WordPress or a static site? The five-year cost compared
Hosting barely differs; people's time does. A five-year worksheet in dollars, the migration price where moving pays off, and when a static site costs more.
By Jeensuk Yang
PHPFree · Web security · Cost worksheet
?Who this is for
- You want to weigh keeping WordPress against moving to a static site in dollars
- Your hosting costs a few dollars a month, and you wonder why you'd pay to move
- You want to check whether your maintenance fee is reasonable
!What you'll learn
- What goes into a five-year cost, the formula, and how to turn it into a monthly figure
- How to put a dollar value on the cost that's bigger than hosting: people's time
- The migration price where moving pays for itself, and when a static site costs more
Running a car costs more than gas.
When we buy a car, we count the sticker price and the gas. We rarely count the half day at the shop for an oil change, or the day we spend worrying when a warning light comes on. That time is part of what the car costs. A website is the same. Hosting looks cheap at a few dollars a month. But there's the time spent updating plugins, checking backups and upgrading PHP every few years. This article turns that time into dollars and adds up five years. I'll show every assumption, so you can swap in your own numbers.
Why compare over five years, and why count people's time?
Five years is long enough that you'll upgrade PHP at least once or twice, and people's time costs more than hosting. If you count hosting alone, WordPress always looks cheaper.
Each PHP version gets two years of full support, then two years of security fixes only.1 Look at one or two years and the upgrade work tends to fall out of the math; look at five and it's in.
People tend to count only the costs they can see. Research on "opportunity cost neglect" found that to weigh a purchase properly, people must think of what else the money could have done, and "consumers often fail to do so." Prompting them to think of it changed their choices.2 For a website, that "something else" is your time. The hour you spent on updates could have been a call to a customer.
- Costs you can see: hosting, third-party services, migration
- Costs you can't: the time it takes to update, check backups and upgrade PHP
- The math: add both up over five years, then divide by 60 for a monthly figure
Turning the invisible costs into dollars is the point of this article.
Jeensuk's takeThe costs that never show up on a receipt are often the biggest. Your hour isn't free.
The worksheet: what goes into a five-year cost?
Add up hosting, third-party services, the migration cost, any maintenance fees, and management time × an hourly rate. Divide the total by 60 to see what it costs per month.
| Item | Keep WordPress | Move to a static site |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting | Monthly hosting × 60 | Monthly hosting × 60 (0 within a free tier) |
| Third-party services | Paid plugin licenses per year × 5 | Contact form service per month × 60 (0 within a free tier) |
| One-time cost | None | Migration cost (your quote) |
| Maintenance fees | Monthly fee × 60 (0 if you do it yourself) | Fee per content change × number of changes (0 if you do it yourself) |
| People's time | Management hours × hourly rate | Management hours × hourly rate |
| Monthly figure | Five-year total ÷ 60 | |
The domain costs the same either way, so it's left out. The cost of a hack is also left out, because we don't have an official dollar figure to plug in for a small business site.
Jeensuk's takeAs you fill in each box, you start to see exactly where your company spends its money and time.
How different is the hosting bill?
Not very. For a small business site, WordPress hosting runs a couple hundred to several hundred dollars over five years, while a static site can cost $0 within a free tier.
Take DreamHost's WordPress hosting as an example. On a four-year term, the Launch plan is $1.99 a month and renews at $7.99; the Scale plan is $7.99 a month and renews at $19.99. Taxes are extra.3 Over five years (four at the intro price, one at renewal), that's about $191 for Launch and about $623 for Scale.
For a static site, Cloudflare says "requests to static assets are free and unlimited,"4 and its free plan allows 500 builds (site rebuilds) a month.5 For the contact form, Formspree's free plan takes up to 50 submissions a month.6
Jeensuk's take"Move to save on hosting" is only half right. What you really save is time.
How do you put a price on people's time?
We estimate that managing WordPress yourself takes 47.5 hours over five years. Even at the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour, that's about $344, more than five years of Launch hosting.
We use the federal minimum wage, $7.25 an hour,7 as the absolute floor, and the median pay for web developers, $47.85 an hour in 2025,8 as what a skilled hour costs. If you do it yourself, plug in what your own hour is worth. The hours break down as below. These are ATATAKAI Digital's estimates for a typical small company website, not measured averages.
| Task | Hours over five years |
|---|---|
| Monthly plugin updates and backup check: 30 min × 60 | 30 hours |
| Checking the site after major WordPress releases: 30 min × 15 (a release cycle runs about four months9) | 7.5 hours |
| PHP version upgrades: 5 hours × 2 | 10 hours |
| Total | 47.5 hours |
47.5 hours comes to about $344 at minimum wage and about $2,273 at the developer rate. A static site isn't zero-maintenance either. If you spend 10 minutes a month checking that form messages arrive, that's 10 hours over five years: $72.50 to $478.50.
