Member Avatar for brandonna

Doing a upgrade most likely next year on my website, but need to figure out how much to budget for it. I like the look of the following sites and was wondering:

1) mint.com
2) benzinga.com

Can you tell if they are:

a) wordpress customization jobs? or another cms tool? can these sites be created in that fashion so that I have a bit more controls despite not being a javascript expert like some of you?
b) how much a job like this would cost me if I wanted to do it to my current site?
c) what other details I may need to know to upgrade from a wordpres site to these?

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by rizvihaider72

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Short, practical guidance to complement the replies from and : the single biggest cost driver is scope. A purely visual/theme redesign is a very different project from adding custom feeds, user dashboards, paywalls, or real‑time data. Start by writing a short requirements list (must-have features, expected daily/peak visitors, and any external integrations); that list is what a developer or agency will price against.

Quick way to check whether a site can be matched with WordPress or needs a custom stack: view page source for obvious WordPress paths (for example /wp-content/) or try loading /wp-admin/wp-login.php, and run a tech-detector like Wappalyzer to see the CMS and third‑party services used. These checks give a fast reality check before you scope work. (See Wappalyzer: https://www.wappalyzer.com/)

Ballpark budgets (US market, current ranges): small theme/customization work typically falls in the low‑thousands; a custom theme plus moderate integrations often ranges mid‑thousands to low‑five‑figures; complex, high‑traffic editorial or finance portals with bespoke features and scaling requirements can run from tens of thousands up to six figures. Hosting, CDN, caching, plugin licenses, and ongoing maintenance add recurring costs. Industry pricing guides and WordPress cost breakdowns are useful references when setting expectations. (See Clutch: https://clutch.co/developers/ecommerce/pricing and Kinsta: https://kinsta.com/blog/wordpress-website-cost/)

Actionable next steps and checklist:

Once you have the feature list and traffic targets, request 2–3 quotes that include time, deliverables, and hosting/maintenance costs. That will give a realistic budget range to plan for.

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Member Avatar for RykeTech

It is impossible to say how much a job like this would cost because I have no idea what you are looking to get out of your website. That is the most important variable when quoting a website. Mint.com has an appealing layout and could easily be set up with cms but a site like benzinga.com would take A LOT longer to build and get everything feeding to the page correctly, and the price would reflect that accordingly.

Member Avatar for rizvihaider72

Yes agreed with RykeTech it is not possible to estimate the worth. The two provided site are very different from each other. Mint.com can be built using a CMS like Wordpress or Joomla easily in 1-2 months but site like Benzinga.com usually have their own CMS, it takes too long to built site like it.

Edited by Ezzaral because: Snipped url. Please restrict personal links to your user signature.
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