WordPress Developer Salary Overview Around the World

WordPress is very popular to date. Visit any website and, most likely, it is built with the help of WordPress. Because of its popularity, a lot of freelancers and in-house programmers from many locations work with this CMS. As a result, we have a big variety in WordPress programmer salary, which is, in general, estimated to be low compared to salaries in other development fields. Studies show that the popularity of the system is growing rapidly, so it is hard to say what the future will bring to WordPress developers. Since there are developers from many countries, there comes a varied salary based on the location. Ukraine developers have their salary range while other countries also have a range of salary for the developers.  

A little of WordPress history

WordPress is a free open-source content management system that allows you to manage the content of your WordPress website. To date, there are many guides that describe how to use WordPress and provide instructions that will help to build a website, blog, etc. Even a beginner can easily build a required website, however, this will take longer than for an experienced WordPress developer. The history of WordPress begins back in 2001 when the French programmer Michael Valdrighi developed a B2/cafelog system that generated pages dynamically using the MySQL database content. However, over time Micheal abandoned the project. Users liked the idea so much that one of them, namely Matt Mullenweg, decided to update the existing system by adding new interesting properties. Matt easily found a like-minded person, Mike Little. So in 2003, a new CMS appeared. It was named WordPress and was written in PHP, using the same MySQL database.

The popularity of WordPress

The creation of WordPress greatly facilitated the web development process. For example, you yourself wanted to write a web page or to maintain and update the content on a page that someone has already created for you. If this system didn’t exist, you would need a lot of special knowledge such as knowledge of programming languages like PHP, JavaScript, HTML, CSS, MySQL database, etc. WordPress allows creating web pages much faster, and they come out better and more reliable. Perhaps it is the simplicity and the extensive functionality of the system that made WordPress development so popular. The resource W3Techs constantly publishes web technology surveys. Their data are based on the research of the Top 10 million websites rated by Alexa rank. The survey on the usage of various CMS showed that 47.5% of all the researched websites are not based on any management system at all. However, 31.5% of websites in this huge list are using WordPress CMS. This means that almost 60% of web pages using CMS are WordPress websites. Also, W3Techs stating that this CMS continues to be the fastest-growing outstripping WooCommerce and Wix.

WordPress programmer salary worldwide

The huge popularity of this CMS generates a great demand. Consequently, around the world, many junior web developers learn WordPress. Some of them continue their careers in this direction, but the others move further, going deeper, studying new programming languages for themselves, opening the boundaries, etc. However, specialists using this CMS will be in demand for a long time. As for now, WordPress jobs exist for developers at any level, and of any locations. The salary rate takes into account the developers’ professional level, the cost of living in their locations, working conditions, etc. For example, in the US WordPress programmer will earn an average of $50,000 per year. In Canada, such a web developer will receive approximately $35,000 annually. The UK offers an even smaller reward of $30,000. In Germany, a WordPress developer will get $44,000 annually. Australia offers vacancies with an average salary rate of $42,000. In Eastern Europe, things are a little different. Taking into account the average developer salaries of other programming languages, a WordPress programmer salary is low in general. WordPress developer salary in Ukraine is even smaller. As an example, in Ukraine, it is possible to find an inexperienced programmer for only $400 per month. However, many outsourcing and software development companies have WordPress programmers with a monthly average wage of about $800 and more.

WordPress salary forecast

The fact that WordPress is a free CMS greatly affects the cost of the programmer's work. Most WordPress developers are freelancers of various levels. Someone is a junior developer, another is on the senior level, and some work in software development companies getting a relatively good salary. Nevertheless, for a long time, the impression was established that the developers using such CMS are mostly freelancers. One of the reasons for the average low wages is the big number of WordPress freelancers and free software, mostly. The value of a freelance WordPress product can differ a lot, from $3,000 up to $15,000. While most freelancers will work for a relatively low price, the salary in the labor market is unlikely to change in the nearest future, which is a threat to WordPress security. For example, cooperating with a small business, the freelancer may think that a customer has scarce resources. In addition, freelancer uses free software, so the thought ‘the work is not worth high financial reward’ may also appear. This is a common misconception. For every developer, it is necessary to have confidence in what they do. In other words, it is better to provide the solution rather than selling a casual WordPress website based on a sample. ‘Code is poetry’ is the wording written at the end of each page of the official WordPress site. Just take a look at the number of existing WP plugins. Everything is made up to be a successful WordPress product creator.

WordPress will last long

WordPress is a worldwide famous content management system. Thanks to its functionality and extensive use, developers are able to operate with a huge number of plugins and tools, to hold any requirements they meet. The creators wanted to build a system that would help to make web pages and they’ve done a pretty good job. Such popularity all over the world has resulted in a big number of WordPress developers with different salary rates. The cost of a project depends on the developer level, the complexity of the website, as well as the location of the developer. In general, WordPress programmers are freelancers, therefore, the price for that job is much lower. Despite that, the WordPress community creates various beautiful products. As WordPress still remains popular and seems to hold its position, it will be used for web development for a long time.