Jeensuk's takeMinimum wage is there to show you the lowest possible number. Your hour is almost certainly worth more.
In a worked example, what's the five-year cost, and where's the break-even?
With the Scale plan, managing WordPress yourself costs about $968 over five years at minimum wage. If moving to a static site costs less than about $895, it pays for itself within five years.
| Five-year total | Time at $7.25/hr | Time at $47.85/hr |
|---|---|---|
| WordPress, self-managed (hosting $623 + time) | About $968 (about $16/mo) | About $2,896 (about $48/mo) |
| Static site (free hosting and form tiers + time + migration) | $72.50 + migration | $478.50 + migration |
| Break-even migration cost | About $895 or less | About $2,418 or less |
On the Launch plan, WordPress hosting drops to about $191, and the break-even migration cost at minimum wage falls to about $463. If you pay someone for maintenance, the math is simpler: multiply the monthly fee by 60. At $100 a month, that's $6,000 over five years, plus hosting. That $100 is just an example to show the math, not a market average.
Requests to static assets are free and unlimited. — Cloudflare Workers pricing docs (why we count static hosting as $0)
Jeensuk's takeBreak-even isn't set by the migration price alone. The more your hour is worth, the sooner moving pays for itself.
When does a static site end up costing more?
When you change content often but can't easily do it yourself, when you get more than 50 form messages a month, or when the site needs a server to do work, like a store or memberships. In those cases, a well-run WordPress site can be cheaper.
- You update content often: in our experience, static sites are harder for non-developers to edit. If you pay someone for every change, fee × number of changes becomes a new cost.
- You get lots of form messages: Formspree's free plan stops at 50 a month; the next plan is $15 a month on monthly billing (200 submissions), or $120 a year.6 That's $600 to $900 over five years.
- The server has to do work: online stores, member logins and bookings run code on the server, and they can't move to a static site as they are.
On the other hand, for a company site of about ten pages that changes a few times a month and doesn't get many form messages, the five-year math tends to lean toward static. Either way, filling in this worksheet once with your own numbers is the most accurate answer.
Jeensuk's takeIf the math says "stay as you are," that's a good outcome too. What matters is choosing with the numbers in front of you.
Frequently asked questions about the five-year cost of WordPress vs. a static site
Isn't WordPress cheaper if you only look at hosting?
On hosting alone, the gap is small. What makes the difference is the time spent on updates, backup checks and PHP upgrades, which comes to about $344 over five years even at the federal minimum wage.
Is there nothing to manage on a static site?
Not nothing. PHP and plugins mostly drop off your list, but you still check the contact form and republish when you change content.
If the migration quote is above break-even, should I not move?
On money alone, yes. But this worksheet leaves out the cost of a hack and the time spent worrying, so factor in what those are worth to you.
SOURCES
- PHP Group, "Supported Versions" php.net
- Frederick, Novemsky, Wang, Dhar & Nowlis, "Opportunity Cost Neglect," Journal of Consumer Research 36(4), 2009 (RePEc abstract) ideas.repec.org
- DreamHost, "WordPress Hosting" plans (checked Oct 25, 2026) dreamhost.com
- Cloudflare, "Pricing · Cloudflare Workers docs" (updated Oct 2, 2026) developers.cloudflare.com
- Cloudflare, "Limits · Cloudflare Pages docs" (checked Oct 25, 2026) developers.cloudflare.com
- Formspree, "Plans" (checked Oct 25, 2026) formspree.io
- U.S. Department of Labor, "Minimum Wage" dol.gov
- U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, "Web Developers and Digital Designers," Occupational Outlook Handbook bls.gov
- Make WordPress Core, "Release Cycle" (updated Jun 1, 2026) make.wordpress.org
Once you know the size of the job and who'll do it, the last question is money. More English editions are on the way.
- How long does a PHP upgrade take? Steps and a timetable (coming soon)
- Do it yourself or hand it off? A 10-question PHP checklist (coming soon)
- WordPress or a static site? The five-year cost compared (this article)
- Moving WordPress to a static site: how and what it costs (coming soon)
To understand what went wrong, start with risk series part 1, "What is PHP2Shell?" More articles on the ATATAKAI Digital blog.
We'll fill in the worksheet with your numbers.
We'll write down your hosting, maintenance fees and management time together and work out the five-year cost. If staying as you are is the better deal, we'll tell you exactly that.
Talk to ATATAKAI DigitalWant to know first whether your site runs on PHP? Run the free 30-second check
Updated Oct 26, 2026
