Static site hosting alternatives
Eight options for putting a static site on a domain - traditional hosts and AI builders - compared on price, free-tier rules, and when a second host is genuinely worth paying for.
The question that decides this isn't which host is cheapest. It's whether anything on your site runs code when a visitor arrives. If nothing does - no API routes, no server-rendered pages, no login, no secret read at request time - then nearly every option below can serve your site, and you're picking on price, limits and hassle. If something does, most of the cheap options are out on the first question, and the honest answer is usually to stay where you are.
A separate frontend host earns its bill when you need the things it's actually built for: a preview URL for every pull request, serverless or edge functions, shared deploy permissions across a team, and an edge network that absorbs traffic spikes a shared host would fold under. Those are real products and they're worth real money to the people who use them.
It stops earning its bill when none of that applies - when the site is a build output that changes on push, one person ships it, traffic is ordinary, and there's already a hosting bill on your card. That's the case this page is for.
What does it cost for a real site?
Cost for a site on your own domain with no vendor badge. Prices from each vendor's pricing page, checked August 2026.
| Option | Yearly cost | Custom domain | No vendor badge | GitHub deploys | No usage limits | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Parkstatic | $29.99 / yr | You already have WordPress hosting and want one more site on it for a flat yearly fee, with no badges, no credits, and no monthly subscription. | ||||
| Netlify | $0 – $240 / yr | Teams that need functions, form handling, and preview deploys. Free gives you 300 credits a month - about 20 production deploys at 15 credits each - and projects pause when they run out. Pro is $20/mo with unlimited members. | ||||
| Vercel | $0 – $240+ / yr | Next.js apps that need serverless functions, ISR, or edge middleware. Hobby is non-commercial only, and being paid to build the site counts as commercial. Pro is $20 per seat per month. | ||||
| Cloudflare Pages | $0 | The cheapest standalone static host if you don't need the site on your WordPress domain. Free covers 500 builds a month, one at a time, 20,000 files per site and 25 MiB per file. | ||||
| Lovable | $300 / yr | Paid plan | Paid plan | Staying inside Lovable with zero setup. Git sync to GitHub is on every plan including Free, but custom domains and removing the Lovable badge need Pro ($25/mo); credits apply on top. | ||
| Replit | $240 / yr | Paid plan | Building and publishing inside Replit. Custom domains work on every plan, but free Starter caps you at 1 published app and shows a "Made with Replit" badge; Core ($25/mo, or $20 billed annually) lifts both. Publishing runs from Replit, not a GitHub Action. | |||
| Base44 | $480 / yr | Paid plan | Paid plan | Paid plan | Vibe-coding full apps with a backend and database. Custom domains and GitHub integration start at Builder ($40/mo billed annually, $50 monthly), and the "Edit with Base44" badge can only be switched off on a paid plan. | |
| Macaly | $300 / yr | Paid plan | Paid plan | Paid plan | AI-built landing pages with hosting bundled in. Custom domains, watermark removal and GitHub all need Pro ($25/mo). A $5/mo hosting-only plan keeps a published site live without AI credits, but it's only offered when you downgrade from Pro. |
included · "Paid plan" = needs a paid tier · not available
Yearly figures assume the cheapest billing option each vendor offers for the plan that unlocks a custom domain without a badge; several are cheaper billed annually than monthly. The Parkstatic figure assumes you already pay for WordPress hosting — if you don't, add that cost and the comparison changes.
The free tiers have rules, not just limits
This is the part people miss. Two of the free tiers above restrict what kind of site you may run at all, and a third takes yours offline when a counter hits zero. None of it shows up in a price column, and all of it lands on the person building a small business site.
Vercel Hobby is non-commercial only
Vercel's fair use guidelines define commercial usage as any deployment used for the financial gain of anyone involved in any part of production, "including a paid employee or consultant writing the code." Their examples include advertising a product or service, running AdSense, and "receiving payment to create, update, or host the site" - and a note adds that asking for donations counts too. A freelancer building a client's brochure site on Hobby is outside the rules even if that site never takes a payment.
GitHub Pages bans business sites
Pages "is not intended for or allowed to be used as a free web-hosting service to run your online business, e-commerce site, or any other website that is primarily directed at either facilitating commercial transactions or providing commercial software as a service." Everything else about it is generous: a 1 GB published site, a soft 100 GB/month bandwidth limit, and a soft 10 builds per hour that doesn't apply at all if you publish with your own Actions workflow.
Netlify's free tier is a hard stop, not a throttle
Netlify bills in credits on accounts created since 4 September 2025. Free gets 300 a month, which the docs call a hard limit. A production deploy costs 15 credits, bandwidth 20 per GB, web requests 2 per 10,000 - so 300 credits is twenty deploys with nothing left for traffic. When the balance hits zero, projects are paused and visitors get a "Site not available" page. You can't buy credits on Free. Deploy Previews and branch deploys, though, cost nothing at all.
