As a web developer with over 15 years of experience building websites for businesses and organizations, one of the most common questions I get asked is:
"Should I use WordPress or just a basic static HTML site for my business website?"
This is an important decision that can have significant long-term effects on your site‘s flexibility, performance, and costs.
In this comprehensive guide, I‘ll compare WordPress and static HTML websites to help you decide which is best for your business. I‘ll provide insights from my expertise building hundreds of sites on both platforms over the years.
Let‘s start by reviewing what exactly WordPress and static HTML sites are, followed by an in-depth look at their key pros and cons for business use cases.
Contents
What is WordPress?
WordPress is an open-source content management system (CMS) that currently powers over 43% of all websites on the internet. It allows you to easily build and manage a website through an intuitive web-based interface.
With WordPress, all of your website content is stored in a database. This makes it easy to publish and make changes to your site without needing to edit any code yourself. You simply log into your WordPress dashboard to add pages, publish blog posts, modify menus, upload media, and more.
Here are some of the key advantages of using WordPress:
Easy Publishing and Updates
One of the biggest benefits of WordPress is how easy it is to add and update content. Without needing to know any HTML or coding, you can create new posts and pages with the click of a button.
Want to change an old blog post? Update your services page? Add a new team member bio? All of this can be done through WordPress‘s visual editor.
This simplicity enables you to quickly make changes whenever needed. As your business grows and changes, you can easily keep your site updated to match.
Thousands of Professional Designs
Another advantage of WordPress is access to thousands of beautifully designed WordPress themes. Both free and premium paid themes allow you to customize the design and layout of your site.
Premium themes from companies like Elegant Themes and StudioPress offer drag-and-drop page builders for pixel-perfect customization. You can create a professional, polished looking website without needing to code it from scratch.
Powerful Built-In Features
In addition to great design, WordPress comes packed with built-in features like:
- Responsive design: Mobile-friendly sites
- SEO optimizations: Meta data, sitemaps, SEO-friendly permalinks
- Image media galleries: Photo and video galleries
- Contact forms: User-friendly contact forms
- User accounts: Member registration and logins
- Admin dashboard: Intuitive stats and site management
Plus many more built-in features that can be enhanced even further with plugins (more on that next).
Scalable Functionality with Plugins
The functionality of WordPress can be extended even further through its vast library of over 55,000 free and premium plugins.
Plugins allow you to easily add things like ecommerce stores, forums, social media integration, lead generation forms, and more to your WordPress site. A few examples include:
- WooCommerce: Add a fully-featured online store.
- bbPress: Add community forums and discussions.
- Contact Form 7: Build customized contact forms.
- Yoast SEO: Optimize your site for search engines.
Virtually any feature imaginable can be added to a WordPress site through plugin extenders. No developer needed.
You Maintain Full Control
With WordPress, you own your website and all its content. You are not limited or penalized for growth in site traffic, users, or monetization options.
You have full control over:
- Your domain name
- Site design/branding
- All website content
- Any data collected
- Monetization choices
You are not locked into proprietary systems or platform dependencies. This gives you flexibility as your business scales and changes over time.
Large Support Community
As an open-source project, WordPress also benefits from its large global community. Tens of thousands of developers contribute ideas, code, plugins, themes, and documentation to the WordPress ecosystem.
For any question or problem that arises, there is likely documentation or help from other WordPress users available online. This community support is invaluable for continued success.
Disadvantages of Using WordPress
Of course, it‘s not all sunshine and rainbows. There are some downsides of using WordPress that are worth considering:
Learning Curve
While WordPress is quite easy to use, there is still a learning curve, especially for someone with very little technical expertise. Becoming comfortable with WordPress takes some time upfront.
When I build sites, new users often need a 1-2 hour training session to understand how to:
- Navigate the WordPress dashboard
- Create new pages and posts
- Add images
- Install plugins
- Change design options
- Moderate comments
The WordPress interface is intuitive, but expect an initial ramp up as you familiarize yourself with its dashboard and customization settings.
Tip: Take advantage of the thousands of free beginner WordPress video tutorials available online to shortcut the learning process.
Increased Responsibility for Site Maintenance
With great power comes great responsibility.
Since WordPress provides you with full control over your site, this also means you take on key maintenance tasks like:
- Installing software updates
- Managing plugins/themes
- Editing files
- Securing the site
- Backing up your database
- Monitoring site performance
I recommend setting aside 1 hour per month for WordPress site maintenance. Ongoing tasks include:
- Quickly updating plugins/themes
- Scanning files for any issues
- Clearing cache
- Checking traffic and SEO stats
- Creating backups
For larger sites, this may increase to 2-3 hours per month. Backup and security plugins can automate 90% of the work, but manual checks are still advised.
Some business owners prefer handing off these technical site maintenance tasks to a WordPress developer. Expect to budget $50-$150/month for managed WordPress site maintenance, depending on your needs.
While WordPress provides immense flexibility, you do trade off a bit more responsibility for being in the driver‘s seat.
