This is a modeled scenario, not a specific company's story. The numbers are derived from published hosting rates, developer salary surveys, and our own framework scoring data. We present it to illustrate the economics of migration at a realistic scale.
The Scenario
A digital media publisher operating 12 content websites on WordPress. Each running 20-35 plugins. Team of 4 developers.
Modeled Annual Costs — Staying on WordPress
Modeled Migration Cost
Modeled Ongoing Costs — Astro
The Economics
The exact savings depend on site complexity, team size, and hosting choices. But the structural advantage is clear: static output eliminates entire cost categories (PHP hosting, database management, plugin licensing, security patching) that WordPress requires by architecture. Our framework scoring data shows Astro at 90/100 on cost of ownership vs WordPress at 35/100.
Data Sources
Hosting prices: published pricing pages of WP Engine, Kinsta, Vercel, Netlify, Cloudflare Pages (accessed May 2026). Developer salaries: US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics. WordPress vulnerability data: Patchstack, NIST NVD. Framework scores: Adyog WebPulse scoring engine with live GitHub and NVD data.
