You’re planning a new website, and someone has told you it could be built in two different ways: a traditional CMS like WordPress or a static site generator like Astro. Now you’re trying to figure out what that actually means for you.
This post cuts through the technical detail and focuses on what matters: cost, control, content editing, and which approach suits your situation.
What’s the difference between WordPress and a static site generator?
WordPress is a CMS, or content management system. It stores your content in a database, and when someone visits your site, a server processes that request and builds the page on the fly. You log into an admin dashboard to add pages, posts, and media. It’s the approach behind roughly 43% of all websites on the internet, from small blogs to large e-commerce stores.
A static site generator (SSG) works differently. Instead of building pages when someone visits, it builds them all in advance, at “compile time”, and serves them as plain files. Astro is one of the more popular SSGs right now, alongside Hugo and Eleventy. The result is a website composed of pre-built HTML files hosted on a server, ready to be delivered instantly.
Neither approach is inherently better. They’re genuinely suited to different situations.
How do performance and security compare?
Static sites are fast. Because the pages are pre-built, there’s no database query, no server-side processing, nothing standing between the visitor and the content. A well-built static site will almost always outperform a standard WordPress site out of the box, and page speed is a confirmed ranking factor for Google.
WordPress can absolutely be fast, but it takes work. Caching plugins (which store pre-built versions of pages to skip the database step), a good hosting plan, and image optimisation all contribute. It’s achievable, but it adds complexity and cost.
On security, static sites have a structural advantage. There’s no database to inject into, no admin login page to brute-force, no plugin vulnerabilities to exploit. WordPress, being so widely used, is a frequent target for automated attacks. That doesn’t make it insecure, but it does mean maintenance matters: keeping WordPress core, themes, and plugins updated is non-negotiable.
Which is easier to host and move between providers?
This is where WordPress has a genuine, practical edge that often gets overlooked.
WordPress runs on a stack called LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP). This is the standard setup for the vast majority of shared hosting providers worldwide. If you’re using cPanel-based hosting, which is the most common type, moving a WordPress site between hosts is well-understood and widely supported. Most hosting companies offer one-click WordPress installs, migration plugins, and support staff who’ve done it hundreds of times. You’re not locked in.
Astro and similar SSGs need a build step before the site can go live. The generator has to compile all your content into static files first, and that process needs to run somewhere. Typically, this happens on platforms like Netlify, Vercel, or Cloudflare Pages, which are excellent but represent a narrower set of options than traditional web hosting. If you want to move providers, you need to move your build pipeline too, not just your files. It’s manageable, but it’s a different kind of dependency.
For clients who want straightforward hosting with lots of provider choices and easy migration, WordPress has the edge here.
Who actually edits the content, and how often?
This is often the deciding question.
WordPress gives you a visual editor built in. Non-technical team members can log in and update content, add blog posts, or change images without touching any code. There are also page builder plugins that make layout changes accessible to non-developers. If multiple people need to edit the site regularly, WordPress is the more practical choice.
Static site generators are more tightly coupled to a development workflow. Content often lives in Markdown files (plain text files with simple formatting), which means whoever edits the site needs to be comfortable with that. There’s a middle-ground approach worth knowing about: a headless CMS, such as Sanity or Contentful or even WordPress itself used in “headless” mode, can provide a familiar editing interface while Astro handles the front end. It’s a genuinely good setup, but it adds a layer of complexity and cost to the project.
If content updates will be frequent and made by non-technical staff, a traditional WordPress build is usually the more sensible starting point.
Is a static site ever the better choice?
Yes, for the right project. If the site is relatively stable, think of a marketing site, a portfolio, a documentation hub, or a campaign page, and if performance and security are high priorities, Astro and similar tools produce excellent results. Pages load faster, the attack surface is smaller, and the hosting costs for static files are often lower.
HTTP Archive data consistently shows that static sites score well on Core Web Vitals, Google’s performance benchmarks, which matters for both user experience and search rankings.
The trade-off is in flexibility and editing convenience. For sites that change constantly, or where clients need to manage content themselves without developer involvement, static generators introduce friction that a CMS avoids.
How do I choose? A simple decision framework
Ask yourself these questions:
- Who will edit the site? If it’s non-technical staff, lean towards WordPress.
- How often will content change? Weekly or more, WordPress. Rarely is an SSG worth considering.
- How important is raw performance? If page speed is a priority and the site is relatively static, an SSG has a structural advantage.
- How much do you value hosting flexibility? If you want to move hosts easily and cheaply, WordPress wins.
- What’s the budget for ongoing maintenance? WordPress needs regular updates. An SSG built on a managed platform often needs less hands-on maintenance.
- Is there a developer available long-term? Static sites tend to need a developer for content changes unless a headless CMS is layered on top. Factor that in.
There’s no wrong answer here. Both approaches build good websites. The right one depends on your team, your content, and how you plan to manage the site after launch.
Not sure which direction makes sense for your project? We’re happy to talk it through, no obligation, no pitch.
If you’d like to see examples of either approach, take a look at some of our WordPress projects and Astro builds.
