What the conversion costs
Converting your WordPress site to a static site you own costs a one-time fee of $1,500 to $2,500. This is the listed price on the Leave WordPress page.
The exact cost depends on your site. Fewer pages, less theme rebuilding, and fewer plugins mean a lower price. A simple brochure site with a contact form is at the low end. If your site uses a membership plugin, events calendar, or shop, it is not a conversion, and there is more on that below.
After the conversion, hosting is free for small business traffic on Cloudflare Pages or Netlify. Your domain still costs about $20 a year, which you already pay.
What WordPress actually costs to run
WordPress itself is free, but running it isn't. The costs come in several parts, and you never see them all on one bill.
- Hosting: Cheap shared hosting starts at about $10 a month. Most business sites use managed WordPress hosting, which costs about $336 a year at WP Engine or $350 at Kinsta. Top plans run past $300 a month.
- Premium plugins: Most small businesses spend $350 to $800 a year on renewals. If you pay for forms, caching, SEO, and backups, $500 to $1,500 a year is common. These are annual licenses, so you pay every year, even if nothing changes.
- Maintenance or care plan: If you buy one, the market rate is $95 to $395 a month, or $1,140 to $4,740 a year. This is usually the biggest expense.
- If you don't buy a care plan, you spend your own time on updates, fixing broken plugins, and sometimes dealing with a compromised site.
Three ways people actually run a WordPress site
There isn't a single "WordPress price." Instead, there are three common ways people run WordPress sites, and the costs are very different.
| How it is run | Hosting | Plugins | Care plan | Per year |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| You look after it | Shared, $120 | $350 | None | $470 |
| Managed hosting | Managed, $350 | $500 | None | $850 |
| Plus a care plan | Managed, $350 | $500 | $95/mo | $1,990 |
Where break-even falls
If you divide the conversion cost by your yearly spending, you'll see when the switch starts to pay for itself.
| How it is run | At $1,500 | At $2,500 |
|---|---|---|
| You look after it | 3.2 years | 5.3 years |
| Managed hosting | 1.8 years | 2.9 years |
| Plus a care plan | 0.8 years | 1.3 years |
The payback period is shorter than with Squarespace, where it usually takes two to three years. Since WordPress costs more to maintain, switching away from it saves you more in the long run.
The care plan is the tell
If you pay $95 to $395 a month for WordPress maintenance, it's worth asking what you're getting. Usually, it covers plugin and core updates, security checks, backups, and fixing things that break after updates.
All these are costs created by WordPress. A static site doesn't have plugins to update, a database to breach, or an admin login to attack. The files are stored on a CDN and served just as they are.
So, the care plan is not overpriced. It matches the work required, which only exists because of WordPress. This is the real reason to consider leaving, and it's a stronger argument than just the hosting cost.
Here's the catch: a static site doesn't need updates, but it's not completely maintenance-free. Nothing breaks by itself, but nothing changes by itself either. If you want a new page next month, someone has to create it. Plan for changes, not ongoing upkeep. These are very different costs.
When you should not do this
If WordPress is running your business rather than displaying it, stay. A static site cannot replace WooCommerce, a membership plugin, an LMS, a booking system with availability, or anything where a logged-in user changes data. Those need a backend, and rebuilding one is a project with a different price tag.
You should also stay if you use cheap shared hosting, pay for only a plugin or two, and rarely update your site. At $470 a year, it takes three to five years to break even, and most sites are replaced for other reasons before then. If your plugins are genuinely all free, you are spending about $120 a year and a conversion will never pay for itself on running costs alone.
The best case for switching is a content site on managed hosting with a care plan that hasn't changed in two years. That site is paying extra for features it doesn't use anymore.
What you get besides the money
A static site removes the risk of attacks. WordPress is a big target because it's so popular, and most hacks happen through outdated plugins, not WordPress itself. A folder of HTML files doesn't give hackers anything to exploit.
Your site will usually get much faster. WordPress builds each page from a database every time someone visits, then uses caching to speed things up. A static page is already complete and ready to load. Try the Website Grader to see the numbers for your own site.
With a static site, nothing breaks while you're away. There are no automatic updates, plugin conflicts, or expired licenses that could disable your contact form.
You own all your files. HTML, CSS, and images are in a folder you can give to anyone.
What the conversion involves
The process takes two to three weeks, and most of the work is handled for you.
- All your pages, posts, images, and menus are transferred, even the ones you might have forgotten.
- The theme is rebuilt to match your current site exactly, unless you request changes.
- Forms are set up to send you emails, since a static site can't store submissions by itself.
- Each plugin is reviewed, and you decide whether to replace it, rebuild it as plain markup, or remove it. You make these choices before the new site is built.
- Redirects are created for every existing URL. This step is important because WordPress URLs can easily break during a move, and redirects help protect your search rankings.
- Your new site goes live on your domain. You only cancel your hosting and plugin licenses after that.
What you cannot take with you
- WooCommerce. You can rebuild a store on Shopify or Stripe, but that is a separate project.
- Memberships, courses, and logins. These need a backend. If one is load-bearing, a conversion is the wrong move.
- Comments can be saved as static text, but if you want new comments, you'll need a third-party service.
- The admin dashboard changes. You can still edit your site in a browser using a content management layer, but it's not wp-admin and there's a learning curve.
If two or more of these features matter to you, switching becomes a full rebuild, not just a cost decision. It's important to know this before you make any plans.