Debating between WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress or a website builder? Read our WordPress.com review to decide if it’s the right spot for your WordPress site (or website in general).
With its pricing changes in April 2022, WordPress.com has never been cheaper to create a fully-functioning WordPress site where you can install your own themes and plugins.
At $15 per month, it’s almost as affordable as cheap WordPress hosting, especially if you only have a single site.
WordPress.com also has a free plan that can work for hobby sites, though we don’t recommend the free plan for any serious type of site.
But at the same time, there are still some cons to using WordPress.com, so it’s not like it’s a no-brainer decision.
In our detailed WordPress.com review, you’ll learn all about the platform so that you can decide if it’s right for you.
📚 Here’s everything that we’ll cover:
Note – we’re going to mainly focus on the WordPress.com Pro plan in our WordPress.com review. However, we will still touch on the Free plan.
🤔 WordPress.com Review: What Does It Do?
At a high level, WordPress.com offers a simpler way to create a website using WordPress.
Not sure what WordPress is? Read our “what is WordPress” introduction.
Instead of needing to purchase your own web hosting like you would with self-hosted WordPress/WordPress.org, you can just register for a WordPress.com account.
You never need to worry about hosting, security, maintenance, and so on because WordPress.com handles all of that for you.
If you want a deeper look at the differences, you can check out our full WordPress.com vs WordPress.org comparison.
We’ll talk about pricing later on, but the basic idea is that WordPress.com offers two levels of “access” to WordPress:
- Free plan – this lets you create a simple website/blog for free but does not give you full access to the WordPress software. Most notably, you cannot install your own plugins or themes, which give you more control over your site’s design and functionality and are one of the best parts about WordPress.
- Pro plan – this plan gives you access to almost everything you’d get with a self-hosted WordPress site, including the ability to install your own plugins and themes.
Again – if you pay for the WordPress.com Pro plan, it’s almost exactly the same as using self-hosted WordPress, but still with a few limitations on flexibility that we’ll discuss below.
We’ll take a deeper look at how all of this works in the hands-on section. But first, let’s go over where WordPress.com fits in terms of the different ways to build a website.
⚙️ What Are Your Other Options for Building a Website?
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This article was written by Colin Newcomer and originally published on WPKube.