Hosting cost comparisons usually compare the wrong things. The monthly hosting bill is often the smallest part of what a site costs to run. Licences, maintenance time and the services you bolt on matter more. I have used Cloudflare Pages here as one concrete example of a static host, but the same reasoning applies to the others, and I am not recommending one over another.
Prices change often, so this article describes what to count rather than quoting numbers that will be out of date. Check current pricing pages before deciding.
What we are comparing
A typical small marketing site: a few dozen pages, a blog, one or two contact forms, a handful of editors and modest traffic. Two ways to run it:
- WordPress on a hosting plan, with a theme and plugins.
- A static site on a static host such as Cloudflare Pages, with a CMS for editors and a form service.
For each, count the hosting, the software around it and the time to keep it running.
WordPress hosting costs
WordPress needs a server that runs PHP and a database. The common options:
- Shared hosting: cheapest, with limited resources and support. Performance and security depend heavily on your neighbours and the host.
- Managed WordPress hosting: higher price, with caching, backups, staging and updates handled to some degree.
- A virtual server you manage: flexible, but you are responsible for the operating system, PHP, database and security.
Cost usually rises with traffic, storage and the number of sites. Agencies hosting many client sites often pay per site or per resource bundle.
Plugins, themes and licences
This is where WordPress costs add up. Many sites use some combination of:
- A premium theme or page builder, often licensed yearly.
- A forms plugin with a paid tier for features such as file uploads or integrations.
- SEO, security, backup and caching plugins, some with paid versions.
- Extra plugins for sliders, galleries, popups or custom fields.
Each licence is modest on its own. Together, and multiplied across sites, they become a real line item. Licences also need renewing to keep receiving updates, which matters for security.
Cloudflare Pages costs
Cloudflare Pages, like most static hosts, offers a free plan that covers many small sites, and paid plans with higher limits on builds, team members and extra features. Other static hosts follow a similar model, and their limits differ in builds per month, bandwidth, team seats and serverless function usage.
What you do not pay for on a static host: a database, PHP, server-level caching or backups. The site is files; git is the backup.
Because the output is plain files, moving between static hosts is straightforward. Hosting choice is not a long-term commitment the way it can be with a managed WordPress host.
Add-ons a static site needs
A static site is not free to run just because the hosting is. To give a team the same abilities they had on WordPress, you typically add:
- A CMS so non-developers can edit content. Git-based and headless tools have different pricing models. See git-based CMS vs headless API CMS.
- A form service to receive submissions, filter spam and notify the team. See handling forms on a static site.
- Optional extras such as hosted search or analytics.
Include these in any honest comparison. A free static host plus a CMS and form service is still often cheaper than WordPress hosting plus licences, but not always, and the gap depends on your choices.
Maintenance time
Time is the cost most comparisons leave out.
A WordPress site needs regular updates to core, plugins and themes, checks that nothing broke afterwards, occasional PHP upgrades and attention when something goes wrong. Whether you do it yourself or pay an agency, it is an ongoing cost.
A static site needs occasional dependency updates, which can be tested before going live, and very little else. See maintenance: WordPress updates vs static.
Total cost over three years
Fill in this table with current prices for the options you are actually considering:
| Cost | WordPress | Static site |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting | Plan price × 36 months | Often free tier, or plan price × 36 |
| Theme or page builder | Licence × 3 years | Usually none; templates are your own |
| Plugins | Sum of licences × 3 years | Generator plugins are usually free |
| CMS | Included | CMS subscription × 36 months |
| Forms | Plugin licence | Form service subscription |
| Maintenance time | Hours per month × rate × 36 | Hours per quarter × rate × 12 |
| Rebuild or migration | One-off cost |
The rows that usually decide it are licences and maintenance time, not hosting.
My take
On hosting alone, static wins easily, but that is not the useful comparison. The useful one includes the CMS, the forms and the hours. For the small marketing sites most teams run, I expect static to come out ahead more often than not, mainly because maintenance time drops so sharply. Run the numbers for your own sites, and be suspicious of any comparison, including this one, that leaves out a row.