If you’re looking for real-world static website examples to inspire your own, this guide is here to help.
Static websites are popular because of their speed, security, and low maintenance. It’s no surprise that you’re looking to create one, but you might not know where to start.
You could be looking for web design inspiration or wondering if a static site suits you and your business. Regardless, we’re here to help. We’ll explore 10 great examples of static websites to inspire you and show you how to set up yours.
Let’s break down what we’ll cover:
- What a static website is and why they’re popular.
- How to create a static website using Simply Static.
- 10 great static website examples built with WordPress and Simply Static to inspire you.
Let’s begin by understanding what a static website is.
What is a static website?
A static website is a type of website with fixed content. Its files are pre-built and stored on a server. When a user clicks to view the website, the files are retrieved and displayed on their browser as they are (the server doesn’t alter the files).
Because of this, every user who accesses a static website will see the same content. Static websites rely on front-end technologies like HTMLHyperText Markup Language. It’s the standard language for creating web pages., CSSCascading Style Sheet. It’s a language used for describing the look and formatting of a document written in HTML., and JavaScriptA programming language used in web development to create interactive elements on a webpage., but not entirely. Sometimes, they use APIs and frameworks to add some dynamic functionality.
These websites are suitable for landing pages, blogs, portfolio websites, and more. But as we’ll see later in this guide, they’re also good for other purposes.
Static vs dynamic websites
Dynamic websites display different content to different site visitors. What they see depends on their location, time of day, preferences, etc. So, how do dynamic websites achieve this?
They don’t store each web page as its own HTML file. Instead, the web server builds web pages ‘on the fly.’ When a user clicks to view a web page, the server calls on the database to create the page according to the factors we mentioned above.
Once this is done, the web page is sent to the user’s browser. Most of the work happens in the backend, so dynamic websites rely on server-side scripting languages like PHPA widely-used programming language especially suited for web development..
Now, let’s look at why static sites are becoming more popular.
Why static sites are becoming more popular
Earlier, we touched on how static websites are popular today. So, let’s dive a little deeper into why that is.
Static websites solve performance and security concerns
Static websites are faster than dynamic sites on the user’s end. This is because static web pages are pre-built and serve as soon as a user clicks to view them. No roundtrips to the database or server-side scripting is needed.
Site speed is key to a positive user experience. Google reports that most users will leave your website if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. If you’re in ecommerce 47% of consumers is the reported number.
As a result, having a website with fast load times is a major plus for your users. Fast-loading websites are also favored in search engine rankings, making static sites good for SEO.
How are static websites more secure?
These types of websites don’t work with databases, reducing the attack avenues for hackers. Without a database, cybercriminals can’t attack you with things like SQL injection.
Statista reports that SQL injection is the main source of critical vulnerabilities in web applications, and it accounts for 23% of the attacks web apps receive.
Static sites are easier to maintain
Static websites are easier to maintain because they have fewer moving parts. First, you won’t be burdened with regular database backups and updates since these websites don’t use a database. In addition, they’re easier to host.
You can host them on various web hosting platforms, including CDNs, without having to do complex server configurations. Here is an example on how to host your Static WordPress website on BunnyCDNBunnyCDN is a service that helps your website load faster by storing copies of your site’s files in multiple locations.:
It is easy to create/convert to a static website
A static website is the easiest kind of website to create or convert to. With some knowledge of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, you can create one from scratch. Or, if you have more knowledge you can use advanced static site generators like as Hugo and Jekyll.
However, if you want an easier, faster, and code-free route, WordPress and Simply Static have got you covered. With that in mind, let’s look at creating a static website with WordPress and the WordPress pluginA piece of software that adds specific features to WordPress. Simply Static.
How to create a static website
Building a static website no longer requires coding. If you’ve built your website on WordPress, you can create a static website quickly and easily with the WordPress static site generator plugin Simply Static.
Using WordPress + Simply Static
WordPress websites are dynamic by default. So, to create a static website without writing any code, you’ll need to set up your WordPress website first and then make it static using Simply Static.
Simply Static allows you to convert your dynamic WordPress site to a static site. All you have to do is adjust a few settings, and Simply Static will do the heavy lifting for you. In a few minutes, you’ll have static copies of your website, ready for exportThe process of saving the files and data from your WordPress site to create a static site..
You can deploy them anywhere, including Amazon S3, GitHub PagesA hosting service from GitHub for publishing static websites directly from a GitHub repository., or NetlifyA platform for automating web projects that provides hosting and serverless backend services for web applications and st…. To further boost site speed, you can deploy them on content delivery networks (CDNs) like BunnyCDN.
