I run 12 websites. 10 are static.

The math#

A static site's server cost is O(1), not O(users). The CDN caches one HTML file, and 10 users vs 100,000 users do roughly the same work on your origin.

A dynamic site runs business logic per request, hits the database, allocates memory. Scaling up means your DB becomes the bottleneck, then CPU, then RAM, then bandwidth.

vs

Maintenance#

A static site's maintenance is only when content changes. Code stays still. Dependencies stay still.

I have a static site deployed in 2019, untouched since. It gets a few thousand visits a month. I have never logged into an admin panel.

A dynamic site needs patches, runtime upgrades, DB tuning, monitoring, spam handling. Each is a recurring cost.

What it can't do#

Honestly:

• Per-user state: comments, likes, follows. I outsource that to GitHub via Giscus.
• Personalization: every user sees the same page
• Real-time data: prices, chat, collaboration
• Mobile-first authoring: you can't "post quickly from your phone" — you need a local editor and git push

When to go dynamic#

Yes	No
Multi-user collab tools	Personal blog
Real-time data apps	Documentation site
Complex transactions	Marketing pages
Backend RBAC	Landing pages

99% of "blogs" don't need dynamic. Same for docs and portfolios.

This site#

This page documents the stack. Source on GitHub, Cloudflare builds it, CDN serves it. I wrote thirteen pieces this week — pipeline never blinked.

In ten years I'll have switched hosts three times. The Markdown files will still be in the git repo.

Comments

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