In reply to Brin Wilson.

It doesn't have to be either-or. There have been extensible static+dynamic CMS platforms for at least 15-16 years. Statamic is an interesting newer example with a commercial license model similar to Expression Engine. Squarespace just bought Brace.io, a CMS as a service that let you separate and dynamically edit presentation and content served from DropBox or AWS. This sounds like an aquihire, but Squarespace may have seen a future threat and intends to use some of Brace's technology for developers. There are a few other, less funded services that work like Brace did. It seems like a promising model.

I don't know for sure, but my guess is that if you looked at small to mid-sized colleges, a large and happy chunk of that market has been served by some type of static+dynamic push CMS since the mid-late 1990s. Their costs can be as low as $25-30k to deploy with $15-30k in annual costs thereafter. Anything built like WP, Drupal, etc. will have trouble competing with the stability, performance and costs that market is accustomed to. That's why Pantheon came to be -- you absolutely need a major assist on the hosting side to cope with the performance hurdles. Static doesn't have that problem. It will always cost less in money, time, security, and risk management. If there is ever serious static FOSS project that is accessible to a mass market as WP is, it ought to be huge.