I've been using Wordpress for my sites since 2005 and while I've enjoyed the platform the constant updates, security updates, and extra features that I don't use have made me look for other options. Recently I've been experimenting with two different ways to build affiliate sites using static site compilers and hosting on SSD-based VPS on DigitalOcean. The first sites I built were based on Jekyll which is a static site compiler written in Ruby. It's pretty easy to configure and you can write your reviews using Markdown. I have it setup so that my entire site lives in a git repository on Bitbucket. When I want to write a new review or informational article I just write a markdown doc and then commit it into git. When I push to Bitbucket I have a post-commit hook that runs the Jekyll compiler and outputs a complete static site into the _sites directory and is ready for upload. I also have a script that can automatically deploy the new version to my hosting. Jekyll is free and well-documented. I created a theme that I now use as a baseline for all of my new sites and then I just customize the CSS and header image. The second tool I've been using is called Hammer and only runs on Mac OSX. It' $23 on the AppStore but allows you to easily take advantage of their automatic page reloading which is helpful during development, it has some good starter themes that are responsive and easy to customize, you can easily get started with SASS, and the interface is easy to use. The main drawback is that you can't use conditionals in your pages like you can in Jekyll so for sites that have dynamic sidebars and such I would recommend Jekyll. Overall the main benefits of using either of these systems or even another tool like Middleman is that with static sites you can host them very cheaply and with excellent performance on a $5 DigitalOcean droplet with an SSD. You can fit more sites onto one server than you can with shared hosting and it's easy to use some automation. It's also quite nice having the ability to treat your affiliate sites as a simple git repo and just push content into it and have automated deployments. Site maintenance is simpler and you don't have to worry about databases, PHP, and security vulnerabilities. I highly recommend giving it a shot!