Apart from being a user-friendly option, Simply Static is the best static site generator for WordPress.
You’ll retain your WordPress website’s design
Converting your WordPress website to a static site doesn’t remove anything from its design. It will remain as elegant as you designed it in the first place. How you created your headers, footers, layouts, and color schemes will remain intact.
You can still use dynamic content on your static site
Just because your website is static, it doesn’t mean that it has to lose all interactivity. With Simply Static, you can still use dynamic features such as forms, search, and comments. This plugin has different ways of handling all of these features so that you don’t lose any functionality you might need.
Easy site updates
Static sites are often criticized for being difficult to update. Luckily, Simply Static makes this easy for you. You can update single pages or posts or multiple pages at once in a few simple steps.
Now that we know what Simply Static brings, let’s see how you can use it to make your WordPress website static. After that, we’ll look at 10 static website examples that can inspire you as you create your own.
How to create a static website with WordPress and Simply Static
First things first, you’ll create your WordPress website. You can use a website builder and theme of your choosing – we recommend Astra because it’s lightweight. Once this is done, install Simply Static. You can do this the standard way from the Plugins > Add New section on your WordPress dashboard.
- Search for ‘Simply Static’ and click Install Now, then Activate. Once this is done, you’ll have installed the free version of Simply Static.
- To install the Pro version, purchase it from the Simply Static website: simplystatic.com. Once the purchase is complete, you’ll download the plugin in a .zip.
- Upload this file under the Upload Plugin section and activate it. That’s it.
With Simply Static installed, you can now convert your WordPress website to a static site.
Convert your WordPress website to a static site
Before you generate static copies of your site, click the Deploy tab and select your deploymentThe act of pushing the static files generated by Simply Static to a live environment where users can access them. option. Next, click on Generate to generate your static site.
This is a simple, takeaway-focused version of the process. Our How to Build a Static Site (The Easy Way) guide provides a detailed walkthrough.
A lot goes into creating an exceptional static website, and creating one from scratch can be difficult. A great way to do this is to see what has worked for others and use it to inspire your design. That said, let’s look at 10 static website examples you can draw inspiration from.
Make your website even faster with Simply Static Pro
10 static website examples to use as inspiration for yours
In this section, we’ll look at real-world examples of static websites. These will show you how different industries and businesses benefit from static websites built with Simply Static.
1. Socialize Video
Socialize Video offers video production services for marketing to small businesses. Businesses looking to use video marketing to boost customer engagement and retention, improve SEO rankings and social media activity, etc., can reach out to them.
Together, you can develop a video marketing strategy that suits your target audience and brand. In addition to video marketing solutions, they offer courses on video marketing, which you can register for and complete.
What type of website is Socialize video?
Socialize Video runs a standard multi-page business website. The website has a landing page, blog, and other pages including:
- Case studies page.
- Team page.
- Courses page.
Which parts of the website are static?
The entire website is static and hosted on BunnyCDN. However, it has dynamic features like forms for the sign-up and login functionalities and searches for their blog.
The way they handle this is by exporting a new page (with the search results for the blog, for example) when you use these features. Because the website’s forms are pretty basic, it uses TidyCal for scheduling meetings with the Socialize Video team.
This is a scheduling landing page in WordPress embedded via Simply Static as an iFrame.
Why a static website works for them
As a video marketing solutions provider, Socialize Video has many videos on its website. These videos are lengthy and high-quality, which could easily cause the website to slow down.
Their main challenge was website performance. Going static eliminated the extra database calls that would slow down the website, which was almost the only way to achieve excellent performance without lowering video quality.
2. UOC (Open University of Catalonia)
As the name suggests, UOC is a university website for students who want to study online. It offers programs for undergraduate and postgraduate degrees, subjects to study freely, and more.
It has a somewhat unique educational model. Students pick their learning hours but still receive assistance from teachers and tutors. This makes it ideal for students who want to learn throughout their lives.
What type of website is UOC?
This is an institutional website where students can sign up for courses and learn. As such, it has an archive of research publications and a knowledge base. It offers learning programs internationally, so it’s multilingual.
The WordPress plugin WPML handles translating the website into multiple languages, including Catalan, Italian, and English.
Which parts of the website are static?
Like Socialize Video, the entire website is static with some dynamic functionality in search. To handle the search, the website loads a new static HTML file containing search results.
A static website works for UOC because the knowledge base and research archives don’t need regular updates.
