SiteGround and Bluehost users face rising costs, but the real story lies in migrating from WordPress to Yapress—a markdown-first platform built with Next.js. The author, using Claude and Gemini for coding, abandoned shared hosting after 99.9% uptime promises faltered, with Bluehost delivering 43 minutes of monthly downtime. Technical friction, like buggy caching layers and opaque support, eroded trust.

WordPress' archive limitations—poor search, rigid linking, and static inspection barriers—pushed the switch. Yapress now hosts a static site with Git versioning, local search, and intentional taxonomies, prioritizing data control over WordPress' dynamic convenience. Comments were dropped, but a subscription plugin replaced them.

The move cost time: debugging, script-writing, and validation. Trade-offs included losing admin interfaces but gaining ownership. Next.js deployment familiarity trumped optimization gains. The conclusion? Platforms must offer undeniable value; when friction outweighs benefits, rolling your own becomes justified.