I have built, hosted and maintained WordPress sites for fifteen years, so this is not a drive-by from someone who never learned the platform. It is the opposite. I know exactly what WordPress costs to keep alive, which is precisely why I moved most of my client sites to static hosting with my own CMS on top. Here is the honest comparison, including the cases where WordPress still wins.
What a WordPress site actually costs after launch
The build is the cheap part. The expensive part is the years after. A live WordPress site is a server running PHP and a database, a theme, and usually a dozen plugins, every one of which is a door. Cores update, plugins update, sometimes they conflict, sometimes an update takes the site down at an inconvenient hour. You tune a cache like LiteSpeed to claw back the speed the stack gives away by default. You add a security layer because the attack surface is large and public. You take backups because you will eventually need one. None of this is hypothetical to me. I ran plugin management across client sites and a security setup on top precisely because a WordPress site left alone is a WordPress site that gets compromised.
For a lot of small business sites, that ongoing burden is most of what I was selling under the word "maintenance." It works. It is also a tax on both of us that exists mostly because of the architecture, not because the client's brochure site is doing anything demanding.
The static alternative, and what people get wrong about it
A static site is just files: HTML, CSS, a little JavaScript, served from a CDN's edge. I deploy to Cloudflare Pages. There is no database to inject, no PHP to exploit, no plugin to update, no server to patch. It is served from data centres near the visitor, so it is fast by default rather than fast after tuning. On the performance and security axes it is not a close contest. A static page has almost no attack surface and almost nothing to slow it down.
The objection is always the same, and it is fair: "my client needs to edit it themselves." For years that was the real reason to reach for WordPress. A raw static site means editing HTML, which no client will do. So I built the missing piece.
Orbit: the editing layer static sites were missing
Orbit is my CMS for static sites. It runs at portal.lverbeeck.com and it is the reason I can put clients on static hosting without stranding them. It works like this: the site has template files with tokens marking every editable field. Orbit reads the templates, renders valid HTML, and commits the result to the site's Git repository, which triggers a fresh deploy. The client never touches code. They get a form-based editor and a visual click-to-edit mode where they select text on a preview and change it.
The workflow the client sees is short: open the site in Orbit, edit a field, save to staging, a deploy runs in about ninety seconds, check the staging link, publish to live. Behind that, every save is a clean commit and a CDN deploy. Beyond editing, Orbit gives them a leads inbox with AI-drafted replies for their contact form, a Google reviews tab with draft responses, an analytics view, onboarding checklists, even an ecommerce module. It is the agency dashboard a small client actually wants, without the server underneath.
Static hosting won on speed and security years ago. The only thing missing was a way for clients to edit it, so I built that.
Real conversions, not theory
Upwind Solutions, a yacht management firm in Bali, was the first client on this stack: static on CF Pages, contact form wired to Orbit Leads, owner editing his own copy through forms. Dr Janiszewski's training site was a live WordPress site I converted to static plus Orbit. It got faster, the maintenance surface collapsed, and the client kept the ability to edit that they were afraid of losing. This portfolio site runs on the same setup. The clearest proof that it works for clients is that I trust it with my own name.
The maintenance conversation changes too. Instead of paying me to keep a stack of plugins from falling over, those clients pay for things that actually move their business: content help, SEO, conversion work. Same monthly relationship, but the money buys improvement rather than insurance against the platform. That is a better deal for both sides, and it is an easier renewal conversation every year.
When WordPress still wins
I am not a zealot. There are real cases where I still reach for WordPress. A large, frequently changing product catalogue with complex inventory. A site that genuinely needs the WooCommerce plugin ecosystem, or membership and course logic that would be expensive to rebuild. A client whose whole team already lives in the WordPress admin and has no appetite to move. Deeply dynamic, logged-in, per-user experiences. For those, the database and the ecosystem earn their keep, and I will tell you so rather than force a static build that fights the requirements.
But for the enormous number of sites that are, honestly, a fast brochure with a contact form and content the owner updates now and then, static plus Orbit wins on every axis that matters: faster, safer, cheaper to keep alive, and still fully editable. That describes most of the web, which is why it now describes most of my client work.
Wondering whether your site should move off WordPress? Ask me, or see the sites already running this way.