Move WordPress to Free Hosting Without Learning Static Sites

Yes, you can move a WordPress site to free hosting. The do-it-yourself route is a plugin called Simply Static, which turns your site into plain finished pages that you upload to Cloudflare, whose free plan hosts them. WordPress itself keeps running somewhere, so the move does not by itself end your WordPress bill. As of November 2026, Cloudflare's own guide says forms, comments and links to /wp-admin (the address of your WordPress login and dashboard) will not work on that copy, and that with the free plugin every change means downloading a new ZIP file and uploading it again.

A site made of plain finished pages is called a static site. Simply Static says the public copy has "no WordPress login, no exposed database, and no PHP execution layer," and adds: "Static sites do not process server-side features by default."

What decides how your move goes

One variable comes first: whether your site is on WordPress.com or self-hosted. WordPress.com says both run on the same WordPress software, and the main difference is hosting. The other variables are your page builder, your forms and whether you sell things. To tell which kind of site you have and what moves from each, read WordPress.com or Self-Hosted: What Moves to a Static Site and What Does Not.

What it costs

From a Canadian connection on 9 November 2026, WordPress.com's pricing page showed Personal at C$12 a month paid monthly, or C$5 a month billed every 12 months, excluding taxes. Business was C$33 a month billed every 12 months, and Commerce C$59. Prices vary by region, so check your own account page. On a self-hosted site, WordPress.com's own comparison page says the software is free and you pay a hosting provider for hosting and a domain.

On the other side, Cloudflare's free plan allows 20,000 files and files up to 25 MiB each on Pages, and Workers Builds gives 3,000 build minutes a month, according to its Pages limits page and Workers Builds limits. If your site has a very large media library, check your file count against those numbers. Cloudflare also says requests for static files are free and unlimited on both free and paid plans.

The free route puts the public copy on Cloudflare, but Cloudflare's guide keeps WordPress as the place you edit, either run locally or behind Cloudflare Access so only your contributors get in. That means this route does not by itself end your WordPress bill. Cloudflare's guide also says that because your WordPress instance then needs less memory and bandwidth, you can often host it on a cheaper plan or on shared hosting. Check what your own plan lets you change. You still pay for the domain, and for a mailbox if you have one. A Website With No Monthly Fees covers what stays on the bill.

Export your blog posts from WordPress

Do this first, whichever route you pick; it gives you a copy of your writing.

On a self-hosted site, open Tools, then Export in your dashboard and choose "All content". The WordPress.org documentation says the file holds posts, pages, custom post types, comments, custom fields, categories, tags, custom taxonomies and users, and that "All content" also covers navigation menus. That page says nothing about image files, so open your download and check, and keep your old site online until you have copied the images.

On WordPress.com, the export page says the file holds your posts, pages, comments, categories and tags, plus links to your media files, "not the actual files". It leaves out your theme design, customizations and plugins. Your media library is a separate export. WordPress.com also says to keep your original site public until the new site has copied your images, which can take several hours for a site with many photos. A site with more than about 1,000 pages or posts arrives as a zip of several XML files.

The file is XML, a plain-text format that WordPress and many other platforms can read. It holds your writing and its structure. The look of the site lives elsewhere. If you want the design too, WordPress.com points to a migration plugin for exporting a whole site.

Doing it yourself with Simply Static

Cloudflare's guide lists two prerequisites: the Administrator account on your WordPress site, and being able to install WordPress plugins on it. If you cannot install plugins, this route is closed to you. The steps:

1. Install the free Simply Static plugin.
2. Choose Generate Static Files, then download the ZIP.
3. In Cloudflare, choose Create application, then Pages, then Use direct upload.
4. Name the project, drag in the ZIP and choose Deploy site.

Simply Static says your design, layout, images, CSS and public content remain the same; that is the vendor's claim, so look at the result page by page. Cloudflare says you can run your WordPress site locally, or put it behind Cloudflare Access so only your contributors get in, and keep editing there. That means WordPress stays running somewhere, so this route does not by itself end your WordPress bill. Cloudflare's guide does not mention shops, so if you sell things, test checkout on the copy before you rely on it.

The trade is the one in the first paragraph: forms, comments and /wp-admin links (the address of your WordPress login and dashboard) do not work on the copy, and each change means a new ZIP and a new upload. For your own domain, Cloudflare's guide says to move your WordPress site to a custom domain or subdomain and refers to its custom domains page. Simply Static says its paid products add forms and search through supported integrations. One note for anyone following the guide: Cloudflare's Pages page now says to start new projects with Workers and publishes a guide for moving from Pages to Workers. Workers does not support a domain whose nameservers (the computers that answer for your domain) are outside Cloudflare, and Pages does.

Editing afterwards

The next question is whether you can still change things. This is what differs day to day.

That is how a professional developer sets up a site: changes are tried on a copy first and every version is kept. You get that without learning or running any of it.

It has a cost. The assistant is one you subscribe to separately, such as Claude Pro at US$20 a month, or the AI plan you already have. You need a free GitHub account, because your site's files live there in your name. If you prefer to type the changes yourself, the text files for your pages sit in a content folder you can edit by hand. Or email SiteFree your changes and skip the assistant. Sources for the WordPress column: drafts and statuses, saving and previewing, revisions and site restore.

Your domain and your email

Your domain is the address people type, such as yourbusiness.ca. Where it is registered is on your own account page; WordPress.com says its annual and multi-year plans include a free domain for the first year only, and its monthly plans include none, so if you got yours with a plan, check when it renews. The domain stays yours in a move. After you approve, SiteFree tells you the one change to make where you bought it.

A domain's DNS records are the address book that tells the internet where your website and your mail live. Cloudflare says its scan of your existing records is not guaranteed to find all of them, so you need to review your email records yourself. SiteFree checks your email settings before it switches anything.

Google and your old addresses

Each page on your current site has an address, and other sites, bookmarks and search results point at them. In a SiteFree move, every old address is redirected to its new page, so those links keep working. Nobody can promise where a page ranks afterwards, and SiteFree does not. If you do the move yourself and your addresses change, Cloudflare's redirects file holds up to 2,000 static redirects and 100 dynamic ones. On the do-it-yourself route, Cloudflare lists WordPress comments as unsupported on the copy, so check whether your existing comments show on the result before you switch.

If you would rather have it done

SiteFree sells this move; this section is the business describing its own service. It is a Canadian (Montreal) migration service, with prices in Canadian dollars. SiteFree rebuilds your site to match its design closely and hosts it free in your own Cloudflare account, with the files in your own GitHub account.

You pay once. Small covers up to 5 pages plus one blog or other section, at $99 CAD for the first 20 sites, then $360 CAD. Large covers up to 100 pages with any number of sections, at $199 CAD for the first 20, then $720 CAD. A shop, a member area or more than 100 pages gets a fixed quote.

Your private preview is ready within three to four business days of payment for WordPress. You get up to two rounds of fixes, and a full refund any time before you approve; your old site stays live until then. You keep the domain, and the site runs in accounts that are yours, so you can cancel your old platform once you are live. To see your page count and price, check your site.