WordPress/Cloudways vs Cloudflare Pages

When someone visits a WordPress page, here's what happens behind the scenes:

Every page request triggers PHP code execution and database queries. Even with caching (like Cloudflare APO), the first request and any uncached page goes through this entire chain. Your server is a single DigitalOcean droplet in New York City. A visitor from Tokyo, London, or Sydney travels all the way to NYC and back.

When someone visits a Cloudflare Pages site, here's what happens:

There is no server. No PHP. No database query. The HTML files are pre-built and distributed to 330+ data centers worldwide. A visitor in Tokyo gets served from Tokyo. A visitor in London gets served from London. The page is already built and waiting.

Performance comes down to two things: how far the data travels and how much work the server does.

Here's what you can observe with your own properties:

You're paying $5/month for Cloudflare APO (Automatic Platform Optimization) on your WordPress sites. APO caches WordPress pages at Cloudflare's edge... essentially making WordPress behave more like a static site.

Here's the irony: APO exists specifically to make WordPress perform more like Cloudflare Pages already performs natively. You're paying $60/year to make WordPress do what Cloudflare Pages does for free.

APO helps, but it's not perfect. Cache misses still hit your origin server. Logged-in users bypass the cache entirely. And you're still maintaining WordPress underneath.

The $28/month Cloudways bill covers a 2GB DigitalOcean server running in New York City. That single machine handles PHP execution, MySQL databases, file storage, email routing, and serves all five of your WordPress sites.

With Cloudflare Pages, all of that becomes irrelevant. There's no server to pay for because the files are served directly from Cloudflare's global network. No PHP means no server processing. No MySQL means no database to manage. The entire hosting layer disappears.

The $5/month Cloudflare APO is trying to solve a problem that only exists because WordPress is dynamic. On Cloudflare Pages, every page is already static and edge-cached by default. There's nothing to optimize.

WordPress earned its 43% market share for real reasons. Here's what it does well, and how each capability can be replicated on Cloudflare if needed.

These aren't marginal improvements. In several categories, Cloudflare Pages is in a completely different league.

Already covered in the Performance tab, but the summary: Cloudflare Pages serves from 330+ edge locations worldwide. Your WordPress server is one machine in New York. The physics alone make Cloudflare 2-5x faster for most visitors.

With WordPress, even with Cloudflare APO caching, every cache miss, every logged-in user, every uncached query string hits your origin server. On Cloudflare Pages, there is no origin server to hit. The edge IS the server.

This is the single biggest differentiator and it's not close.

WordPress requires constant attention:

• WordPress core updates (monthly)
• Plugin updates (weekly, and they can break things)
• Theme updates
• PHP version upgrades (Cloudways pushes these periodically)
• Server OS patches
• MySQL optimization and cleanup
• SSL certificate renewals (usually automatic but can fail)
• Backup verification
• Security scanning

Cloudflare Pages maintenance: none. HTML files don't need patching. There's no server to update. No database to optimize. No plugins to keep current. No PHP version to worry about. Deploy and forget.

Your Cloudways server is a 2GB RAM machine. If all five WordPress sites get traffic simultaneously, they're competing for the same resources. A traffic spike on one site can slow down all five.

Cloudflare Pages runs on one of the largest networks in the world. There's no concept of "server capacity." Whether you get 100 visitors or 100,000 visitors, every single one gets the same sub-second response from their nearest edge location. No degradation. No 503 errors. No emergency server upgrades.

Cloudflare's network uptime: 99.99%+. That's less than 53 minutes of downtime per year. Individual servers (like your Cloudways droplet) typically guarantee 99.9% (8.7 hours/year) and real-world downtime is often higher.

Covered in detail on the Cost tab, but the headline: $396+/year vs. $0/year. Cloudflare Pages free tier includes unlimited sites, unlimited bandwidth, unlimited requests, and 500 deployments per month. You could run 50 sites for free.

Blogging is one of the top reasons people think they need WordPress. But blogs are just HTML pages with text, images, and dates. Here are three ways to run a blog on Cloudflare Pages, ranked by how much control vs. convenience you want.

How it works: You tell Sterling "write a blog post about X" or Sterling drafts posts as part of your content calendar. Sterling writes the HTML, adds it to the blog index, and deploys to Cloudflare Pages. Done in minutes.

How it works: A headless CMS gives you a web-based writing interface (like WordPress's editor) where you or team members can write and schedule posts. The CMS stores the content. When you publish, it triggers a build that pulls the content and deploys updated static pages to Cloudflare Pages.

