Struggling to understand the difference between WordPress.com vs WordPress.org and which one is the best place to make your WordPress site?
This has long been one of the most confusing things for WordPress newbies. Trust me – you are not alone.
To aggravate the issue even more, the differences between WordPress.org vs WordPress.com have been blurring and slimming as time goes on, so the two are more similar than ever.
But at the same time, there are still some very important differences between WordPress.com vs WordPress.org that might make one option better than the other for your specific situation.
In this post, I’m going to try to help you understand the meaningful differences between them. Then, I’ll help you pick the right option for your website in 2022 and beyond.
To accomplish that, I’m going to cover the following information for both platforms:
That’s a lot of ground to cover, so let’s dig in!
WordPress.com vs WordPress.org: Basic Introductions
Here’s the high-level difference between WordPress.com vs WordPress.org:
- WordPress.org is the non-profit home of the free, open-source WordPress software. Anyone can download this software for free and use it to make a website. WordPress.org is administered by the non-profit WordPress Foundation.
- WordPress.com is a for-profit business that gives you one way to create a website using the WordPress software. However, WordPress.com is not the only way to create a website with WordPress.
If you want to make a website with WordPress.org, you need to install the WordPress software on your own web hosting. Purchasing web hosting is essentially renting space on a computer (called a server) that you can use to power the WordPress.org software.
Because of this, you’ll also see WordPress.org called self-hosted WordPress. If you ever see someone say “self-hosted WordPress”, they’re always referring to installing the open-source WordPress software on your own web hosting.
As it exists currently, you can kind of think of WordPress.com as one option for hosting the WordPress software. However, unlike a regular web host, WordPress.com does a lot to simplify the process of creating and maintaining a WordPress website.
I like to describe WordPress.com like this – “it’s like the open-source WordPress.org software and Squarespace had a baby”.
All WordPress.com
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This article was written by Colin Newcomer and originally published on WPKube.