Ready to make your mark on the web? Have great ideas, stories, or products to share with the world? Do it. You’ve presumably already made your first major decision, and a smart one at that: you’ve chosen WordPress. WordPress puts a world of choices at your fingertips and offers unrivaled customization as a platform for bloggers, businesses, and anyone else needing a vehicle to get what they’re offering out there for the world to see.
The next major decision to tackle before you begin building is which WordPress platform will fit your personal or business needs. You have two routes you can go: WordPress.com or WordPress.org. We’ll outline what these options mean for you and compare the pros and cons of both below.
WordPress puts a world of choices at your fingertips: .com or .org, which is right for you?Click To TweetWhat is WordPress.com?
WordPress.com is a fully hosted website where you register, agree to terms of service, and hit the ground running with most all of the background technical work taken care of for you.
| Basic | Free! |
|---|---|
| Premium | $99USD/year |
| Business | $299USD/year |
Because WordPress.com is a free, fully hosted, and ready-to-use environment right out of the box, there are some necessary business-sense limitations in place for what can be done with your website. There are 3 plans available, with each successive tier easing those limitations: Basic, which is completely free, Premium for $99USD/year, and Business for $299USD/year. You can also purchase upgrades like a unique domain name, extra storage space, an ad-free website, et cetera independently of the plan tiers if your plan doesn’t already provide that for you.
This article will only get into the pros and cons of the Basic plan, but the major differences between the three come down to amount of storage, level of customization allowed, and the availability or lack thereof of eCommerce options.
WordPress.com is the quick, easy, hassle-free option for bloggers who are content to keep it simple with a pre-designed theme and don’t want to have to worry with the technical aspects of their website.
What is WordPress.org?
WordPress.org is for those not afraid of exploring the technical side of their website and offers much more freedom of design in return for your efforts. With WordPress.org you can build your own autonomous, completely customizable website where the only limitations are your skill and imagination.
To go this route, you’ll need to acquire a domain and web host, install WordPress to that web host, design your site, and then to bring your work live to the web. This method adds the flexibility of designing your site locally and then uploading to your web host before going live, or building your site directly on your web host’s WordPress installation.
Sound daunting? It’s completely doable even for a novice, and there are plenty of resources available to help you on your way. Self-hosting on WordPress.org is the way to build a website with every last detail just the way you want it. The sky’s the limit for those with the time and inclination to tinker.
No matter what your needs are, WordPress has you covered!Click To TweetWordPress.com v. WordPress.org
Both the free WordPress.com and the self-hosted WordPress.org have their benefits and drawbacks in comparison to one another. In the table below you will find the major points to consider in weighing one versus the other. No matter what your needs are, WordPress has you covered. All you have left to do is decide which model fits your needs the best based on the information below, and then you’re well on your way to showing the world what you’ve got!
 |
Free WordPress.com | WordPress.org |
|---|---|---|
| Getting Started | Sign up & start building! | Need to install WordPress before building your site. |
| Theme Support | Limited to themes found on WordPress.com | Can use any theme |
| Plugins | Cannot use custom plugins | Can use any plugin |
| Customization | Can manipulate any aspect of your site that doesn’t require editing code | Can edit files/code via FTP, cPanel, or any other method provided by web host |
| Email Hosting | No professional/domain email hosting service, i.e. yourname@yoursite.com | Most web hosts bundle professional domain email hosting as part of package |
| Affiliate Links | Cannot place affiliate links | Can make use of affiliate links as a marketing tool |
| Advertising & Google Analytics | Cannot use third-party advertising services like Google AdSense and cannot track stats with Google Analytics | No advertising limitations and full use of Google Analytics to track website statistics |
| Terms of Service | Must accept and follow WordPress.com terms of service for using their site | None |
| Maintenance | All maintenance and development handled for you by WordPress.com | Responsible for your own maintenance, updating, and security |
| Cost | Free vanilla experience w/ ability to purchase a variety of upgrades | You’ll need to purchase a domain (~$10/yr) and a host (~$50-$70/yr) |
When I started my blogging journey then my first question was, Why I should choose WordPress.org and not other CMS softwares.
I searched a lot about it on Google at that time and I found that everybody is recommending to use WordPress.org and I started doing the same.
Now today I know that why people should choose WordPress.org . Because WordPress is an independent and easy to use content management system.
The best thing about it is, We can bring any feature in our website with just using a single plugin. That’s really good. 😀
I am using WordPress.org since last 3 years and I loved it. 😀
Hi Quay,
I registered a domain and hosted from HostGator. And I install a wordpress to build my website. Does it means that I have the SELF-HOSTED WORDPRESS.ORG??
I am a beginner.
Looking forward to your answer.
Thank you.
kind regards
Junyun,
It sure does! Welcome to WordPress!
Cheers,
Quay