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WordPress powers over 40% of the web, but its dynamic, PHP-driven architecture can introduce persistent bottlenecks: slow load times, security vulnerabilities, high hosting costs, and scalability challenges during traffic spikes. Static site generators (SSGs) have emerged as a powerful solution, offering blazing-fast performance, ironclad security, and ultra-low hosting costs—all while letting you keep WordPress as your familiar, intuitive content editing backend.
In this guide, we’ll break down five of the most popular tools to convert your WordPress site to a static one: Staatic, Jekyll Exporter, Make Me Static, and Static Snap. We’ll cover their features, pros, cons, and ideal use cases to help you pick the right tool for your project.
Why Go Static?
Before we dive into the tools, let’s recap the core benefits of moving your WordPress site to static:
- Blazing Fast Performance: Static HTML files are served instantly from CDNs, eliminating server-side processing and reducing TTFB (Time to First Byte) to milliseconds.
- Enhanced Security: With no PHP or database to attack, your static site is virtually immune to WordPress-specific hacks, malware, and plugin vulnerabilities.
- Lower Hosting Costs: Static sites can be hosted for free (or next to free) on platforms like Netlify, Vercel, GitHub Pages, or Cloudflare Pages.
- Unlimited Scalability: Static sites handle millions of visitors without breaking a sweat, as there’s no dynamic server load to bottleneck performance.
- Better SEO: Faster load times and higher reliability directly boost your search engine rankings.
1. Staatic – Static Site Generator
Staatic is one of the most mature and widely used static site generators for WordPress, with over 2,000 active installations and a 4.2/5 user rating. It was last updated 2 months ago, making it actively maintained for the latest WordPress versions. It’s designed to be a flexible, self-hosted solution that converts your dynamic WordPress site into static files and deploys them to your platform of choice.
Key Features
- Multi-Platform Deployment: Supports one-click deployment to GitHub, Netlify, AWS S3 + CloudFront, or your local/shared server.
- Advanced Crawler: A powerful built-in crawler navigates your entire site, converting dynamic content to static HTML while capturing all assets (images, scripts, styles).
- Multisite & Multilingual Support: Fully compatible with WordPress Multisite and WPML for multilingual sites.
- Developer-Friendly Tools: CLI commands for automated publishing, custom URL rules, redirect support (301/302/307/308), custom 404 pages, and exclude rules.
- Compatibility Integrations: Built-in compatibility patches for popular WordPress plugins, with extended support available in the Premium version.
- Basic Auth Support: Works with password-protected WordPress installations using HTTP basic authentication.
Unlike caching plugins, which only store cached versions of dynamic pages but still require WordPress to process requests, Staatic completely eliminates PHP and database from the delivery chain. This means your site is always “cache-warmed”, with no latency for first visitors, and you can host your static site on any CDN or cloud provider for even faster performance.
Pros
- Extremely flexible, works for small blogs and large enterprise sites alike.
- Active maintenance: Regular updates and strong support, with 100% of support issues resolved in the last two months.
- No external dependencies: Runs entirely on your server, no third-party service required for core functionality.
- Positive user reviews: Most users praise its seamless deployment integrations and ease of use, with many calling it the best static conversion tool they’ve used.
Cons
- A small number of users report URL rewriting issues with highly complex sites, though this is rare for most standard use cases.
- Free version has limited compatibility with dynamic plugins; advanced dynamic feature support requires the Premium tier.
Ideal For
Developers and site owners who need a flexible, self-hosted solution with support for complex sites (multisite, multilingual), custom deployment targets, and CLI automation.
2. Jekyll Exporter
Unlike the other tools on this list, Jekyll Exporter isn’t a full static site generator—it’s a migration tool that lets you export your WordPress content to Jekyll, one of the oldest and most popular static site generators. With 700+ active installations and a 3.5/5 rating, it was last updated 6 months ago, and is the go-to tool for users looking to fully move away from WordPress hosting to Jekyll.
Key Features
- One-Click Export: Converts all your WordPress posts, pages, custom post types, and settings into Jekyll-compatible Markdown files with YAML front matter.
- Filter Support: Lets you customize exports with filters to handle custom fields (like Advanced Custom Fields) and custom post types, so you can adapt the export to your specific content structure.
- CLI Option: For larger sites, a command-line interface avoids web server timeouts that can break the web-based export.
- Zip Packaging: Exports all content, images, and a
_config.ymlfile into a single zip file, ready to use with Jekyll or other Markdown-based SSGs like Hugo.
Pros
- Simple, no-config migration for users moving to Jekyll.
- Open-source, maintained by well-known developer Ben Balter.
- Works with other Markdown-based SSGs like Hugo, not just Jekyll.
Cons
- It only exports your content, not the final static HTML. You’ll need to set up and run Jekyll yourself to build the static site.
- Mixed user feedback: Some users report the tool no longer works for larger or newer WordPress sites, while others confirm it works reliably for smaller blogs.
- Web-based export times out for large sites, requiring CLI usage to complete the export.
Ideal For
Users who want to fully migrate from WordPress to Jekyll (or another Markdown-based SSG), rather than keeping WordPress as a backend for ongoing content updates.
3. Make Me Static
Make Me Static is a newer, cloud-powered static site generator that offloads the heavy lifting of crawling and processing your site to external servers, so it doesn’t strain your WordPress hosting. It pairs a WordPress plugin with a cloud service to automate Git-based deployment and static hosting. The plugin has 10+ active installations, a perfect 5/5 user rating, and was last updated 1 month ago, showing active development.
