Static site = A site you have to pay someone to manually update
Dynamic site = A site powered by a content management system that can be managed by anybody
In early 2006 I became the new webmaster of a 10 year old static website. The clients are non profit and wanted to ensure they spent the absolute minimum on their web presence. After a year I was getting very tired of constantly having to update and change small bits of text. I managed to persuade the client that a content management system (CMS) would be far more efficient for both of us and cheaper in the long term for them.
Today I have finally made a lovely graph to show you all that it is indeed true - static sites are far more costly in the long term if you want to keep them relevant and useful.
Halfway through the upgrade to a dynamic site the client changed their mind and decided to stick with thier old static site but put the dynamic info (an events calendar) on their new CMS site. Now a few years later we can compare the cost of both sites side by side.
If I was clever with graphs and numbers I'd extrapolate the costs and show them side by side but alas I am not.
As you can see in the graph the new CMS site has a high initial setup cost then after a few adjustments starts costing nothing. Meanwhile there is a large drop in the cost of running the static site without having to pay anyone to change the static content. In fact from Oct '07 to Oct '08 i was only able to send my client one invoice!
Now my clients and their staff are realising the importance of their web presence and as you can see in the graph are requiring more and more updates to their static site which is now over 15 years old!
I hope now people are able to see using this real world example that static sites cost more in the long term. Now I'll write a blog post on all the other benefits of a dynamic site.
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