What an owned WPResidence site and a rented real estate platform cost over three years, and what you keep when you stop paying.
Last updated: September 28, 2026
For an agent or agency that plans to run a website for more than about two years, owning the site usually costs less than renting one. WPResidence is a real estate WordPress theme: you install it on your own hosting, and the domain, listings and leads stay yours. We estimate the three-year cost of an owned site at $550 to $2,300 if you or your staff handle updates, or $4,100 to $13,100 with a paid care plan. A rented real estate platform (SaaS) at $50 to $300 or more a month, plus a setup fee, comes to about $1,900 to $11,300 or more over the same three years, with maintenance included.
Renting can cost less when the site runs for under about two years, stays simple and needs no MLS listings. The sections below cover costs, control, build time and growth.
We build and sell WPResidence and MLSImport, so their prices come from our pricing pages. Hosting, platform, care plan and freelance figures are our estimates.
Estimated costs, with maintenance counted on both sides.
An owned site costs a license, hosting and maintenance. A rented platform charges a monthly fee that includes hosting and maintenance. The table counts maintenance on both sides and shows the owned site two ways: maintained by you, or by a paid care plan.
| Cost | Owned site (WPResidence) | Rented platform (SaaS) |
|---|---|---|
| License or platform fee | $49 a year, with a year of updates and support | $50 to $300+ a month |
| Setup | $0 to $300, one time | $100 to $500, one time |
| Hosting and domain | $10 to $50 a month for hosting, plus $10 to $15 a year for the domain | Hosting included; domain $10 to $15 a year |
| Updates, backups and security | 2 to 4 hours a month of your time, or a $100 to $300 monthly care plan | Included in the monthly fee |
| 3-year total, maintained by you | $550 to $2,300 | $1,900 to $11,300+ |
| 3-year total, with a care plan | $4,100 to $13,100 | $1,900 to $11,300+ |
With a care plan, an owned site costs about the same as renting over three years. Two things differ. You can drop the care plan or do the work yourself, while a platform’s fee includes maintenance whether you use it or not. And after three years you own the domain, the listings and the site. Build costs for agency sites and portals are a separate line, shown in the build cost table below.
Hosting depends on the site: a single-agent site runs on a $5 to $15 shared plan, a typical agency site on $10 to $50 a month, and a large portal with many photos on a $25 to $80 managed server.
When a WPResidence license ends, the site keeps working; new versions and support stop until you renew. See WPResidence pricing for one, three or ten websites.
When you stop paying a real estate platform, the site usually goes offline. You can usually export some text or a contact list, but the listing pages, design, search and lead forms stay on the platform.
An owned WPResidence site runs on your own hosting under your own domain. Listings, agents, leads and pages are stored in your WordPress database, so you can move to another host, hand the site to another developer or change the design without entering the data again. If your WPResidence license ends, the site keeps working.
You choose the domain, the host and every setting, and you can move the site, hand it to a client or sell it.
In Theme Options you turn off what a client doesn't need: paid submissions, each payment gateway (PayPal, Stripe, wire transfer, WooCommerce) and the favorites button. Listings and search keep working with these off.
The White Label screen replaces the WPResidence name, author, description, logo and screenshot with your own, including in the admin menu titles, so a client site shows your brand. It can also hide the Themes and Customizer screens from users who are not administrators.
An agent account is a user on your site, so adding agents costs nothing extra.
Estimated first-year build costs by site type.
We estimate the first-year build cost at $200 to $1,200 for a single-agent site, $2,000 to $3,000 for a small agency site and $5,000 to $10,000 for a portal with MLS listings and stronger hosting. Most of that is setup time and outside services, since the features come with the theme.
| Site type | WPResidence build cost (first year) | Custom-built site |
|---|---|---|
| Single-agent site | $200 to $1,200 | $5,000+ |
| Small agency site | $2,000 to $3,000 | $10,000 to $20,000+ |
| Portal with MLS listings and stronger hosting | $5,000 to $10,000 | $20,000+ and months of work |
A build has four steps: install, theme setup, content and data, then custom changes. Importing one of the 50 demos gives you a full layout with pages and sample listings in one click, so most of the remaining work is settings and content.
If you build sites for clients, split the quote into tasks. This is our estimate for a mid-range agency site.
| Task | Hours | What it covers |
|---|---|---|
| Install | 3 to 5h | Hosting setup and required plugins |
| Demo import and Theme Options | 5 to 10h | Import the closest demo, then set Theme Options |
| Design and branding | 15 to 30h | Logo, colors, header, layout |
| Property fields and search | 8 to 16h | Custom fields and search filters |
| Payments and packages | 6 to 12h | Packages, featured listings, expiry, listing limits |
| MLS listings (if needed) | 10 to 25h | Set up MLSImport or another MLS provider |
| Content import and SEO | 10 to 25h | Import listings, page titles, redirects |
| Testing and training | 8 to 15h | Checks, speed, client handover |
Added up, a mid-range agency site takes about 65 to 140 hours. At a freelance rate of $50 an hour, that is about $3,300 to $7,000; add 10 to 20% for surprises. A basic site takes 2 to 4 weeks, a larger portal 2 to 3 months. The build cost table above assumes you do part of the setup yourself, which is why its small agency figure is lower.
