WordPress Website Design & Development,
Charlotte, NC
17 years in web design. 12+ years on WordPress.
Pricing
Four build tiers. Two price columns per tier: Standard and ADA/WCAG Certified. Every WordPress build has a human designer in the loop.
Four Build Tiers
Standard prices shown reflect our default AI plus Human Loop service level. ADA/WCAG Certified is 2x Standard and includes the full compliance pipeline.
Launch
6 Pages
New businesses with tight budgets. Honest caveat: 6 pages isn't enough content to compete seriously for SEO in most niches. We offer this because we understand budget reality, not because we recommend it.
- ✓10 Shutterstock images
- ✓2 Gravity Forms
- ✓1 hr designer training
- ○HeyGen video ($75/video add-on)
Small Business
20 Pages
The real baseline. Enough content depth to rank for meaningful keyword clusters. This is the tier we recommend to most local-business and professional-services clients.
- ✓20 Shutterstock images
- ✓2 Gravity Forms
- ✓1 hr designer training
- ✓1 HeyGen video included
Professional
40 Pages
Content-heavy service businesses, multi-location businesses, and sites that need strong topic-cluster SEO depth.
- ✓40 Shutterstock images
- ✓3 to 5 Gravity Forms
- ✓1 hr designer training
- ✓2 HeyGen videos included
Enterprise
60+ Pages
Existing large sites needing migration or expansion. New clients rarely start at this size. If you're here, it's because you have existing content or clear expansion needs, and we'd rather quote your specific scope than pretend a grid captures it.
- ✓60 Shutterstock images
- ✓8+ Gravity Forms
- ✓1 hr designer training
- ✓3 HeyGen avatar videos
Choose Your Build Standard
WordPress always has a human in the loop. We don't offer an AI-only WordPress build, because the platform has enough moving parts (themes, plugins, shortcode behavior, compliance edge cases) that we don't think we could honestly ship it without a designer validating every page. Two build standards:
AI plus Human Loop
Our standard. DraftDash handles content, Vigil audits compliance, Catori handles SEO, MOG directs layout, and a human designer validates every page before handoff. This is what we recommend for every WordPress build.
ADA/WCAG Certified
Full Vigil pipeline on every page, multiple human auditors (the "triplicate" loop: AI plus Humans plus re-validation), WCAG 2.2 AA guarantee issued in writing, and the five compliance-companion pages (privacy policy, cookie policy, accessibility statement, ADA landing, compliance report) built and maintained. Guarantee is conditional on staying on our compliance-tier maintenance plan.
Why the 2x on Certified isn't a price gouge
You're genuinely getting about 2x the work. Five additional pages. Per-page Vigil pipeline. Multiple human auditors. A guarantee we stand behind. And the ongoing maintenance-plan coupling that keeps you compliant as content changes. Less than 5% of websites are fully WCAG 2.2 AA compliant (tentative citation pending, WebAIM Million). Compliance is a premium asset because the work is premium.
Being honest about the time ratio
In our shop, a WordPress build on a third-party theme takes our AI-plus-human pipeline roughly 3 to 4x as long as the equivalent Forged Site. We've built both many times, and that ratio is consistent. The pricing above already reflects that reality. Forged Sites are cheaper at every tier not because we're cutting corners, but because the rendering stack is cleaner and the work is genuinely faster.
What's Included at Every Tier
Every WordPress build we ship includes the full Idea Forge Studios build stack:
Design and Build
- ✓Fully responsive design (mobile, tablet, desktop) on custom templates
- ✓Current-generation AI imagery (best model available at build time, this landscape changes monthly and we stay current)
- ✓Licensed Shutterstock images from our stock subscription (count by tier: 10 / 20 / 40 / 60)
- ✓VEO 3.1 AI video headers, recommended on all Standard-tier and higher pages (Launch tier can opt in as a paid add-on)
- ✓Revolution Slider Plugin with one custom slideshow design
- ✓User-editable blog and page editor (classic WP plus Gutenberg)
Performance, Security, SEO
- ✓Yoast SEO configured on all pages, with Catori SEO optimization passes during build
- ✓WP Rocket page caching plugin included and configured
- ✓Wordfence security plugin included and configured
- ✓Full Vigil compliance audit report generated at handoff (even on non-Certified tiers). On Certified tiers, Vigil runs per-page with sign-off; on Standard tiers we use Vigil's feedback to fix the major issues even though we don't certify.
