Are You Charging Enough? Updated Hourly, In-House, and Emergency Rates

As the new year unfolds, it’s natural to look at your pricing. Are you charging too much, too little, or just right? The real answer lies in questions you need to answer yourself. Once you answer those questions, you can implement the strategy.

How much do you cost your own business?

How many hours does the average build take?

How often are your estimates on par with reality?

How will you estimate (per project or per hour)?

How many hours do you want to bill in a week/month?

TL;DR: Your hourly rates should reflect how much you cost your own business. All of your pricing strategy starts from here.

As WordPress evolves into a business-critical infrastructure, pricing models need to shift from hourly labor to value-based risk management. And in 2026, $25 an hour simply won’t suffice.

If you ask around, current US WordPress rates range from $80 to $200/hr, with emergency response often commanding a two times premium. That’s fine, but if you want to maximize profitability, you should transition to care plans instead of hourly charges. Why? Care plans focus on uptime, security, and deliverability rather than time-bound tasks. And, your client’s websites aren’t a nice-to-have – they are must-haves. Meaning, they need you more than you need them. And that mentality shift alone will help you raise your rates.

Stop Charging Like a Freelancer: A WordPress Pricing Manifesto for 2026

So, are you charging enough? According to the 2025 Admin Bar survey, the median rate a WordPress developer charges can be really low: like $25/hour. That is not a typo.

Most WordPress developers aren’t undercharging because they lack skill. They’re undercharging because they’re pricing the wrong thing. Development, like website hosting, is not a commodity item, so stop pricing it like one.

You don’t sell hours. You don’t sell “fixes.” You don’t sell “WordPress help.”

You sell uptime, deliverability, performance, and risk reduction.

Yet, too many people are still charging like WordPress is a side project instead of business-critical infrastructure. That disconnect is costing you — and it’s time for a reset.

“People often worry about hosting costs being too expensive, care plans, and what they should charge, but the reality is that as an industry of professionals, we set the price and standards based on local trust as well as market rates.”
Ben Gabler on The Admin Bar

“It Only Took 5 Minutes” Is Not a Pricing Strategy

If pricing were truly based on time, seniority would be a liability. Senior developers would earn less than juniors because they solve problems faster. Speed would be punished.

But that’s not how value works in any other high-stakes industry:

A lawyer doesn’t bill less because the answer was obvious to them.

A pilot doesn’t discount a flight for a smooth, routine landing.

Clients don’t pay for your effort; they pay for outcomes and certainty.

WordPress Is Infrastructure Now

WordPress doesn’t just power blogs anymore — it is the engine behind 60% of the Web!

eCommerce Revenue: Every minute the cart is down, money is vaporizing.

Lead Generation: If a form fails, a six-figure contract might vanish.

Email Deliverability: One missing SPF record can blacklist a company.

SEO Traffic: A botched migration can destroy years of organic growth in hours.

When something breaks, a business owner doesn’t think in “minutes of labor.” They think in lost revenue, lost trust, and lost customers. That’s not a task; it’s an operational incident.

The Shift: From Labor to Liability Management

The most successful WordPress devs stopped pricing like labor and started pricing like liability management. Your real job is making sure bad things don’t happen — and stopping them instantly when they do, or even before they happen.

Three Pricing Truths the Industry Avoids

Speed Is the Product: If you can diagnose a critical DNS issue in sixty seconds, that isn’t a discount. That speed is the result of years of experience.

Urgency Changes the Price: A broken checkout on a Friday night is a catastrophe. Priority access is a premium feature, not a courtesy.

Clients Pay for What They Don’t Understand: DNS, SPF, and caching layers are invisible to clients. They are buying the trust that you handle the complexity.

A Practical Pricing Reset

Work Type | Pricing Logic | Strategy
Scheduled Work | Standard Rate $125/hour | Planned updates, new features, and non-critical builds.

Priority Support

Standard + 50%
$185/hour

Requests that jump the queue or require same-day response.

Emergency Response

Standard x 2
$250/hour

Nights, weekends, or “site-down” revenue-critical incidents.

Online Shops / WooCommerce

Standard + 40%
$175/hour

High-risk work involving payment gateways, database locks, and PCI compliance.

The Rocket.net Advantage: When you host on a platform that handles the heavy lifting — Enterprise CDN, WAF, and automated backups — you spend less time on “labor” and more time as the high-value consultant your clients need.

The Bottom Line

If your pricing doesn’t change when urgency changes, you’re undercharging. WordPress is infrastructure now. Start pricing like it.

“Maintaining a website isn’t a luxury—it’s a business necessity.”
Rocket.net- Agency Pricing Strategies for Hosting and Maintenance That Actually Work

WordPress Pricing FAQ: 2026 Industry Standards

What is the average hourly rate for a WordPress developer in 2026?

WordPress developers’ hourly rates according to eitbiz.com:

Beginner Developer: $15–$40/hour

Mid-Level Developer: $40–$80/hour

Senior Developer/Agency: $80–$150/hour

How much should I charge for emergency WordPress support?

Industry standard for emergency WordPress support is 1.5x to 2x your standard hourly rate, often with a 2-hour minimum for incidents occurring outside of business hours (nights, weekends, and holidays).

Why is value-based pricing better than hourly pricing for WordPress?

Value-based pricing aligns your compensation with the business impact of your work (e.g., preventing $10,000 in lost sales) rather than the minutes spent. This allows senior developers to be paid for their expertise and speed, rather than being penalized for efficiency.

What should a WordPress Care Plan include in 2026?

A modern WordPress Care Plan should include managed hosting, automated backups, real-time security monitoring, performance optimization (Core Web Vitals), and priority emergency response.

“Look, you can keep charging $29/month and wondering why you’re burned out. Or you can treat your expertise like what it is: the difference between a client’s site thriving or tanking.”
Rocket.net – How Much Should You Pay Someone To Maintain Your Website?