You get a visual editor AND the speed/security of static hosting. Best of both worlds.

How it works: Write blog posts as simple Markdown files (.md). A static site generator converts them into beautiful HTML pages. Push to Git, Cloudflare Pages auto-builds and deploys.

This is how Cloudflare runs their own blog (Hugo). Hundreds of developer blogs and company sites use this pattern.

Here's a site-by-site analysis of each WordPress property on your Cloudways server, with a recommendation for each.

Being straightforward about the risks and downsides:

• SEO transition: Proper 301 redirects are critical. All existing URLs must redirect to their new locations. Sterling handles this with Cloudflare redirect rules (no server needed). Done correctly, Google sees a seamless transition with no ranking impact.
• Elementor designs: Current page designs built in Elementor would need to be rebuilt as HTML/CSS. Sterling does this, but it's the bulk of the migration work. Expect 2-4 hours per site for a faithful recreation.
• Forms: Any contact forms currently using WordPress plugins (Gravity Forms, Contact Form 7) need replacement. Workers + D1, or a service like Formspree, handles this easily.
• Third-party integrations: Check if any WordPress plugins are providing integrations (analytics, CRM, email marketing) that would need alternative implementation.
• DNS changes: Minimal. Your domains already use Cloudflare DNS. You'd just change where the domain points (from Cloudways IP to Cloudflare Pages).

The perception that "real websites use WordPress" is outdated. The trend across the industry is moving away from traditional CMS platforms toward static/edge-hosted architectures. Here's who's already there.

WordPress still powers approximately 43% of all websites. But the trend line tells a different story:

• New website creation has been shifting toward static/edge platforms since 2020
• Enterprise and mid-market companies are leading the migration away from WordPress. The security and performance advantages are too significant to ignore at scale.
• The JAMstack ecosystem (JavaScript, APIs, Markup) grew from a niche developer pattern to a mainstream architecture powering major brands
• Headless CMS adoption is growing 30%+ year-over-year, decoupling content editing from the hosting layer
• WordPress's own direction (Gutenberg, full site editing) acknowledges that the old model needs modernization

WordPress isn't dying. But for informational and marketing sites, the industry has found a better architecture. The companies above didn't choose static hosting because it was cheaper (though it is). They chose it because it's faster, more secure, and easier to maintain.

To be fair, WordPress still dominates specific categories where its ecosystem is hard to replace:

• E-commerce (WooCommerce powers 28% of all online stores)
• Membership sites (MemberPress, Restrict Content Pro)
• Online courses / LMS (LearnDash, Tutor LMS)
• Multi-author publications with complex editorial workflows
• Sites managed by non-technical teams who need a visual editor and can't ask an AI to deploy changes

None of your five WordPress sites fall into these categories.

Your instinct is right. You've been watching your Cloudflare Pages sites (Lanewise, CapCon, Command Center, Stevens Family Planner) load instantly, cost nothing, and require zero maintenance... while your WordPress sites on Cloudways cost $396/year, load slower, need constant updates, and carry a security surface area you don't need.

All five of your WordPress sites are informational/marketing properties. They show content, images, and blog posts. They don't run e-commerce. They don't have user accounts. They don't need WordPress's plugin ecosystem. They need fast, secure, reliable web hosting. That's exactly what Cloudflare Pages provides, for free.

1. Phase 1: Migrate debsswimschool.com (simplest site, lowest risk, proves the pattern)
2. Phase 2: Migrate dugoutready.com marketing pages (app is already on Cloudflare, unifies the stack)
3. Phase 3: Migrate automatedelegate.com (book launch site, important to have fast before August 30 launch)
4. Phase 4: Migrate bradstevenstraining.com (largest site with most blog content, but straightforward)
5. Phase 5: Migrate 1on1connections.com (marketing site portion)
6. Phase 6: Cancel Cloudways server + Cloudflare APO (after all sites verified and running on Cloudflare Pages)

Each migration is a few hours of Sterling work. The entire migration could be complete within a week of dedicated effort, or spread across a few weeks alongside other work.

If you ever need non-technical team members (like Deb for her swim school, or a content team for BST) to update website content without going through Sterling, you'll want a headless CMS layer. That's a 30-minute Sterling setup (Sanity or Storyblok, free tier). It gives them a WordPress-like editing experience while keeping all the benefits of Cloudflare Pages hosting.

But that's a "when you need it" addition, not a reason to keep paying for WordPress now.