How Long Does a WordPress Website Actually Take to Build?

Honest answer from 250+ WitsCode builds: a 5-page brochure WordPress site takes 3 to 4 weeks, a 25-page service site takes 8 to 10 weeks, and a full WooCommerce migration takes 12 to 16 weeks. Those numbers assume a competent build team, a client who can make decisions, and content that arrives on time. Two of those three almost never happen at once, which is why most projects quietly slide.

We have been the last-mile developer for enough vibe-coded prototypes and stalled agency projects to know that the build itself is rarely what blows the schedule. Coordination, content, and approval cycles do. The rest of this piece walks through the three project archetypes we ship most often, names the phases honestly, and tells you exactly where the time disappears.

The Three Archetypes We Actually Build

WordPress timelines collapse into three patterns. A small brochure site for a service business that needs credibility. A mid-size service site with case studies, team pages, integrations, and a blog. And a full WooCommerce build or migration where commerce, product data, and payments enter the picture. Each has its own rhythm, its own bottlenecks, and its own honest week count. The phase labels are similar across all three, but the duration of each phase scales non-linearly with site size.

Before we go deeper, here is the meta-pattern. Roughly 30 to 40 percent of a WordPress build is design and development. Another 30 percent is content production and stakeholder review. The remaining 30 to 40 percent is integrations, QA, and launch logistics. When founders tell us "the dev part should be quick, we have a Figma already," they are right about the dev part and wrong about everything else.

Archetype 1 → The 5-Page Brochure Site (3-4 Weeks)

This is the home, about, services, contact, plus one supporting page build. Usually a service business: a clinic, a consultant, a local trades firm. No e-commerce, no logged-in users, maybe a contact form and Google Analytics. If everything goes right, we ship in three weeks. Four if the client needs a second design round.

Discovery and Scoping (3-5 days)

We start with a kickoff call, a sitemap confirmation, a tech audit if there is an existing site, and a content inventory. For a five-page site this is genuinely fast because the decisions are bounded. The biggest discovery risk here is the client realising mid-call that they actually need a booking system, which quietly converts the project into archetype two.

Design (5-7 days)

Wireframe approval, then a hi-fi mockup of the home page and one inner template. We do not design every page at this size. Inner pages get composed from the same component library at build time. A second design round adds three to five days, which is why we charge for it explicitly in our scope.

Content and Build (7-10 days, parallel)

Development happens in parallel with content collection. We build the theme or block patterns, wire up ACF for any structured fields, and stub the pages. Content is where this archetype dies. We had a five-page veterinary clinic build run six weeks because the practice owner kept rewriting the about page. The fix is a content deadline, written into the scope, with a "we proceed with placeholder copy" clause.

QA, Launch, and Hypercare (3-5 days)

Cross-browser checks, mobile, accessibility sweep, form testing, analytics verification, then DNS cutover. Most five-page sites launch on a Tuesday or Wednesday morning so we have the rest of the week to babysit. Friday launches are how junior agencies create their own weekend emergencies.

Archetype 2 → The 25-Page Service Site (8-10 Weeks)

This is the build most growing SMBs actually need. Service pages, location pages, case studies, team bios, a blog, gated lead magnets, HubSpot or Salesforce integration, custom post types for case studies, a careers section, and probably a knowledge base. Eight weeks if the client is decisive, ten if they are normal.

Discovery and Information Architecture (1-2 weeks)

The IA work alone is a week. We have to map service-to-location combinations, decide if case studies are filterable by industry, plan internal linking, and figure out where the resource library lives. A 25-page site that gets IA wrong needs a rebuild in eighteen months, so we push hard here even when the client wants to skip ahead.

Design (2-3 weeks)

Home, service template, case study template, blog index and post, plus three or four bespoke pages. We design a small component library, not 25 unique pages. Design review is the first place this archetype slips. We had a 25-page build run 14 weeks because the marketing director wanted alignment from a CEO who was traveling for three of those weeks. The mitigation is a named decision-maker in the kickoff document, not "the team will review."

Development and Integrations (3-4 weeks)

Theme development, ACF field groups, custom post types, taxonomy setup, and the integration layer. HubSpot forms, Calendly embeds, Mailchimp lists, sometimes a Pipedrive webhook. Each integration looks like a half-day task and turns into two days when sandbox credentials are wrong, the client's HubSpot account is on a legacy plan, or the GDPR consent flow needs a rework. Plan for one integration to misbehave. It always does.

