Breakdance + Sevalla (formerly Kinsta): Deploy a Fast Static WordPress Site

Static sites are faster to load, have zero attack surface for WordPress exploits, and cost almost nothing to host. The tradeoff is that you lose dynamic features, which makes this approach ideal for presentation sites, portfolios, and landing pages that don’t need logins or live data.

Update (February 2026): Kinsta moved its static site hosting to a separate platform called Sevalla as of February 2, 2026. Your existing data, settings, and pricing carry over. You can log in to Sevalla with your MyKinsta credentials. The free tier and workflow are the same, just on a different dashboard.

This tutorial covers converting a Breakdance-built WordPress site into a static site and deploying it on Sevalla’s free static hosting tier.

Why go static?

Try Breakdance

A standard WordPress site needs PHP, a database, and server processes running constantly. A static site is just HTML, CSS, and JavaScript files served from a CDN. Benefits:

• Much faster page loads (no database queries on each request)
• No WordPress vulnerabilities to patch
• Sevalla’s static hosting is free for basic usage (up to 100 sites, 600 build minutes/month, 100 GB bandwidth)
• No server maintenance

This works best for sites that don’t change often — company pages, portfolios, documentation.

What you need

• A WordPress site built with Breakdance (or any builder)
• A Sevalla account (you can use your existing MyKinsta credentials)
• A GitHub/GitLab/Bitbucket repository for deployment
• The Simply Static plugin

Steps

1. Optimize WordPress for static export

Breakdance already strips out a lot of bloat by default. Go to Settings → Performance inside Breakdance and disable Gutenberg editor, oEmbeds, and any features you don’t use. Fewer assets = smaller static output.

2. Configure Simply Static

Install the Simply Static plugin. Configure it to:

• Output to a local directory or ZIP
• Set the destination URL to your Sevalla static site URL
• Exclude anything dynamic (admin URLs, comment endpoints)

3. Generate the static files

Hit Generate in Simply Static. For a small site this finishes in seconds — even a medium-sized site with 50–100 pages takes under a minute.

4. Push to your repository

git add .
git commit -m "static content update"
git push --force -u origin main

Connect the repository to Sevalla Static Site Hosting. Sevalla will auto-deploy on every push to the branch you specify.

5. Add your domain

In Sevalla, go to your static site and add a custom domain. Verify domain ownership, then add a CNAME record in your DNS pointing to Sevalla’s edge (powered by Cloudflare’s 260+ location CDN).

6. Handle forms

Breakdance’s built-in form builder won’t work on a static site — there’s no PHP to process submissions. Use an external form service instead. AIDAForm has a free tier and generates embed code you drop straight into Breakdance. Formspree and Netlify Forms also have free tiers that work well.

Result

The exported static site looks identical to the WordPress original — including Breakdance animations and dynamic sections that are JavaScript-driven. Page speed is noticeably better since there’s no server processing per request.

For small presentation sites this setup is close to free: WordPress runs locally or on a cheap VPS just for authoring, and the public-facing site lives on Sevalla’s CDN. If you exceed the free tier limits, overages are $0.05/min for builds and $0.10/GB for bandwidth, which is still cheap for most sites.