What is a static website, and why is it enough for a landing page?
Read about hosting for five minutes, and you will meet the words "static site". aiput.site hosts static sites only, so here is what that means in plain terms, and why it is usually all a landing page needs.
Static and dynamic
A static website is a folder of ready files: HTML pages, styles, scripts and images. When someone opens the site, the server sends those files exactly as they are. Every visitor gets the same page.
A dynamic website builds each page on the server at the moment someone asks for it: it queries a database, checks who is logged in, and puts the page together. WordPress, online shops and anything with personal accounts work this way.
The difference is when the work happens. On a static site it was all done in advance, when the files were made — these days, often by your AI agent.
What a static site can do
More than it sounds:
- animations, sliders, tabs and galleries: JavaScript runs in the visitor's browser;
- maps, videos and booking calendars embedded from services such as Google Maps, YouTube or Calendly;
- contact forms, through a form service that receives the messages and emails them to you;
- payments, through payment links or buttons from providers such as Stripe or PayPal;
- several pages and several languages.
What it cannot do
- user accounts and logins;
- store what visitors send — orders, comments, registrations — by itself;
- show different content to different people, decided on the server;
- run PHP, Python or Node.js code on the server.
If your project needs any of these, you need a server. Our comparison of hosting options shows what that involves.
Why static is a good choice
- Speed. The files are ready and are served from data centres close to the visitor. Sites on aiput.site are served from Cloudflare's global network.
- Security. Far less to attack: no admin panel to guess a password for, no plugins to patch, no database to leak.
- No upkeep. There is no server software for you to update.
- What you checked is what visitors get. The page does not change unless you publish a new version.
Is my AI-made site static?
Almost certainly, if the agent gave you HTML, CSS and JavaScript files and an index.html that opens when you double-click it.
If instead it made a project with a package.json and talks about running npm run dev, you have a JavaScript app that has to be built first. Most React, Vue or Astro sites without a server part can be built into static files. Ask the agent to build the site and publish the resulting folder, usually called dist or build.