Cloudflare Pages is the least encumbered
500 builds a month, one at a time, a 20-minute build ceiling, 20,000 files per site and 25 MiB per file. If you have no WordPress hosting and no need for a server, that free tier is hard to argue with.
When Parkstatic is the right pick
The AI builders on this page charge $240–$480 a year to put a site on your own domain without their badge on it — and they still meter your usage with credits. Parkstatic gives you that for a flat $29.99 a year, with no credit limits, because it deploys to WordPress hosting you already pay for.
Custom domain
On your own WordPress domain, not a subdomain.
No vendor badge
No "Made with" tag on your site, at any tier.
GitHub deploys
Push to main, your site rebuilds and goes live.
No credit limits
Flat yearly fee. No credits, no usage metering, no overages.
You should stay on Vercel or Netlify if…
Most people who land on a page like this should not switch. The honest list:
Anything runs at request time
Next.js Server Actions or Route Handlers, incremental static regeneration, middleware, an auth callback, a form posting to your own endpoint, a database read. A folder of files cannot do those. Stay on a host that runs Node.
You want a URL per pull request
Parkstatic has no preview deploys. On Netlify they cost zero credits even on the free tier, which makes staying easy to justify.
More than one person ships
Shared environment variables, deploy permissions, an audit trail of who deployed what. The pricing shapes differ here: Netlify Pro is $20 a month with unlimited members, Vercel Pro is $20 per developer seat per month, so a four-person team is $80 a month on Vercel and still $20 on Netlify.
Your project is genuinely non-commercial
Vercel Hobby gives you 100 GB of data transfer and a million edge requests a month, free. Nothing here beats free.
Traffic is spiky
A shared WordPress host will fold under a front-page spike well before an edge network will. Reused hosting is cheap, not elastic.
You don't already pay for WordPress hosting
Buying it to serve a static build is a worse deal than Cloudflare Pages, which will host it for nothing. The saving only exists when the bill already does. And one licence covers one WordPress site, so ten sites means ten licences - at that point a platform with a team plan is probably cheaper as well as better.
Go deeper
- Vercel alternative for a single site: what Pro costs
What actually forces the jump from Hobby to Pro, and what a static page view costs once the included allowances run out.
- Netlify alternative: what 300 credits actually buys
Build minutes are gone. Here is what a credit is worth in page views and deploys, and which plan you are actually on.
GitHub Pages and Cloudflare Pages get their own pages next. Until they land, the two most useful reads are the full hosting comparison for the general case and the Lovable hosting alternative if your site came out of an AI builder rather than a repo you wrote yourself.
The static site hosting on WordPress guide is the long version of the argument, and the deploy guides have the per-builder setup steps.
Common questions
What is the cheapest Netlify or Vercel alternative for a static site?
If you already pay for WordPress hosting, Parkstatic is the cheapest route because it reuses hosting you're already buying: $29.99 per year, or $89.99 once, for a single site. If you don't have WordPress hosting, Cloudflare Pages' free tier is the cheapest capable option, though it means running a second platform alongside whatever else you host.
Is Vercel Pro a fair comparison to Parkstatic?
Not directly, and it's worth being clear about that. Vercel Pro is a per-seat, usage-based platform for full applications with serverless functions and edge middleware. Parkstatic is a flat-priced plugin that deploys a pre-rendered static build to hosting you already own. They overlap only for people whose actual need is 'put this static site on a domain' - which is a large share of Vercel and Netlify users, but not all of them.
Can I move an existing Netlify or Vercel site to WordPress hosting?
Yes, provided it builds to static files. Point the Parkstatic GitHub Action at the same repository you already deploy from, keep your existing build command, and the pre-rendered output is published to your WordPress domain instead. You do not need to change your framework or rewrite your site.
Can I host a Lovable, Replit, Base44, or Macaly site on WordPress instead?
Yes, if the project builds to static files. Export or sync the source to GitHub, then use Parkstatic to build and deploy it to WordPress hosting you already pay for. Lovable is the easiest case, because Git sync is available on every Lovable plan including Free - so you can get the code out without paying Lovable anything. Base44 and Macaly put GitHub behind a paid tier. You keep editing in the AI builder; Parkstatic handles the deploy. Full-stack apps that need a running backend server are not a fit.
Does hosting on WordPress make my site slower?
No. Parkstatic serves pre-rendered HTML files rather than rendering pages through the WordPress PHP and database stack on each request, so there is no per-page database query. Real-world speed then depends on your hosting provider and whether you put a CDN in front of it, exactly as it would on any other host.
Already paying for WordPress hosting?
Parkstatic connects your GitHub repo to the WordPress hosting you already pay for, for a flat $29.99 a year. The free plugin is on WordPress.org if you want to try it first.