Content Migration and Population (parallel, 2-3 weeks)

This is where 25-page builds actually live or die. The client needs to write or migrate 25 pages of copy, source 30 to 50 images, write team bios, and provide case study content with permission cleared. We give clients a Notion or Google Docs template and a hard cutoff. When content slips past week six, the launch slips by exactly that amount. There is no compression magic.

QA, Accessibility, and Launch (1-2 weeks)

A 25-page site has roughly 200 things that can break: redirect maps from the old site, schema markup for case studies, OG tags, sitemap regeneration, search functionality, form submissions to the right CRM list, and consent banner behaviour across regions. We allocate at least eight working days. Launches at this size always have a punch list.

Archetype 3 → The Full WooCommerce Build or Migration (12-16 Weeks)

E-commerce changes the physics. Now you have product data, variants, tax zones, shipping rules, payment gateways, fulfillment integrations, and almost always a migration from Shopify, Magento, or a legacy WooCommerce install. Twelve weeks for a clean greenfield Woo build with under 200 SKUs. Sixteen weeks for a migration from another platform with real order history and a working storefront that cannot go dark.

Discovery, Data Audit, and Migration Planning (2-3 weeks)

The audit is the project. We map every product, every variant, every category, every redirect, every customer record, every legacy URL pattern, and every payment integration. We had a Shopify-to-Woo migration where the client had 4,200 products in their export but only 2,800 were active sellers. Cleaning that data took eleven days and saved the launch from being a search-quality disaster. Discovery for Woo is not a kickoff call. It is a fortnight of forensics.

Design and Storefront UX (2-3 weeks)

Home, category listing, product detail, cart, checkout, account dashboard, order confirmation. The checkout flow alone is three or four states. We design within an existing block theme like Blocksy or a Woo-optimised parent so we are not reinventing cart drawer behaviour from scratch.

Development, Product Build, and Integrations (3-5 weeks)

This is the longest single phase. Theme work, custom Woo templates, ACF for product detail, shipping zones, tax classes, payment gateway configuration, ERP or 3PL integrations, abandoned cart automation, and review imports. Stripe and PayPal configuration sounds simple and is rarely simple. We have lost three days to a Stripe Tax setting that interacted badly with a client's UK VAT registration.

Migration Dry Runs (1-2 weeks)

We run two or three full migration dry runs against staging. Product data, customer records, order history if it is being preserved, redirect maps, and SEO metadata. Each dry run surfaces something. Missing alt text on 800 product images. Variant SKUs that do not match the warehouse system. A category structure that worked in Shopify but breaks Woo's parent-child taxonomy logic. Skipping dry runs is how stores launch with broken search and no-one realises until the next Monday.

QA, Accessibility, Performance, and Launch (1-2 weeks)

Performance testing under realistic product loads, payment gateway end-to-end tests with real cards, refund flow verification, accessibility audit on checkout (legally important in both the UK and US), and the launch runbook. Woo launches are coordinated cutovers with rollback plans, not DNS flips. We hold the team on standby for 48 hours after launch because order processing problems show up on the second business day, not the first.

Why Real Projects Run Longer Than the Numbers Above

The week ranges in this article are honest medians from our pipeline. About 35 percent of projects beat them. About 25 percent overrun by two to four weeks. The overruns cluster around five recurring causes. Content arrives late, which we have already covered. Approval cycles expand because new stakeholders join after kickoff. Scope creeps when the client discovers a feature mid-build, like "can we add a member portal." Integration partners go quiet, especially smaller SaaS tools where support response is measured in business days. And legal or compliance review gets bolted on at week eight when someone in the client's org notices GDPR exists.

The single best predictor of on-time delivery is whether the client has one named decision-maker with calendar availability. Not budget, not site size, not tech complexity. Decisiveness.

How WitsCode Scopes for Realistic Timelines

We are the last-mile developer for vibe coders, which means a lot of our work starts with a Figma file, a Lovable prototype, or a half-built Webflow draft that needs to become a real WordPress site. Our discovery process is built around honesty about timelines, not optimism. We will tell you in the scoping call whether your "we need it in three weeks" is a 5-page archetype or a 25-page archetype in disguise.

If you have a prototype, a deadline, and a real business depending on launch, talk to us about scoping the build properly. We will give you a phase-by-phase plan with named decision points, content deadlines that mean something, and a launch date we will actually hit. Start a scoping conversation with WitsCode → and bring whatever you already have. We will tell you what it really takes.