I run a 60+ room hotel in Quebec called Auberge de nos Aieux. I also manage a few other business websites. For years, every single one of them ran on WordPress.
I'm not a developer. I never was. So when I needed a website, I did what everyone does: I hired someone. Then I hired someone else to maintain it. Then I dealt with the ongoing costs, the plugin updates, the security scares, and the occasional "your site is down" panic at 11pm on a Friday.
I don't use WordPress anymore. Here's why.
The Real Cost of WordPress
People say WordPress is free. The software is. Everything around it isn't.
Here's what I was actually paying:
- Hosting: $25/month for managed WordPress hosting. That's $300/year per site.
- Premium theme: $60 one-time, but updates and support expire after a year, so really $60/year if you want to stay current.
- Plugins: Contact form plugin, SEO plugin, caching plugin, security plugin. Some free, some $50-100/year each. Call it $150/year for the essentials.
- Developer: Every time I needed a change that was beyond "edit this text," I paid someone. $75-150/hour. A few changes a year adds up fast.
- SSL certificate: Some hosts include it, mine charged $10/year extra.
For one site, I was spending roughly $600-800/year. For multiple sites, multiply that. And I still didn't have full control over my own websites.
The Headaches Nobody Warns You About
Cost is one thing. But the ongoing maintenance is what really wore me down.
Updates. WordPress core updates, theme updates, plugin updates. Every week, something needed updating. Skip the updates and you risk security vulnerabilities. Do the updates and sometimes things break. I've had a theme update break my booking page on a Saturday morning during peak season.
Security. WordPress powers a huge chunk of the internet, which makes it a massive target. I've had sites compromised. Malware injected. Spam pages created under my domain. Each time it happened, it cost hundreds to clean up and days of stress.
Speed. WordPress sites are slow unless you spend serious effort optimizing them. Page builders add bloated code. Every plugin adds JavaScript. The database grows. Caching helps, but it's another thing to configure and maintain.
Backups. Another plugin, another cost, another thing to hope works when you actually need it.
What I Switched To
I build my websites with Claude Code and host them on GitHub Pages.
Claude Code is an AI tool from Anthropic. You open your terminal, describe what you want in plain English, and it writes the code. I say "build me a hotel website with a booking section, photo gallery, and contact form" and it just does it. HTML, CSS, the whole thing.
GitHub Pages is free hosting from GitHub. You push your files, flip a switch, and your site is live. Free. No server to manage. No database. No PHP. Just clean, fast HTML files served from GitHub's global network.
What Changed for Me
Here's what my setup looks like now:
- Hosting cost: $0/month. Forever. GitHub Pages is free.
- SSL: Free. GitHub provides it automatically.
- Domain: ~$12/year. The only cost.
- Maintenance: None. There are no plugins to update, no database to manage, no security patches to worry about. Static HTML files don't get hacked.
- Speed: My sites load in under a second. There's no bloat. No database queries. No page builder overhead. Just clean code served from a CDN.
- Making changes: I open my terminal, tell Claude Code what to change, and push the update. Takes about 3 minutes.
Annual cost for one site: $12. Compare that to $600-800 with WordPress.
But What About...
"Don't you need a developer to use the terminal?"
No. You need to know three commands: ls (look around), cd (move to a folder), and mkdir (create a folder). That's it. Everything else, you tell Claude Code in plain English.
"Can a static site handle a hotel website?"
Yes. My hotel sites have photo galleries, room descriptions, contact forms (via Formspree), Google Maps, and links to our booking engine. A hotel website is fundamentally an information site. It doesn't need a database.
"What about SEO?"
Static sites are actually better for SEO in many cases. They load faster (Google cares about speed), they have cleaner code, and you can set up all the same meta tags, structured data, and sitemaps that WordPress does. I just tell Claude Code to add them.
"What if you need a blog?"
You're reading one. This blog is a static HTML page. Each post is its own file. I tell Claude Code to create a new post, it writes the HTML, I push to GitHub, and it's live. No WordPress needed.
Who This Works For
This approach isn't for everyone. If you're running an e-commerce store with thousands of products and a shopping cart, you probably need Shopify or WooCommerce. If your site needs user accounts and a login system, you need a backend.
But if your business website is mainly about presenting information and letting people contact you, a static site is not just adequate, it's superior. That covers most small businesses: restaurants, hotels, salons, contractors, freelancers, agencies, consultants.
I run a hotel with over 60 rooms and all my websites are static. If it works for me, it probably works for you.
The Skill That Changed Everything
The biggest thing I gained wasn't the cost savings, though those are real. It's the independence.
I don't wait for a developer to make changes. I don't negotiate hourly rates for a text edit. I don't worry about my hosting company raising prices or my WordPress site getting hacked at 3am.
I describe what I want. The AI builds it. I put it online. That's it.
If you're a business owner still paying monthly for Squarespace, Wix, or dealing with WordPress maintenance, I genuinely think there's a better way. It took me one afternoon to learn. It saves me thousands every year.