# The Hiring Math: Full-Time Developer vs AssemblyWP

A full-time WordPress developer costs $100-160K/year. AssemblyWP costs $30-60K/year with no recruiting, no management, and pause-anytime flexibility. Here's the honest breakdown.

Published: 2026-03-17 by Mike Valera

Source: https://assemblywp.com/blog/hiring-math-full-time-developer-vs-assemblywp

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You've got a growing WordPress backlog. Features to build, bugs to fix, performance to improve. And you're staring at the same question every growing business hits: **should I hire a full-time developer, or outsource this?**

Most people frame it as "in-house vs. agency." But the real question is simpler: what does each option actually cost, and what do you get for it?

Let's break down the numbers.

![Math lady calculating](https://media3.giphy.com/media/WRQBXSCnEFJIuxktnw/giphy.gif)

## The True Cost of a Full-Time WordPress Developer

When you see a job listing for a WordPress developer at $90K/year, that number is just the starting point. Here's what you're actually paying:

### Base salary: $80,000-$120,000/year

That's the 2026 range for a mid-to-senior WordPress developer in the US. Junior devs run $55-75K, but if you're reading this, you probably need someone who can work independently. That means mid-level at minimum.

### Benefits: $16,000-$36,000/year (20-30% of salary)

Health insurance, 401(k) match, PTO, payroll taxes. These add 20-30% on top of base salary. For a $100K developer, you're looking at $20-30K in benefits alone.

### Recruiting costs: $10,000-$30,000 (one-time)

Job postings, recruiter fees (typically 15-25% of first-year salary), interview time, background checks. Even if you handle recruiting internally, the time investment is significant. Finding a good WordPress developer takes 4-8 weeks on average.

### Ramp-up time: 2-4 months of reduced productivity

A new developer doesn't ship at full speed on day one. They need to learn your codebase, your workflows, your business logic, your deployment process. Expect 2-4 months before they're fully productive. That's $15-40K in salary for partial output.

### Management overhead: 5-10 hours/week of your time

Someone needs to assign tasks, review code, give feedback, handle 1:1s, and manage career development. If your time is worth $100-200/hour, that's $26,000-$104,000/year in opportunity cost. Even at the conservative end, it's not nothing.

### PTO and sick time coverage: 3-5 weeks/year of zero output

Vacation, sick days, holidays. That's 3-5 weeks per year where you're paying full salary and getting nothing shipped. You either wait, or you find someone else to cover.

### Total annual cost: $100,000-$160,000+

And that doesn't count the cost of a bad hire. If things don't work out in the first 6 months (and 30% of new hires leave within that window), you're starting the whole process over.

## What AssemblyWP Costs

Let's put the same lens on AssemblyWP:

| | Starter | Pro |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly fee | $2,495 | $4,995 |
| Annual cost | $29,940 | $59,940 |
| Concurrent requests | 1 | 2 |
| Recruiting cost | $0 | $0 |
| Benefits cost | $0 | $0 |
| Ramp-up time | None | None |
| Management time | Minimal | Minimal |
| PTO coverage gaps | None | None |

Total annual cost: **$29,940-$59,940**

That's 30-40% of what a full-time hire costs. And you can pause your subscription when you don't need it, which drops the effective annual cost even lower.

## The Side-by-Side Comparison

| Factor | Full-Time Developer | AssemblyWP |
|---|---|---|
| Annual cost | $100-160K+ | $30-60K |
| Time to start | 4-12 weeks | Same week |
| Recruiting effort | Significant | None |
| Management required | 5-10 hrs/week | Submit requests |
| Skill gaps | One person's expertise | Full team's expertise |
| Scaling up | Hire another person | Upgrade plan |
| Scaling down | Layoff (expensive, messy) | Pause subscription |
| PTO/sick coverage | You cover it | Built in |
| Risk of bad hire | 30% leave in 6 months | Cancel anytime |

## When Full-Time Hiring Makes More Sense

Let's be honest about this. AssemblyWP isn't the right choice for every situation.

**Hire full-time if:**

- **You need 40+ hours/week of dedicated WordPress work.** If your development needs are constant and heavy, a full-time developer (or a small team) will deliver more raw throughput than a productized service. The math favors in-house at that volume.
- **You need deep institutional knowledge.** If your codebase is massive, complex, or highly proprietary, having someone who lives in it every day builds knowledge that's hard to replicate externally.
- **You're building a product, not a website.** If WordPress is your product (like a SaaS built on WordPress), you need developers who eat, sleep, and breathe your codebase. That's a full-time commitment.
- **Culture and team integration matter.** If you want a developer in standups, brainstorming sessions, and deeply embedded in your team, full-time is the way to go.

## When AssemblyWP Makes More Sense

**Use AssemblyWP if:**

- **You need 10-30 hours/week of WordPress development.** This is the sweet spot. Enough work to need consistent help, but not enough to justify a full-time salary and all the overhead.
- **Your development needs are variable.** Big push this month, quiet next month? Pause when you don't need it. Try doing that with a salaried employee.
- **You don't want to manage developers.** Submit requests, get work back. No 1:1s, no performance reviews, no career pathing, no figuring out if someone is actually productive.
- **You need a range of skills.** One developer can't be an expert in WooCommerce, custom plugin development, performance optimization, headless WordPress, and front-end design. AssemblyWP gives you a full team's worth of expertise.
- **You want to start this week, not in 3 months.** No job postings, no interviews, no onboarding. You submit your first request and work starts.

## The Math for a Typical Growing Business

Say you're running a WooCommerce store doing $1-5M/year. You need:

- Ongoing feature development (new product pages, checkout tweaks, custom functionality)
- Performance optimization (Core Web Vitals, page speed)
- Security and maintenance
- Occasional plugin customization or integration work

That's probably 15-25 hours/week of development. Not enough to keep a full-time senior developer busy (and bored developers leave). But too much for occasional freelancer work.

AssemblyWP Pro at $4,995/month gives you 2 concurrent requests with priority turnaround. $59,940/year.

A full-time developer for the same work: $100-160K/year.

You save $40,000-$100,000/year. You get work done faster. And if business slows down, you pause instead of laying someone off.

## How to Decide

Here's a simple framework:

1. **Estimate your weekly WordPress development hours.** Be honest. Track it for a month if you're not sure.
2. **If it's under 30 hours/week,** AssemblyWP is almost certainly more cost-effective.
3. **If it's 30-40 hours/week,** it depends on complexity and how much institutional knowledge matters.
4. **If it's 40+ hours/week consistently,** you should probably hire.

The good news? AssemblyWP is month-to-month with no contracts. You can try it, compare the output and cost to what you'd get from a full-time hire, and decide based on real experience instead of guesswork.

## Ready to Do the Math for Your Business?

Start with a free site audit at [assemblywp.com/scan](https://assemblywp.com/scan). We'll show you exactly what your site needs, and you can decide whether those needs call for a full-time hire or a smarter alternative.

Just an honest technical assessment of your WordPress site.

*Mike Valera is the founder of AssemblyWP, an AI-powered WordPress development service for growing businesses. He's been building WordPress solutions for over a decade and has seen both sides of the hiring equation up close.*