WordPress was the right answer in 2009. Almost without exception, it's the wrong answer now — for the kind of sites you probably run.
The original WordPress promise — a CMS so anyone can edit their site — is intact. What rotted is everything bolted on around it: page builders, visual editors, the plugin economy, "managed" hosting that costs more every year while loading slower every year. The average WordPress site we audit runs 27 plugins. Each one is a vendor relationship, a subscription, a security surface, and a thing that might break next Tuesday.
If you're running a true e-commerce store with thousands of products, multi-author publication with editorial workflow, or a site with deeply complex authenticated functionality — WordPress might still be the right answer. But for the marketing sites, brochure sites, service-business sites, and creator sites that make up most of what's actually deployed on WP: you're paying for complexity you don't use, every single month.
"Most WordPress sites should never have been WordPress."
Same site. Better plumbing.
Content scraped and converted to JSON
Every page, post, product, custom post type, ACF field — extracted from your WP database, normalised, and stored as JSON in a Git repo. Each piece of content gets a stable identifier and a content type. That's now the source of truth, not the database.
Design rebuilt — original or refreshed
You choose: rebuild the design pixel-for-pixel (cheaper, faster, lower-risk) or refresh while we're at it (more design time, but no second engagement needed if you've been wanting a redesign anyway). Either way the output is hand-written HTML and CSS, no page-builder bloat.
Custom edit panel for your team
The thing most clients worry about. "How do we edit the site if there's no WordPress admin?" Answer: we build you an edit panel. Tuned to your specific content shape — pages, products, blog posts, team members, whatever you have — that reads and writes the JSON. Looks and feels as friendly as WordPress. No PHP. No plugins. The "static" bit means visitors get HTML; you still get a CMS.
Hosting on Cloudflare Pages
Pre-rendered HTML deployed to Cloudflare's edge — 300+ cities, sub-second TTFB worldwide, generous free tier covers virtually any small-to-mid business. Your typical £25–£120/mo "managed WordPress hosting" bill drops to £0.
SEO equity preserved
Same URL structure, same content, same internal linking, structured data done properly (not bolted on by a plugin that conflicts with three others). We migrate your sitemap and set up redirects from any URLs that do change. Most rebuilds see SEO improve, not regress, because the underlying HTML is faster, cleaner, and more semantic than what page builders produce.
Annual cost — typical 30-page brochure site.
You still pay us to build it, and to make changes (or to run a Care & Iteration retainer). But you'll never get a £30/mo "managed hosting" renewal email again, and a plugin won't white-screen your site at 3am.
Be clear about both.
In scope
- ✓Content extraction from WordPress (pages, posts, custom post types, ACF fields, media)
- ✓Design rebuild — pixel-for-pixel or refreshed (your choice)
- ✓Custom edit panel tuned to your content shape
- ✓Schema.org structured data baked in
- ✓Cloudflare Pages deployment + DNS migration
- ✓301 redirects for any URL changes
- ✓Sitemap, robots.txt, llms.txt
- ✓30 days of post-launch fixes included
Not in scope (separate quote)
- ·True e-commerce with hundreds+ products and multi-step checkout (use Shopify; we'll integrate)
- ·Membership / paywall / authenticated user areas (custom build)
- ·Multi-language with editorial translation workflow
- ·Ongoing content writing (covered by Care & Iteration)
- ·AI Visibility Monitoring (covered by its own service)
- ·Brand identity / logo design (we partner with designers for this)
From £4,800. Final fee depends on content volume and design choice.
The £4,800 starting fee covers a typical 10–30-page brochure site, design rebuilt to original. Pricing scales with two factors:
- →Content volume. 30 pages costs less to extract and rebuild than 300. We quote on a per-page-type basis after a 15-minute scoping call.
- →Design choice. Pixel-for-pixel rebuild stays in the £4,800–£7,500 range for most sites. A design refresh adds 1–2 weeks and £2,000–£4,000 depending on scope.
Quickstart clients get the £950 audit fee credited against the rebuild. AI Visibility Monitoring is bundled for the first three months on any rebuild engagement.