What is a Static HTML Website?
Now you know the pros and cons of using WordPress. Let‘s compare it with a static HTML website, which is the main alternative.
A static website consists of flat HTML pages that are coded manually. Unlike WordPress sites where content is retrieved dynamically from a database, static sites serve fixed .html pages as-is.
To make any changes to content or design on a static site, the underlying HTML code needs to be edited.
Most businesses hire web developers to build fully custom static sites for them. The developer will code the pages, layouts, styling, etc by writing HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and other necessary code languages.
Here are a few of the advantages of a static HTML site:
Very Little Ongoing Maintenance
Once a static HTML site is launched, it requires virtually zero regular maintenance. Since nothing is dynamic or database-driven, everything operates on fixed files.
As long as you don‘t need to change any content or design, a static site can run for years on end without any updates needed.
Blazing Fast Load Times
With no database calls or backend logic, static sites load incredibly fast. Every component is hard-coded and ready to serve to users in milliseconds.
Page load tests consistently show static sites outperforming WordPress and other CMS options, often by 50% or more. Speed is perhaps the biggest perk of going static.
Lower Hosting Requirements
Since static sites are just basic HTML/CSS/JS files, this allows them to run on cheaper shared hosting accounts. You don‘t need servers with PHP, MySQL, etc installed.
Of course most full-service web hosts still offer these languages by default. But you can get away with more bare bones web hosting for a static site in a pinch.
Now what are the downsides and risks?
Difficult to Make Any Changes
Herein lies the Achilles heel of static websites. They are extremely rigid and inflexible when it comes to any changes.
Without a CMS like WordPress, even small edits require manually altering code in HTML files. Want to change some text or add a new page? Hope you brushed up on your HTML skills (or have your developer on speed dial).
Think of your static site like a printed brochure versus a document you can edit on your computer. One is fixed permanently after it‘s made. The other can be changed easily at any time.
No Built-In Features
Static websites are also limited functionality-wise out of the box. Features like contact forms, blogs, ecommerce, etc would need to be custom built and hard-coded by a developer.
What if you wanted to add a simple contact form to your site after launch? With WordPress, you just install a contact form plugin in seconds. With a static site, you‘d need to pay a developer to code one into your pages.
Extra functionality requires ongoing developer resources in most cases. Be prepared to get comfortable with your billing rates.
Much Higher Long-Term Costs
And speaking of billing rates… the long term cost of ownership of a static HTML site can really add up.
Since even tiny changes require developer intervention, you end up paying over and over for any new features, edits, design tweaks, new pages, etc you want after launch.
It‘s not uncommon for a simple content site built with WordPress to run under $500/year for hosting, maintenance, updates, etc.
A static site with the same number of page changes? Easily $2000+/year or more when accounting for all the dev hours required.
These costs balloon even further once you want more complex features like ecommerce added down the road. Be prepared for skyrocketing lifetime costs over the years.
WordPress vs HTML – Which is Better for Business Websites?
Now we‘ve covered the pros, cons, and tradeoffs of both WordPress and static HTML sites at length. So which one is better for business websites?
For the vast majority of businesses, WordPress is my recommended choice.
The flexibility, built-in CMS features, and lower total cost of ownership make WordPress better suited for most business sites, especially those wanting to grow and evolve over time.
WordPress is Ideal for Businesses Who:
- Want to easily publish new content and make changes themselves
- Require a professional website design
- Need features like ecommerce, memberships, etc
- Desire flexibility to change design and features
- Want to scale website functionality over time
- Prefer to manage the site themselves
- Have limited budget
Unless you meet ALL of the criteria below, WordPress is likely the better fit:
Static HTML Works Best for Businesses Who:
- Have very simple content needs
- Will never need to add or update site content
- Don‘t need many advanced features
- Like the site design exactly as-is
- Are comfortable paying developers for every future change
- Prefer developers fully manage the site
Over a 5 year period, the total cost of ownership for a simple 10 page WordPress site is approximately $2500 – $3000 when factoring hosting, maintenance, theme, and plugin expenses.
The same 10 page static HTML site would likely cost $15,000+ over 5 years after paying for initial development and ongoing change requests.
Of course these are estimates, but you can see how WordPress vs HTML cost savings add up dramatically for businesses wanting flexibility.
Making the Right Choice for Your Business Goals
I hope this comprehensive WordPress vs HTML comparison helps provide clarity on the best platform for your business website.
Most companies are better suited for WordPress long-term – but static HTML sites have some very niche pros like speed and simplicity. Align your choice with your specific business goals.
For example, a simple static site may work fine if you just need a basic online presence and don‘t intend to update content often or grow beyond a brochure-like website.
But if you want to actively publish content in a blog or news section, sell products online, or engage customers and prospects – WordPress is likely the superior choice.
Let me know if you have any other questions! I‘ve helped over 100 businesses make the decision between WordPress and static sites – and I‘m always happy to offer personalized advice based on your website needs.
