a 30,000 PLN quote are two different projects, not the same project at two prices.
If what you need is extending or integrating an existing site, look at development and optimization. If the site already works and your concern is that it should not break overnight, ongoing technical support makes more sense.
Frequently asked questions
What is the hourly rate for a WordPress developer? Hourly rates on the market spread from a few dozen to several hundred zloty and depend mainly on whether you are paying for clicking around in a builder or for writing code. I do not bill projects by the hour - I use a fixed price for an agreed scope, so you know up front what you will pay and I have no reason to stretch the work out.
Is it worth hiring a WordPress developer full-time? Rarely - employment only pays off once you have a steady stream of changes worth several days of work a week. For one company site or one store, contracting or ongoing maintenance is cheaper and faster. I compared the costs of both options in the piece on an in-house developer or a contractor.
How long does it take to build a WordPress site? A simple company site is usually a few weeks, a store or a site with integrations takes longer. The biggest delay is almost never the code - it is the materials: copy, photos, product data and decisions on your side. I give the deadline together with the quote and flag what could move it.
What if my previous developer disappeared? It can be taken over, as long as you have access to the domain and the hosting - the rest can usually be reconstructed. I start with a review of what is left: the WordPress version, the plugins, the backups, and whether the site got infected along the way. What that help looks like step by step I described in the piece on who fixes WordPress.
Sitting on this yourself and unsure where to start? I speed up and repair existing sites and stores - Core Web Vitals, outages, the features that are missing. Tell me what is happening and you will get a concrete quote with a date.