You Don’t Need a Plugin to Convert to Static WordPress

Searching for a way to transform your WordPress site into a static powerhouse, without slowing down or compromising your workflow?

You’re not alone.

As the demand for faster load times, bulletproof security, and simplified maintenance grows, more WordPress site owners are eyeing the static model. And while a sea of plugins promises to deliver just that, many users quickly find the reality doesn’t match the pitch.

Let’s unpack what’s actually going on and why the best solution may not be a plugin at all.

Do Plugins Really “Instantly” Convert WordPress to Static?

The idea of a magic button that turns your dynamic WordPress site into static HTML sounds amazing.

But when you look at the top plugins in the space, cracks start to show.

Simply Static: A Veteran with Limits

Simply Static has been around for years and offers basic crawling and static file export capabilities. It’s great for lightweight sites or bare-bones blogs. But throw in a modern theme, a builder plugin, or anything dynamic, and the results get shaky fast.

Key downsides include:

• Limited selective publishing: Want to update just one blog post? Good luck. The interface makes that harder than it should be.
• Form headaches: Contact forms are severely restricted, and the workaround options often require changing how your site functions.
• AJAX? What AJAX?: Simply Static doesn’t reliably support AJAX calls, meaning many plugins or frontend elements silently break.

We’ve written several deep-dive guides about its pitfalls:

• Simply Static Takes Hours? Yeah It Does.
• Fixing the “Simply Static Temp Dir Not Readable” Error (And Why You Shouldn’t Have to)
• Simply Static Deployment Files Blank? Here’s the Fix

Staatic: Automation, but Not for Everyone

Staatic offers newer features like Git-based deployments and automation workflows. For developers, that might sound ideal.

But for most users? Not so much.

• No partial pushes: It’s all or nothing. That’s not helpful when you only need to update a single landing page.
• Plugin friction: eCommerce features, form plugins, and other dynamic tools often misfire.
• Dev-centric setup: GitHub-first deployment assumes a developer background. Not ideal for marketers, agencies, or non-tech teams.

Why the Plugin Approach Breaks Down

The dream of pressing a button and getting a perfect static site collides with harsh realities:

• PHP-powered forms don’t work without heavy reconfiguration or third-party APIs.
• AJAX-driven content, search, and filters often disappear in the export.
• Learning curves are steep, especially with pagination, CPTs, redirects, and 404s.
• Plugin and theme compatibility is poor, particularly with builders like Divi or Elementor.
• Output control is nonexistent. You’re stuck with whatever the plugin renders.
• You still have to manage your infrastructure. Choosing, configuring, and deploying to a static host is on you.

In other words, you’re replacing one set of problems with another.

There’s a Better Way: Headless Hostman

Instead of cobbling together tools, plugins, and cloud setups, we built something different: an all-in-one platform that delivers on the promise of static WordPress without the headaches.

Headless Hostman is Not a Plugin

We provide the entire infrastructure and workflow:

1. Sign up
2. Migrate your site
3. Click once to deploy

We handle crawling, exporting, optimizing, hosting, and monitoring.

It’s that easy.

Anyway You Like It, That’s the Way You Push It

• Full Site Push: Publish everything in a few minutes
• Selective Push: Push only posts, only pages, or only one CPT
• Single Page Pushes: Update as needed, instantly
• Delete Pages: One click and it’s gone from the live site
• Scheduled Posts: They go static the moment they publish

Dynamic Features Still Work

Our system integrates with Contact Form 7, Gravity Forms, Ninja Forms, and more. File uploads, email notifications, conditional logic—yes, they all keep working.

• See our full list of compatibilities here

Works with Your Existing Site

Gutenberg, Elementor, WPML, Advanced Custom Fields.

We crawl and convert even the most complex setups with ease. There’s nothing to “rebuild” or give up.

Optimized for Performance, Not Just Speed

Static hosting makes your site fast, but we go further. Our platform optimizes Core Web Vitals with features like:

• Above-the-fold Critical CSS
• Smart script deferral and lazyloading
• Image preloading and dimension setting
• Background-to-image conversions
• Whitespace and HTML minification

And more.

24/7 Diagnostics and Monitoring

We continuously scan your static site for issues with:

• Sitemaps
• robots.txt visibility
• JavaScript errors
• Google indexing issues

Get alerts before problems affect your traffic or rankings.

Real Support. Real Results.

When things break, we fix them. When you have questions, we answer them.

Our team is available through your portal and includes onboarding, documentation, and dev-level help.

Conclusion: The Static Plugin You’ll Never Need

If you’re serious about performance, uptime, and security but don’t want to lose your forms, your themes, or your sanity then Headless Hostman is the only real choice.

We’ve removed the pain, kept the power, and delivered a true static WordPress solution that works out of the box.

Let’s ride.