How UOC benefits from Simply Static
First, Simply Static makes this website static. But that’s not all it does. UOC uses Simply Static’s secure file transfer protocol (SFTPSecure File Transfer Protocol. A secure method of transferring files between a local system and a remote server.) integrationThe act of combining different systems, software, or functionalities to work together as a unified whole. to deploy to another university’s IT department server.
We’ve also helped them build some custom workflows based on our ‘Builds’ feature to achieve things like:
- Update the ‘News’ section on the homepage every 24 hours.
- Update the calendar page every day at 8 AM.
- Batch-uploading PDF files to the static site every week.
3. Gray V
Gray V is a sound design agency that creates soundtracks for hospitality spaces like hotels and resorts. This agency works with its hospitality clients to design playlists that match their identity and how they want customers to experience their brands.
Gray V creates playlists to play for an entire day and night to create a great atmosphere in these establishments. They mix different artists, tempos, and genres to match the time of day.
What type of website does Gray V run?
Gray V has a not-so-standard business website. We label it as ‘not so standard’ because it is extremely simple. The landing page doesn’t have much writing but has many high-quality images, which are on the ‘Creative Studio’ and ‘Background Music’ pages.
Is it entirely static?
The website is mostly static except for the client login page. When you click this page, you will be redirected to a new page (isolated from Gray V’s main website pages). The website uses a separate client portal for authentication and user interactions.
Why a static website
Gray V has numerous high-quality images on the homepage. Like Socialize Video, making the Gray V static ensures that they don’t have to compromise the quality of their images.
The website’s main purpose is for clients to contact Gray V. There are no other user interactions needed.
4. Showpad
Showpad offers a proprietary sales enablement solution, Showpad eOS. This solution provides a platform where sales and marketing teams come together to empower sellers with all they need to engage buyers and boost revenue.
Marketers create and publish useful content on this platform. Sellers can easily access useful information about products or services when they need it, which also helps them onboard easily.
What type of website does Showpad run?
Showpad runs a SaaS website that showcases the services contained in the Showpad eOS platform and others. Potential customers can view this information, along with pricing, customer success stories, and other resources such as the help center.
Which parts of the site are static?
Showpad is Simply Static’s enterprise customer. In other words, they use Simply Static for their entire website, which is hosted on AWS S3Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a cloud computing platform that offers various services, including storage solutions like S… using the AWS S3-Simply Static integration.
On top of that, it uses CookieYes, a plugin compatible with Simply Static, to stay GDPR compliant.
Why a static website works for Showpad
In an increasingly competitive industry (SaaS), Showpad enjoys the benefits of fast loading times. Its website is fast enough to retain users as soon as they visit the landing page.
5. ESR Group
The ESR Group, or simply ESR, is a leading real estate manager in the Asian Pacific region. It specializes in investing in, managing, and developing logistics properties, including warehouses and distribution centers. Recently, it has expanded to include data centers.
ESR also manages funds and investment vehicles related to properties.
The type of website ESR has
ESR’s website is a standard business website. The website is multi-lingual since ESR works across different countries. But, there is a separate version of the website for each language.
Is the website entirely static?
ESR’s website is mostly static, with a few dynamic functionalities. It uses forms to allow users to sign up for its newsletters. An embedded page handles these signups.
This website has been built with Elementor and converted to a static site with Simply Static. The resulting static files run on BunnyCDN.
Why a static website works for them
This website is heavy on animations – almost every section of every page has a couple of animations. It also uses high-quality videos on all landing pages (across different languages). The level of performance these websites have can almost only be achieved by going static.
Otherwise, this bulky content would slow down the websites.
6. TabTree Software Solutions
TabTree offers several software solutions for businesses, such as:
- A CRM solution. To help businesses manage customers from when they’re leads to when they become loyal to a business. It has different CRM solutions for different industries, for instance, real estate, stock brokers, etc.
- Delegate. A task management app to keep teams productive.
They also develop custom software to address unique business challenges.
What type of website TabTree runs
TabTree is a SaaS business website with the standard About Us, Products, and Contact Us pages. Thanks to Simply Static, the entire website is static. TabTree uses Simply Static’s GitHubA web-based platform for version control and collaboration, allowing multiple people to work on projects at once. integration to publish the website on CloudflareA company that provides services like security and website speed improvement. It acts as a protective layer between the … pages.
The website has some dynamic functionality because it uses forms to allow potential customers to contact them. For this, TabTree integrates Simply Static’s contact forms with Contact Form 7.