Key Features
- External Crawling: The plugin uses a remote crawler to scan your site, so your WordPress server doesn’t get overloaded during static generation.
- Git Integration: Automatically pushes your static site to a Git repository, with support for MadPenguin’s built-in Git/Pages service, or self-configured GitLab (GitHub support is planned).
- Incremental Updates: Three scan modes let you update only changed pages (for fast minor edits), sync all assets, or clean up unused files in your Git repo.
- Automation: Scheduled updates, A/B testing profiles, live web stats, and a setup wizard for new users.
- Flexible Scanning: Adjustable scan rates, exclude/include rules for files/folders, and support for custom static assets.
- AJAX Support: Rewrites links to preserve JavaScript-based services that still need to access your WordPress backend.
Pricing & Tiers
The plugin offers a subscription-based model with multiple tiers to fit different site sizes:
- Free Tier: £0/month, 1 profile, 4 scans/day, up to 500 assets, throttled scan speed.
- Lite Tier: £350/month, 1 profile, 8 scans/day, up to 2000 assets, scheduled crawling.
- Full Tier: £10/month, 2 profiles for A/B testing, 64 scans/day, up to 12000 assets, unthrottled scanning.
Note: The pricing structure appears to have unusual tiered pricing, which may be a display error on the official site, as the Full tier offers more features at a lower listed price than the Lite tier.
Pros
- No server load: All crawling is done remotely, so your WordPress site doesn’t slow down during static generation.
- Zero-config hosting: The default MadPenguin Pages service lets you get up and running without setting up your own Git or hosting.
- Incremental updates make post-edit publishing extremely fast, even for larger sites.
- Built-in live stats and automated scheduled updates.
- Setup wizard makes it very beginner-friendly, with guided configuration.
Cons
- Very new, with only 10+ active installations, so it’s less battle-tested than older tools.
- Relies on external cloud services, so you’re dependent on their uptime for your static generation workflow.
- Currently only supports GitLab for self-hosted Git; GitHub support is still planned.
- Requires HTTPS and pretty permalinks (no plain permalinks supported).
Ideal For
Beginner users who want a hands-off, automated solution, don’t want to deal with server load, and want built-in hosting and stats. It’s also great for users who want incremental updates without managing their own crawler.
4. Static Snap
Static Snap is the newest tool on this list, first released in September 2024, but it’s already gained attention for its ability to preserve dynamic functionality like forms and search in static sites. With 10+ active installations and a perfect 5/5 user rating, it’s designed to bridge the gap between static performance and dynamic features, and is updated very frequently (last updated 3 months ago).
Key Features
- Dynamic Feature Support: Preserves form functionality for popular plugins like Contact Form 7, WP Forms Lite, Gravity Forms, and Elementor Forms, using its own API to handle form submissions without server-side code.
- GitHub Backups: Automatically pushes your static site to GitHub for version control and secure backups.
- Multi-Platform Deployment: Supports deployment to a wide range of static hosting providers.
- Regular Updates: The team is actively developing the plugin, with frequent updates adding new features and bug fixes, including new form integrations and compatibility patches.
- Eco-Friendly Focus: Reduces server resource usage to support more sustainable hosting practices.
Pros
- Solves one of the biggest pain points of static sites: retaining dynamic form functionality without third-party services.
- Extremely easy to set up, with a user-friendly interface that requires minimal configuration.
- Active development: The plugin is updated frequently, with new features added every few weeks.
- Positive early user reviews, with users praising its simplicity and performance gains.
Cons
- Very new, so it’s still maturing—some edge cases may not be fully supported yet.
- Many dynamic features rely on the Static Snap API, so you’re dependent on their service for those features to work.
- Limited adoption so far, with only 10+ active installs.
Ideal For
Site owners who need to keep dynamic features like contact forms while going static, and want a simple, modern tool with automatic backups.
How to Choose the Right Tool
The best tool for you depends on your goals, technical skill, and what you want to get out of your static site:
| Use Case | Best Tool |
| You want to fully migrate from WordPress to Jekyll/Hugo | Jekyll Exporter |
| You need a flexible, self-hosted solution for complex/multisite sites | Staatic |
| You’re a beginner who wants hands-off, automated hosting & updates | Make Me Static |
| You need to keep dynamic features like contact forms | Static Snap |
| You want CLI automation and custom deployment targets | Staatic |
| You don’t want to strain your WordPress server with crawling | Make Me Static |
| You need multilingual or multisite support | Staatic |
Limitations of Static Sites
While static sites offer huge benefits, they’re not right for every site. Dynamic features that require server-side processing—like user logins, real-time comments, or live data—won’t work out of the box. However, most of these can be added with third-party services:
- Comments: Disqus, Commento
- Forms: Static Snap’s built-in support, or Formspree, Getform
- Search: Algolia, Google Custom Search
- User Authentication: Auth0, Netlify Identity
Final Thoughts
Converting your WordPress site to static is one of the best ways to boost performance, security, and reduce costs—without giving up the ease of use of WordPress as a content editor.
Each of the tools we covered has its own strengths: Staatic is the mature, flexible workhorse for developers, Jekyll Exporter is perfect for migrations, Make Me Static makes static sites accessible to beginners, and Static Snap solves the dynamic feature gap.
No matter which tool you pick, going static will transform your site’s speed, security, and reliability—giving your visitors a better experience while saving you time and money.
