How does Statamic hosting compare to WordPress hosting?

Statamic runs on standard PHP hosting — any server that can run a Laravel application can run Statamic. That’s a broader and generally less expensive set of options than the specialized managed WordPress hosting market.

WordPress hosting has become its own category. Providers like WP Engine, Kinsta, and Flywheel exist specifically to handle WordPress’s requirements: MySQL databases, WordPress-specific caching layers, multisite support, automatic WordPress and plugin updates, and the security surface that comes with running a widely-targeted platform. They’re good products, but they command a premium and lock you into WordPress-centric infrastructure.

Statamic’s hosting requirements are simpler in flat-file mode because there’s no database to manage, no database backups to worry about, and no database-specific performance tuning. Your content is files, which means they travel with your code in version control and your hosting provider doesn’t need to do anything special with them. A mid-range VPS or a modern PHP hosting platform like Laravel Forge with a DigitalOcean, Linode, or Vultr server handles Statamic comfortably.

In database mode, you’re back to needing a MySQL or PostgreSQL database, which adds a bit more to the hosting setup — but it’s still standard database hosting, not WordPress-specific infrastructure. The tooling around Laravel applications (Forge, Ploi, Envoyer) is mature and makes deployment and server management straightforward.

Static caching is another hosting advantage. Statamic can pre-render pages as static HTML files and serve them directly, which means popular pages don’t generate PHP processes at all. This reduces hosting costs at scale because you can handle significantly more traffic on the same server compared to a dynamically rendered site.

On the flip side, Statamic doesn’t have a $5/month shared hosting option. It’s a Laravel application and benefits from a properly configured server environment. For most professional sites this isn’t a constraint, but it’s worth noting if you’re used to the bottom of the WordPress hosting market.

We cover hosting options, provider recommendations, and setup considerations in our Statamic hosting guide. If you want someone to handle the hosting setup and ongoing management as part of the migration, that’s something we include in our migration service and offer separately as ongoing support.