Do you need a CMS? Static site or CMS for a Hobart business
A Hobart business needs a CMS website when its own staff publish content regularly, when the site has too many pages to manage by hand, or when one detail, such as a price, must match everywhere it appears. If your developers can make the few changes a year, a static website is faster and costs less.
What a CMS is, in plain terms
A CMS, or content management system, is the admin you log into to publish and unpublish content yourself. For a Hobart business weighing up a CMS website, the real question is who will change the words and photos, your staff or your developers.
A static website keeps its content in the code. Our developers make each change and publish it, so there is no admin to learn and nothing to log into. Both kinds of site can run to plenty of pages and sections, both work down to the smallest phone, and both can carry a form to collect leads.
Three signs a CMS website earns its keep
A CMS website pays its way when at least one of these is true for your business.
- Your team publishes regularly. Menus, events, news, staff profiles or listings change every week or two, and waiting on your developers for each update would slow you down.
- There are too many pages to manage by hand. Once a site carries dozens of similar pages, such as services, locations or properties, editing each one in code turns every update into a job you pay for.
- One detail appears in many places. A price shown on the home page, a service page and a comparison table should be edited in one place. In a CMS, you change the price once and it updates everywhere it appears.
A CMS website from Binary Top also has proper SEO controls built in.
When a static website is the better buy
A static website is the better buy when your content changes a few times a year and you are happy for our developers to make those changes. Most small businesses barely touch their site from one year to the next, and an admin nobody opens adds cost and nothing else.
- Speed. A static website is the fastest thing Binary Top builds. It is hand-coded onto a global CDN and loads in well under a second. Google suggests the largest image or block of text on screen should appear within 2.5 seconds of the page starting to load, in its Core Web Vitals guidance.
- Hosting. A static site on a global CDN costs next to nothing to host.
- Changes. Each change is quoted per task at $65 an hour, so you approve a number before work starts. On a care plan, the quote itself is free.
- Nothing to learn. Nobody on your team has to learn an admin, keep a login or remember how the editor works between updates.
The $65 rate is published in the FAQ on the home page.
Static website vs CMS website, side by side
The table compares the two on the things that decide the choice. The prices are Binary Top's published starting prices, and each one is a build floor before hosting, domains and later changes.
| What matters | Static website | CMS website |
|---|---|---|
| Who edits the content | Our developers, when you ask | Your team, in the admin |
| Starting price | From $800 | From $2,500 |
| A content change | Quoted per task at $65 an hour | Free when your team makes it; larger work quoted per task at $65 an hour |
| Speed | The fastest thing we build, loading in well under a second | Hand-coded front end, so the site stays quick |
| Hosting | Costs next to nothing on a global CDN | Runs on a server, with a monthly cost that grows with the site, quoted up front |
| Best for | Brochure sites, launches and businesses whose details rarely change | Teams that publish often, large sites and content that repeats across pages |
Treat the two columns as reference points. Many jobs land somewhere between them, and the quote follows your brief. Current prices live on the home page, and the services page covers websites, rebuilds and care plans.
Real builds around Hobart: who edits what
Westbrook Residence is a static website for 17 architecturally designed waterfront townhouses at Bellerive Bluff. The property developer handed over a brochure PDF, and our developers rebuilt it as a fast, interactive static site that buyers can find on search. The townhouses don't change from week to week, so the content lives in the code.
17 waterfront townhouses · Read the Westbrook Residence case study
@Rice is a beachside restaurant in Lauderdale, built as a CMS website on Craft CMS. A full-bleed hero video sells the water view over the Derwent. The restaurant's staff update the menu, hours and location for dine-in and takeaway themselves in the CMS. Those are the parts of a restaurant site that change most often.
1.1k search clicks · 3 months · Read the @Rice case study
Dave's Noodles, a Hobart noodle bar with seven branches from Kingston to Burnie, shows owner editing at a larger scale. The owners manage the menu and content themselves in Craft CMS, and each dish's availability is tracked per branch. Opening hours are edited somewhere else entirely. The site reads them from each branch's Google Business Profile, so the owners update Google once and the website follows.
That link to Google is what makes Dave's Noodles an integrated build, the step above a CMS website. Once you know who edits, the next question is whether any of the content already lives in another system.
Starting static and moving to a CMS later
Starting with a static website is a sound choice when you are unsure how often you will publish. These are the signs it is time to move:
- You send changes to your developers every week.
- The same detail is out of date on some pages and right on others.
- Staff want to publish news, events or menus without waiting on anyone.
Moving a static site's content into a CMS is a rebuild, scoped and quoted as a fixed price before work starts. For the full cost picture, including what a site costs to run after launch, read how much a website costs in Hobart.
Where Binary Top fits
Binary Top builds both: hand-coded static websites, and CMS websites on Craft CMS hosted on AWS behind a hand-coded front end. The senior developers who scope your site are the ones who write its code, and every quote is fixed before work starts. If you are weighing the two, tell us who will edit your site and we'll tell you which fits.
- Google Search Central: Understanding Core Web Vitals and Google search results, checked October 2026
- web.dev: Largest Contentful Paint (LCP), checked October 2026
Common questions
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