How Long Does a WordPress Website Take? Our Real Timeline

"How long will it take?" is the first question almost every client asks us, and the honest answer is: it depends less on the website than you think. We went through the records of the 110 WordPress website projects we have delivered and looked at what actually happened between kickoff and launch.

The short version: the median WordPress site went live on the client's domain about 4 weeks after kickoff (27.5 days). The middle half of projects landed between 18 and 67 days. That spread is the interesting part, and most of it is not development time.

The four phases of a WordPress project

Every website we build runs through the same chain of steps in our project system: a first draft, one or more revision rounds, the go-live (we call it migration internally), and a final quality check. Here is how long each phase took across our projects.

Phase 1: the first draft

This is the phase clients worry about most, and it is actually the most predictable one. Once we have the brief, the logo, the brand colours and ideally a reference site the client likes, our team builds a complete first version on a staging environment. The median was 8 days.

What we deliver at this point is not a mockup. It is a working WordPress site with real pages, navigation, forms and a mobile view, so the client can click through it on their own phone.

Phase 2: revision rounds

This is where timelines split. The median WordPress project had 2 revision rounds, but some had none and a few went past six. Each round follows the same pattern: the client collects feedback (often as a Word document, a PDF with comments or annotated screenshots), we implement it, and the site goes back for review.

The work on our side per round is usually a matter of days. The waiting in between is what stretches the calendar. Across all WordPress projects, the median time the draft and revision tasks were open on our side was 16.5 days, while the median total time spent waiting between rounds – for feedback, content or approvals – was 13.5 days.

Phase 3: go-live

Moving a finished site from our staging environment to the client's domain took a median of 1 day. When it takes longer, the reason is almost never WordPress. It is access: the login for the hosting provider, the domain registrar or the DNS settings is missing, or the domain has to be transferred first and the transfer code has not arrived.

Phase 4: after launch

Launch is not the end. In 34% of the projects where we tracked the go-live, the client came back with new requests later – typically new pages, text changes or extra features. The median first request arrived 12 days after launch. We plan for this now instead of treating it as a surprise.

What makes a WordPress project fast or slow

We split the projects into groups and compared them. Three factors stood out.

Revision rounds. Projects with zero or one revision round were delivered in a median of 14 days. Projects with four or more rounds took a median of 56 days. That is not because four rounds of changes take 8 weeks to implement. It is because every round adds another wait.

Content readiness. In projects where missing or late content (texts, photos, videos, logos) showed up in the feedback, the median delivery time was 74 days, compared to 26 days when content was ready. When a site is built with placeholders "until the photos arrive", the photos become the deadline.

Languages. Multilingual websites took a median of 79 days versus 26.5 days for single-language sites. Translations can only be done once the texts are final, so every text change late in the project triggers another translation pass.

How many hours does the team actually spend?

Calendar time and working time are very different things. The median WordPress project had 15.2 hours of logged work, with the middle half between 9.3 and 32 hours. In other words, the typical site needs roughly two working days of hands-on time from our team – spread over several weeks of feedback cycles. A project that stretches over two months on the calendar is rarely two months of work.

How we keep WordPress projects on the short end

These are the habits we have built from the projects that went well:

• Content before design. We ask for texts, images and the logo at kickoff. If texts are not ready, we draft them and the client confirms them before we start translating.
• One feedback document per round. One consolidated list from one decision maker beats five emails from three people.
• Real device review. We send the staging link early so feedback on mobile layout comes in round one, not round four.
• Access checklist on day one. Hosting, domain and DNS logins are collected at the start, not the week of launch.
• A clear line between revisions and new scope. New pages or features go into a separate task, so the launch date does not keep moving.

FAQ

Where the numbers come from: our own project records in Odoo – 233 finished projects, 909 tasks and about 4941 logged hours, mostly from 2025–2026. Durations are calendar days from kickoff and we quote medians, so one unusually long project does not distort the picture.

Planning a WordPress project?

If you want a realistic plan for your own project, book a short call with our team and we will walk you through the phases, what we need from you and where projects like yours usually lose time. You can also browse finished work in our WordPress portfolio.