WordPress vs a Custom Static Site for a Small Business

For most small business sites that mostly publish pages (services, about, contact, a few blog posts), a custom static site is cheaper to run, faster by default and has a much smaller attack surface than WordPress. WordPress is the better choice when non-technical staff need to publish content daily, or when you need a plugin ecosystem such as ecommerce, memberships or bookings without paying for custom work. The right answer depends on who edits the site and how often it changes, not on which technology is newer.

What does each option cost to run?

A static site is a folder of pre-built HTML, CSS and JavaScript files. It needs no PHP and no database at request time, so hosting can be free. Cloudflare’s documentation lists the Pages Free plan limits as 500 builds per month, 20,000 files per site, a 25 MiB maximum per file and 100 custom domains per project. A typical small business site fits inside those limits.

WordPress needs a PHP host with a database. Prices I read in November 2026:

Option	Price (USD, excl. tax)	Source
SiteGround StartUp, 12-month term	$17.99/month	SiteGround rates page, October 2026
SiteGround StartUp, 24-month term	$14.99/month	SiteGround rates page
SiteGround StartUp, 1-month term	$24.99/month	SiteGround rates page
WordPress.com Business, billed every 12 months	$25/month	WordPress.com pricing page
WordPress.com Business, billed monthly	$40/month	WordPress.com pricing page

On those list rates, a 12-month SiteGround StartUp term works out to about $216 a year ($17.99 x 12), and WordPress.com Business on annual billing is $300 a year ($25 x 12). Both pages say the prices exclude taxes, and SiteGround notes that introductory offers on its sales pages can be lower than these rates. Premium themes, paid plugins and backups are extra and vary by site.

The static site’s cost sits elsewhere: the one-time build. That is a fixed quote from whoever builds it, so I am not putting a number on it here. Compare it against the yearly hosting and plugin spend of the WordPress route over three to five years.

Which one is faster?

Google’s Core Web Vitals thresholds, as documented on web.dev, are measured at the 75th percentile of page views:

Metric	Good	Poor
Largest Contentful Paint (LCP)	2.5 s or less	over 4 s
Interaction to Next Paint (INP)	200 ms or less	over 500 ms
Cumulative Layout Shift (CLS)	0.1 or less	over 0.25

A site is rated “good” on a metric when at least 75% of page views meet the good threshold.

A static page is a file served from a CDN, so the server does no work per request. That makes a good LCP easy to reach. WordPress can also pass these thresholds, but it takes work: page caching, a lean theme, optimised images and few plugins. Each plugin that loads scripts or styles on the front end adds weight. I have not measured a specific site here, so treat this as how the architecture behaves, not as a benchmark. Run your own site through PageSpeed Insights and look at the field data before deciding.

Which one is more secure?

WordPress core itself is not the main problem. Patchstack’s State of WordPress Security in 2026 report counted 11,334 new vulnerabilities in the WordPress ecosystem in 2025, up 42% from 2024. Of those, 91% were in plugins, 9% in themes and only 6 in core.

Two other findings from the same report matter for a small business that cannot patch the same day:

46% of vulnerabilities had no developer fix available when they were publicly disclosed.
For heavily exploited vulnerabilities, the weighted median time to first exploit was 5 hours.

Patchstack also tested 18 hosting providers against 30 WordPress vulnerabilities and found hosts blocked about 26% of exploit attempts. Patchstack sells WordPress security products, so read that result with that in mind. The point still holds that a host firewall does not replace keeping plugins updated.

A static site has no login page, no database and no plugin code running on the server, so most of these attack classes do not apply. The risk moves to your build pipeline, your dependencies and any third-party forms or scripts you embed, which is a much shorter list to watch.

What about maintenance?

On WordPress, maintenance means updating core, the theme and every plugin, checking backups, and reacting to security advisories. Given the numbers above, that is not optional. Someone has to own it, either you or a paid maintenance plan.

On a static site there is little to patch. Maintenance is mostly content edits, dependency updates at the build stage, and renewing the domain. The catch is editing: if you want to change a paragraph, you either ask the developer, or you need a headless CMS or Git-based editor set up on top, which is more setup than WordPress’s built-in admin.

When is WordPress the right choice?

Pick WordPress when:

Several non-technical people publish or edit content weekly or daily and you want a familiar admin screen.
You need a ready-made plugin for ecommerce, memberships, events or bookings and the plugin fits your process as is.
You already have a working WordPress site that is updated, fast enough and not costing you problems. Migrating a healthy site for its own sake is wasted money.
You have an agency or in-house person who already handles updates and backups.

Pick a custom static site when the site is mostly fixed pages, the content changes a few times a month, speed and low running cost matter, and you do not want to own plugin updates. When I move a business off WordPress, the check I start with is how many plugins the site really uses and whether any of them hold data (orders, form entries, members) that needs a proper migration.

FAQ

Can a static site have a contact form?

Yes. The form posts to a small serverless function or a form service, and you keep the rest of the site static.

Can WordPress pass Core Web Vitals?

Yes, with caching, optimised images and a lean theme and plugin set. It needs ongoing care because a new plugin or a heavier theme can push the numbers back over the thresholds.

Is a static site free to host?

Hosting can be free within limits, for example Cloudflare Pages Free allows 500 builds per month and 20,000 files per site. You still pay for the domain and the one-time build or any later changes.

How do I know if my WordPress site is at risk?

Check the number of plugins, when each was last updated and whether any are abandoned. Compare your plugin list against a vulnerability database such as Patchstack’s.