A real estate website's running costs are a domain (about $12 a year), a free SSL certificate, hosting ($4 to $35 a month on the plans below) and, for listings, an IDX plugin or platform ($95 to $400 a month on the published prices below). Design and build are either included in a platform's plan or quoted as a project.
This guide is part of our real estate marketing cluster and our web design guides. What the site should contain is in real estate website design; how the listings get there is in IDX websites for realtors.
The four routes, and why the price differs
Most price confusion comes from comparing one route with another. The four:
- A website builder. A hosted plan with templates; listings shown by pasting links or embedding a widget. Cheapest, least real estate-specific.
- WordPress plus an IDX plugin. Your own site on hosting you choose, with a plugin that pulls your MLS feed into searchable, indexable listing pages. The most common route for agents and small brokerages that want to own their site.
- An agent website platform. A real estate-specific service that bundles site, IDX, CRM and lead tools for a monthly fee plus setup. Fast to launch; the site lives on their platform.
- A custom brokerage build. A site designed and built for the brokerage, usually on WordPress, with IDX, agent and office pages, recruiting pages and integrations. Quoted per project.
The base costs every route shares
A domain renews yearly: Porkbun lists a .com at $11.81 a year (read 8 November 2026). The SSL certificate that makes the site https is free: Let's Encrypt is a free, automated and open certificate authority run by the nonprofit Internet Security Research Group, and most hosts install it automatically. A domain that reads as the agent's or team's brand is fine, but the REALTOR Code of Ethics' Standard of Practice 12-10 (2026 Code, effective 1 January 2026) extends the duty to present a true picture to URLs and domain names, so a domain must not mislead about who or what the site is.
Route 1: a website builder
WordPress.com's pricing page (read 8 November 2026, US dollars excluding taxes) is a fair reference for hosted builders: Free at $0, Personal at $9 a month or $4 a month billed yearly, Premium at $18 or $8, Business at $40 or $25, and Commerce at $70 or $45. For a real estate site the plan that matters is Business, because it is the first that allows plugins, and an IDX plugin is how listings get onto the site. Below that, listings are links to the MLS or a portal, which sends your visitors away.
Route 2: WordPress plus an IDX plugin
Two costs: hosting and the IDX plugin. Managed WordPress hosting with updates and backups included runs from Kinsta's single-site plans at $35 a month or $30 a month billed annually ($350 a year) to WP Engine's Essential plan at $28.00 a month billed annually ($336 up front), both read 8 November 2026 in US dollars. Cheaper shared hosting exists; for a site that must load fast on a phone while a buyer stands outside a listing, the managed tier usually earns its price.
The IDX plugin is the real estate line. Showcase IDX publishes Essentials at $94.95 a month or $849.50 a year with two seats, live feeds for more than 600 MLSs, lead capture and indexable listing pages, and Premium at $124.95 a month or $1,195 a year with five seats, advanced lead routing and CRM integrations (read 8 November 2026; shown in dollars). Other plugins price similarly by seats and MLS boards; several we tried to open did not load, so only the one we read is quoted. Add a premium theme or page builder and a few paid plugins, each renewing yearly, and the route costs roughly $130 to $170 a month in running fees before any design work.
Route 3: an agent website platform
Platforms bundle the site, the IDX, a CRM and lead tools. Real Geeks publishes its platform at $399 a month plus a $500 one-time setup fee for two users, with IDX feeds at $10 per MLS board per month, additional users from $25 a month, and optional lead packages at $299 to $599 a month that include paid social or search ads (read 8 November 2026; shown in dollars). The trade: you launch in days with everything connected, and you pay a platform fee for as long as the site exists, on a site that belongs to the platform rather than to you.
Route 4: a custom brokerage build
A custom site adds design and build to the running costs above: a page plan for the brokerage, its offices, its agents and its recruiting; templates designed in the brokerage's brand; the IDX feed configured and styled; integrations with the CRM, the transaction system and the marketing tools; and the redirects from the old site. It is quoted against that scope, and we publish no rate card for it. The public ranges for small-business and larger marketing sites in our guides to how long a website takes to build and WordPress website development cost give the bands; a brokerage site with IDX and agent pages sits in the larger-site band, not the brochure band.
What makes a real estate site cost more
Six things move the price within any route:
- Several MLS boards. Each feed is set up, paid for (Real Geeks charges per board) and styled.
- Agent and office pages. Fifty agents with their own listing pages and lead routing is a different site from one agent's.
- Recruiting. A brokerage site sells to agents as well as to buyers and sellers, which doubles the page plan.
- Integrations. CRM, transaction management, email, showing and valuation tools, each with its own API work.
- Compliance. The brokerage name clearly on every page, the true-picture rules for images and claims, Fair Housing-safe copy, and the advertising rules of your state or province, built in rather than patched on.
- Speed on phones. Listing pages are image-heavy; making them fast is real work and shows in search rankings.
Which route for whom
A new agent who needs a presence this month takes a builder or a platform. An agent or small team that wants to own the asset and rank in search takes WordPress with an IDX plugin. A brokerage with offices, many agents and a recruiting story takes a custom build on WordPress with IDX, because the platform templates cannot carry the brand or the structure. The table below sets the routes side by side with their published prices.
How to budget a real estate website
Six steps:
- List the base costs for a year: domain, hosting plan, IDX plugin or platform fee, theme and plugin renewals.
- Count the MLS boards and the agents who need pages or seats; both multiply the IDX and platform costs.
- Decide who owns the site. A platform's convenience against an asset you keep when you change vendors.
- Scope the custom work on one page if you need it: pages, templates, integrations, redirects, compliance checks.
- Get two or three quotes against that page, itemised, with running costs separate from the build.
- Hold back for content: agent photographs, office pages, neighborhood copy and listing descriptions are the work platforms do not do for you.
Conclusion
A real estate website costs what its route costs: a hosted plan for a builder, hosting plus an IDX plugin for a WordPress site, a monthly platform fee plus setup for an agent platform, and a quoted project plus running costs for a custom brokerage build. The published prices above, all dated, give the running-cost bands; the number of MLS boards, agents, integrations and the compliance work decide where a site lands inside them.
PromotEdge International is an international strategy, technology, marketing and design company, and our delivery team is in India. Our web design team builds brokerage and team sites on WordPress with IDX, quoted against a written scope, and our real estate marketing team brings the buyers and sellers to them. This guide is general information, not legal advice; the rules of your state or province and your own counsel decide what applies to you.
Facts we rely on: see our company facts for what we state about ourselves and where each fact comes from.