Scenario: What Happens When a Publisher Migrates 12 Sites from WordPress to Astro

Key finding

Managed WordPress hosting: $1,200 - $6,000/site/yr (Source: WP Engine, Kinsta, Flywheel published pricing tiers (2026).)

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

$1,200 - $6,000/site/yr

Managed WordPress hosting

Source: WP Engine, Kinsta, Flywheel published pricing tiers (2026).

$500 - $3,000/site/yr

Premium plugins & themes

Source: WordPress.org marketplace. Average premium plugin renewal $50-150/yr. 20-30 plugins per site.

20-30% of FTE

Developer maintenance allocation

Source: WP Tuts industry survey. At $95K avg salary (Bureau of Labor Statistics), that's $19K-$28.5K/developer.

4,200+ new CVEs in 2025

Security patching burden

Source: Patchstack State of WordPress Security 2026 report.

Modeled Migration Cost

$10,000 - $20,000

Content migration tooling

Based on published rates for WordPress-to-static migration services. Varies by content volume and complexity.

$5,000 - $15,000

Template rebuild per site

Based on published Astro/Next.js development agency rates ($100-200/hr).

Modeled Ongoing Costs — Astro

$0 - $60/yr

CDN hosting per site

Source: Netlify, Vercel, Cloudflare Pages published free tier limits. Most content sites fit within free tier.

3-5% of FTE

Developer maintenance

Source: Static site maintenance benchmarks. No plugins to patch, no database to optimize.

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.