A real estate site needs updates, backups, security checks and the occasional fix. We estimate a care plan at $100 to $300 a month, or 2 to 4 hours a month of your own time for a small or mid-size site. This is the cost that moves an owned site from $550 to $2,300 over three years up to $4,100 to $13,100 in the comparison table.
The WPResidence license includes a year of updates and support, and a care plan after that is optional. For routine tasks, see WPResidence support and documentation.
Renting can cost less when the site will run for under about two years, stays simple and needs no MLS listings, such as a site for one development that sells out within a year.
A different or simpler theme suits you better when:
Custom work needs a developer: links to other CRMs, booking flows the theme doesn't have, and in-house property systems. The theme covers most of a real estate site, and custom code for the rest has its own budget.
An owned site has no platform fee, but it has running costs: hosting at $10 to $50 a month, a domain at about $10 to $15 a year, the WPResidence renewal at $49 a year if you want updates and support, and, if you show MLS listings, a feed such as MLSImport from $49 a month for one MLS. A care plan is optional.
One live domain counts as one website. Licenses cover one, three or ten websites, so a freelancer with ten client sites needs licenses for ten websites. On the Studio and Agency licenses you can hand a finished site to the client and move that activation to your next project. Inside one site there is no fee per agent.
Photos, not code, make real estate sites heavy. Compress images with a plugin such as Smush, EWWW or ShortPixel, keep listing photos under about 300 to 400 KB, and add a page cache and a CDN such as Cloudflare. WPResidence caches its own queries, and that cache stays on unless you switch it off in Theme Options.
Videos play from YouTube, Vimeo or TikTok through the listing's video field, and 3D tours such as Matterport go in the virtual tour field, so the heavy files stay with those services.
If you build sites for clients, using one theme on every project makes each new site faster. Theme Options has an export and import tool, so you can copy a finished setup, including your custom property fields, to the next site. With WPResidence Studio you design the property, agent, agency, developer and category pages once as templates, and each template applies to every page of that type, or only to the ones you pick. Each client site still gets its own design.
Clients want a site that launches on time and works. When you know the theme's settings and Studio templates, you can quote a fixed price and a launch date, and charge for the result rather than by the hour.
WPResidence has four account types: User, Agent, Agency and Developer, each with a front-end dashboard. Agencies and developers add their own agents. Paid listings are built in: packages with a listing limit, featured listings, an image limit per listing, expiry dates and a warning email before a package expires, or a fee per listing. A solo agent can start from a demo and Theme Options, then add agents on the same site as the team grows, with no fee per agent.
PayPal, Stripe and wire transfer payments are built in. WooCommerce is optional: turn on WooCommerce payments when you want packages and listing fees paid through a WooCommerce payment gateway. WooCommerce does not handle recurring membership payments.
For MLS listings, MLSImport (sold separately) connects to 800+ MLS feeds and imports each listing as a property on your site, with its own page that search engines can index. Many IDX services show listings in a frame or on the provider's pages, which do not count as pages on your site.
If visitors can submit listings, you can require admin approval for every new listing and choose which fields are mandatory. reCAPTCHA is available on the registration form.
The main points of this page.
Our estimate: $550 to $2,300 for an owned site you maintain, $4,100 to $13,100 with a care plan, and $1,900 to $11,300+ for a rented platform.
A rented site usually goes offline when billing stops. An owned site runs on your hosting and keeps working when the WPResidence license ends.
Turn off paid features in Theme Options and put your own brand on client sites with White Label.
Hosting, a domain, an optional care plan and, for MLS listings, MLSImport from $49 a month.
Sites that run under about two years, stay simple and need no MLS listings.
User, Agent, Agency and Developer accounts and paid listing packages on one site, with no fee per agent.
Yes, when you maintain it yourself. We estimate $550 to $2,300 over three years for an owned WPResidence site, against $1,900 to $11,300 or more for a rented platform. With a $100 to $300 monthly care plan, the owned site comes to about $4,100 to $13,100, close to renting, and you keep the site and its data.
The site usually goes offline. You can usually export some text or contacts, but not the working site. An owned WPResidence site runs on your own hosting and keeps working when the license ends.
One per live domain. Licenses cover one, three or ten websites, and on the Studio and Agency licenses you can move an activation to a new project after handing a site over. There is no fee per agent inside a site.
No. PayPal, Stripe and wire transfer are built in. WooCommerce payments are optional, for when you want to use a WooCommerce payment gateway.
We estimate $100 to $300 a month for a care plan, or 2 to 4 hours a month of your own time for a small or mid-size site. The WPResidence license includes a year of updates and support.
When the site will run for less than about two years, stays simple and needs no MLS listings.
Yes. Import a demo, set up Theme Options and add listings, then add agent accounts on the same site as the team grows, with no fee per agent.
