Cost Difference Between Coding Custom Theme or Coding Child Theme

[Kingalan1]

Assuming there is an SEO advantage to coding a Wordpress custom theme (wondering if that assumption is correct) versus modifying a child theme, is there a very significant cost difference between the two choices?

Competition in my niche (New York City commercial real estate is keen) and I am dealing with competitors such as www.wework.com, 42floors.com and squarefoot.com with optimized sites built with quality code.

In the event that we modify a child theme, I am leaning in any case towards have wireframes and illustrations provided to present to the developer. Should I expect a custom theme to be double the cost, triple assuming the design is provided?

I have read that code maintenance on a child theme is less costly as modifications get pushed to the parent theme. How substantial are maintenance costs (time to maintain) for a custom theme?

Thanks!!!
Alan

[brooksmanley]

I definitely understand.

My agency works with premium themes / child themes and find that while many are very clunky and bloated, we don't notice any issues with the code not being clean enough. When using pre-built WordPress themes, we find it's important to utilize canonical tags when necessary, always check on page speed, and to noindex unnecessary pages. We also use Yoast SEO plugin, which will cover some themes' faults.

Having said that, I'm not a developer, but I'm sure there are themes out there with invalid or unfriendly code.

Yoast has a good post on choosing WP themes: https://yoast.com/perfect-wordpress-theme/

[Kingalan1]

Hi Brooks:

Thanks so much for the excellent answer, it really provides an idea about differing development costs  between a custom theme and a child theme.

I am on the fence as to whether a real estate theme would not be sufficient. I can absorb the added cost if necessary. Big factor is whether cleaner, more efficient code of a custom site is an important SEO factor. Do you have an opinion? We are just in an insanely a competitive niche so we need everything working in our favor. But from a user interface perspective some of the commercially available themes are pretty good.

Thanks, 
Alan

[brooksmanley]

It's really hard to give a general price estimate for a custom theme v.s. using a WordPress theme and utilizing child themes.

I would say you can expect the custom theme to be at least double the cost, but again, there are countless factors to consider. You will most likely be looking at more maintenance with the custom theme, but it will largely depend on how your developer codes, how many plugins they utilize, whether they build custom plugins, etc...

Here are two (again very general) pricing guides that might be somewhat helpful:

• https://www.elegantthemes.com/blog/resources/a-general-pricing-guide-for-wordpress-websites
• http://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/how-much-does-a-custom-wordpress-theme-cost/