Static site or WordPress: which is right for your business?
Speed, security, cost, autonomy: an honest comparison between a custom static website and a WordPress site, and when each one is the right choice.
WordPress powers a large share of the world’s websites. It is an excellent tool, but not always the right one. For many business websites, a static site is faster, safer and cheaper to maintain.
We build both. Here is how we advise our clients.
What a static site is
A static site is made of ready-made pages, generated once at publication time. When a visitor arrives, the server simply sends the page: no database to query, no code running on every visit.
WordPress, on the other hand, builds each page on demand, from a database and plugins.
Speed
A static site starts with a head start: nothing to compute, lightweight pages. That is why it easily achieves excellent Google PageSpeed scores, which matter for search rankings and for mobile visitors.
WordPress can be fast too, but it takes work: caching, image optimisation and, above all, not piling up plugins.
Security
This is often the deciding factor.
- WordPress has an online admin area, a database and plugins of varying quality: all potential entry points if updates are not kept up. It is the favourite target of hacking bots.
- A static site has no exposed admin area and no database: the attack surface is close to zero. The only dynamic element is often the contact form, which we protect carefully.
Autonomy
This is WordPress’s big advantage: you publish your own news and pages from a simple interface. With a static site, changes usually go through your provider, or through a specialised editing tool.
Long-term cost
A static site costs little to host and almost nothing to maintain. WordPress requires regular updates to the core, the theme and plugins, and sometimes paid plugin licences.
Our recommendation
| Your situation | Our advice |
|---|---|
| Showcase site, few updates, premium image | Static site |
| Demanding multilingual site (French, Arabic, English) | Static site |
| News or articles published weekly by your teams | WordPress |
| Online store | PrestaShop, or Odoo if you already use Odoo |
| Company already on Odoo | Odoo website, connected to your products and customers |
Proof by example
The site you are reading is a custom static site in three languages: it uses no cookies, no third-party scripts, and has no exposed database. That is exactly what we offer our clients, with a measurable performance target guaranteed in the quote.