How much does a CMS cost? A publisher's guide to running costs

Cost conversations about publishing software tend to start and end with the sticker price. That figure is usually the wrong one to compare. A site that publishes every day needs reliable hosting, someone who can make changes safely, updates applied on time and a plan for the day you move to something else. This guide breaks the cost into categories so you can build a budget that survives contact with reality.

Vendor prices change, so every figure below is tied to the vendor’s own pricing page and dated. Where we could not verify a price, we describe the category without a number.

What are the main cost categories?

What does the licence cost?

Many of the best-known systems cost nothing to license. Drupal is licensed under the GNU GPL version 2 or later, and the Joomla repository describes Joomla as free and open source software under the same licence. See the licensing guide for what that permits.

Others charge. Craft CMS’s pricing page lists a free Solo edition, Team at $279 per project and Pro at $399 per project for self-hosted use, each including one year of updates, with an Enterprise tier on custom pricing. The same page says updates after the first year cost $99 per year. That means a Pro site has a known year-one licence cost and a smaller recurring one, which is easier to plan than a variable bill.

What do hosted plans cost?

Hosted plans swap the build and maintenance work for a monthly fee. Ghost(Pro) lists Starter at $15 USD per month, Publisher at $29 and Business at $199, billed yearly with the option to switch to monthly billing; the Custom tier is priced on request. Ghost’s repository describes Ghost(Pro) as covering CDN, backups, security and maintenance, and states Ghost can also be self-hosted with its CLI tool.

WordPress.com lists, in US dollars excluding taxes, Personal from US$9 per month on monthly billing and US$4 per month on annual billing, Premium at US$18 and US$8, Business at US$40 and US$25, and Commerce at US$70 and US$45, with Enterprise handled through WordPress VIP on custom pricing. Its listed prices exclude taxes. The cheaper tiers differ in storage and features, so match the tier to your requirement list before you compare it with a self-hosted build.

What does hosting cost for a self-hosted CMS?

We do not quote hosting prices here, because they vary by provider, region and traffic and we did not verify any single provider’s page. What matters is the shape of the bill. Shared hosting is cheapest and least predictable under load. A virtual server gives you control but makes you responsible for patching. Managed hosting for a specific CMS costs more and hands maintenance to someone else.

For a news site, budget for three things people forget: a content delivery network for image-heavy pages, off-site backups, and enough headroom for a spike when one story takes off. Our installation guide covers what a self-hosted setup needs.

Where does development money go?

Even a free CMS needs a front end. A custom theme and templates, integrations with your newsletter and analytics, and any bespoke editorial features are the largest one-off item for most publishers. Ask for a fixed scope with named deliverables, and for the theme to be delivered in a version-controlled repository you own.

Plugins, extensions and renewals

Features outside the core often cost extra: membership, paywalls, advanced SEO controls, multilingual support, forms and caching. Some are free, some are one-off purchases and some renew yearly. List every extension you need and note its pricing model, support terms and update history. A plugin that is not updated becomes a security risk, which turns into a maintenance cost.

Maintenance, support and security

Software needs updating, and for a publisher an outage or a compromise is public. Plan for a regular update routine, tested on a copy of the site first, monitoring for uptime and errors, and backups you have actually restored from at least once. If nobody on staff can do this, pay an agency retainer or choose a hosted plan, because the cost does not disappear when ignored; it arrives as an incident.

What does migration cost?

Moving an archive is mostly about mapping. Articles, authors, categories, tags, images, comments and URL structure all need to land in the new system, and old URLs need redirects so incoming links and search visibility are not lost. The larger and older the archive, the more edge cases you meet. Run a trial migration of a sample first (see how to trial a CMS) and count the exceptions before you commit to a quote.

A simple way to build the budget

1. Write the required features before you shop.
2. Price each option against that list, including add-ons needed to reach parity.
3. Add hosting, development, maintenance and migration as separate lines.
4. Add a contingency, and a year-two figure for renewals and updates.

The cheapest option in year one is often not the cheapest across three years. Comparing a three-year total keeps the decision honest.