Forms and Training
- ✓1 Gravity Forms form included (additional forms at $150/form)
- ✓1 hour of live designer training included, scheduled at handoff
Idea Forge Studios AI Stack Integration (on qualifying maintenance plans)
- ◆DraftDash, content management and publishing
- ◆Ethel, voice assistant integration (when available for your use case)
- ◆Thea, our AI content strategy assistant, runs topic research and content briefs that feed directly into your DraftDash publishing pipeline
- ◆Vigil, ongoing compliance monitoring with dashboard access
Turnaround
Same Day Rough Draft
AI has collapsed what used to be a two-week design phase into something we can do in an afternoon. When a client shows up prepared, we can deliver a first-pass rough draft the same day you sign. That wasn't true a year ago. It's true now.
Who qualifies
Same-day delivery only works when the starting material is there. You qualify if any one of these is true:
- ›You have an existing website we can reference for brand, tone, and content.
- ›You provide a transcript or written brief covering everything you want built or changed.
- ›You're available for a full engagement session with us that day, live, to walk through scope together.
- ›You arrive with complete information about what you want designed: pages, structure, copy direction, visual references.
Timing caveat
If we start late in the day, your rough draft may land the next morning rather than the same evening. We'll flag the cutoff when you book.
It's a rough draft, not a finished site
Every design needs review and polish. No client should take a Day 1 rough draft and ship it unchanged. Think of it as a working first pass we then refine together, not the final deliverable.
HeyGen AI Video Avatars by Tier
AI-generated spokesperson videos with full voiceover and transcript, produced through our HeyGen pipeline:
| Tier | Included HeyGen Videos |
|---|---|
| Launch | None included; $75/video add-on available |
| Small Business | 1 HeyGen talking avatar video with transcript |
| Professional | 2 HeyGen talking avatar videos with transcripts |
| Enterprise | 3 HeyGen animated avatar videos with transcripts and full voiceover |
Want to see a sample HeyGen avatar video? See a demo on the WordPress service page.
Add-on pricing
$75 per additional HeyGen video, flat. That includes production, script refinement, voiceover, and YouTube upload. Available on any tier.
The $75 assumes a reasonable revision cycle
Flat-rate pricing covers up to 3 revision rounds with the client. Some clients want 20+ rounds of fine-tuning before approving. If you're in that camp (and you know if you are), we'll flag it upfront and quote the extra scope. We don't surprise-bill for it.
An honest limitation
AI avatar videos may not come out exactly as you picture them in your head. The tooling is remarkable but still imperfect. Voices, micro-expressions, and camera feel don't always hit the mark on the first generation, and not every correction is fixable inside the current model. Clients who go into HeyGen production expecting "close but not perfect" are always happy with the result. Clients who need "exactly as I imagined it" are usually better served by a live-actor shoot (which we can also broker).
Maintenance Plans
WordPress sites require a separate maintenance plan on top of your build cost (Forged Sites bundle maintenance into the platform fee). This is because WordPress has ongoing security, plugin, and theme update requirements that static sites simply don't carry.
Three maintenance tiers, matching your service level:
AI Pure Maintenance
Automated backups, plugin updates, security monitoring via Wordfence, Vigil dashboard access. Designer time for content changes: client-handled.
AI plus Human Loop Maintenance
Everything in AI Pure, plus 30 minutes of human designer time per month (see below). Catori monthly SEO audit. DraftDash content publishing assistance.
ADA/WCAG Compliance Maintenance
Everything above, plus ongoing per-page Vigil audits on every content change, compliance-guarantee preservation, multi-auditor revalidation, scheduled compliance reports. The 3x isn't a typo. WordPress shortcode verification and plugin-compatibility checking during updates genuinely triples the work compared to our Forged Site compliance maintenance.
View full maintenance plan pricing ›
What 30 minutes of human designer time actually covers
That's 30 minutes of human time, not the AI orchestration that runs behind it. In practice, with our AI pipeline doing the heavy lifting, 30 human-minutes per month can comfortably cover 10+ pages of content updates or template-based edits across one or two template variations, including re-auditing. If you want a completely new page structure, a site-wide redesign, or a custom workflow built out, that's additional project scope and we'll quote it straight up.
Frequently Asked Questions
Should I use WordPress at all? How do I decide? +
Can I start at a lower tier and upgrade later? +
What's the compliance guarantee actually worth? +
Why does Magento 2 pricing not appear anymore? +
Do you build in Shopify / Wix / Squarespace / Webflow? +
Still deciding if WordPress is right for you?
This page is the honest price list. If you want the philosophy, fit framework, and decision guide, that lives on our WordPress service page, a short read with no hidden pitch.
We quote real work, not templates.