Why a static website works for TabTree
SaaS websites are a prime target for hackers. The Security Magazine reports that 45% of tech leaders have experienced a SaaS cybersecurity incident.
TabTree is able to enjoy better security by going static. They don’t use a database which means fewer attack surfaces for hackers to exploit.
7. ACH.COM
ACH.COM provides ACH (automated clearing house) payment processing services for banks, credit unions, and organizations in Canada and the US. For context, ACH refers to electronic money transfers between banks and credit unions across a network called the ACH.
What type of website is ACH.COM?
ACH.COM is a SaaS website. Unlike the other SaaS websites we’ve covered, it is a single-page web application. This means the About Us, How it Works, and Contact Us sections are all on the same page.
Which parts of the website are static?
They use Simply Static for their entire website. They use forms to collect contact information from potential clients, and they integrate Simply Static’s form functionality with Gravity Forms.
The website is deployed to a custom SFTP server using an integration provided by Simply Static.
Why it works for them?
ACH.COM is big on security. New site visitors have to pass through a Cloudflare human verification to protect the website against bots. Having a static website boosts their security further by protecting them from database-oriented attacks. This is especially important since they handle finances.
8. ArtCritic
This is an art magazine that covers stories from independent artists worldwide. It features artwork from different artists and offers critical insight into each piece.
ArtCritic is an entirely static, multilingual blog website with some interesting features, such as infinite scrolling without AjaxA technique for updating parts of a web page without refreshing the whole page. It allows for faster and more interactiv…. This feature seems custom-coded, and readers can scroll through its latest articles page infinitely.
Also, the website uses Simply Static’s search integration. To handle search, ArtCritic has a dedicated subpage.
Why a static website works for ArtCritic
ArtCritic’s website is relatively low-maintenance. Having a highly interactive website for this type of blog would be overkill. A static website serves all their needs – users only need to access the website and read their pieces.
Also, a static site adds better performance and security to ArtCritic.
9. Dash
Dash is mainly a mobile payment provider through its proprietary payments provider, Dash Wallet. It is a cost-friendly solution for making payments across different countries.
Dash offers financial services, such as crypto trading and loan services, to individuals and institutions.
What type of website is it?
Dash.org is a multilingual business website available in up to 21 languages. The website is mostly static, and Simply Static is responsible for the static parts. It does have non-static areas like its community forum.
Dash’s utilization of Simply Static doesn’t stop at making the website static. It also uses:
- The GitHub integration and hosts the website on Cloudflare.
- Optimization settings – For instance, hiding WordPress, minificationThe process of removing unnecessary characters from code files to make them smaller and improve website speed. of CSS and JavaScript files, etc.
Why a static website works for Dash
Security is key to all payment and financial services providers. Dash, being one of them, enjoys better security by making their website static. There isn’t a database that hackers can exploit and potentially gain access to customer wallets.
10. Mailtrap
Mailtrap is an email delivery platform for businesses that send thousands to millions of emails monthly. It allows them to test emails for spam, broken links, missing content, and other issues and validate them in bulk.
As a service, Mailtrap integrates with business apps (for example, a delivery app), allowing businesses to send emails directly from their apps. It also provides key email metrics, for example, click-through rates, so that businesses stay on top of their email deliveries.
What type of website does Mailtrap run?
Mailtrap’s SaaS website showcases the services its email delivery platform offers and how customers can start using it. The website is entirely static and multilingual – it is available in nine languages.
What’s interesting is that even their ecommerce solution is running on a static website.
Why a static website works for them
The email delivery space is quite saturated, with big players such as MailChimp, Postmark, and Amazon SES dominating the market. Mailtrap’s static site ensures it is always fast, giving it a chance of having a high SEO ranking.
Emails are a prime target for cyberattacks, with over 3.4 billion phishing emails being sent daily. A static site gives Mailtrap an extra layer of protection.
There we have it! 10 great examples of static websites and how they benefit from being static. As you can see, static sites aren’t limited to brochure websites alone. You can use them for various use cases, including but not limited to what we’ve covered here.
Get inspired by these static website examples
Static websites offer several benefits, such as speed, security, and low maintenance, making them ideal for various use cases. In this guide, we’ve covered 10 of the best static website examples and how they benefit from being static.
We hope you can use this as inspiration for your next static website project. Once you have enough inspiration, use Simply Static to convert your dynamic WordPress site to a static site.
You’ll be able to do this quickly and easily and enjoy the benefits we’ve covered in this guide.
