WordPress.org VS WordPress.com Which Better? Differences Explained!
Today I’ll be answering a common question that I get from a lot of my users which causes a lot of confusion so what is the difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com you’ve probably heard a lot of people talk about wordpress but when you went to wordpress.com it wasn’t exactly what you had in mind right.
What Is WordPress.org VS WordPress.com
So first let’s start with wordpress.org now wordpress.org is primarily accessible through hosting companies so if you go to wordpress.org and try to build your website.
You can’t I think that’s where the confusion starts wordpress.org is an open-source platform that allows you to build your website with drag and drop builders seo plugins and also gives you e-commerce functionalities, you can build anything from a basic website to a blog to a multi-vendor e-commerce website or even a hotel booking website.
I do have many tutorials on when using wordpress.org you’ll have access to tons of plugins page builders and you can purchase any wordpress theme you come across on the internet you can then take themes that you purchased and upload them to your wordpress websites import the demo contents and bam your website is done it’s simply incredible now.
you’re probably asking yourself how do I install wordpress.org it’s really easy almost all hosting providers have wordpress available for their customers you simply sign up for a shared or cloud hosting account and then depending on your server wordpress will be available in the cPanel or your customer portal.
You then click on install wordpress then your host installs wordpress onto your domain that you purchased and now you can start building your website right away it’s really easy I personally recommend name hero they have the best prices for hosting amazing support and a really fast one-click setup for wordpress I also do have an exclusive discount for A2hosting.
Know how to install wordpress check the link of this article.
Ko that’s wordpress.org, in a nutshell, it’s primarily available through a hosting company which I think leads to most of the confusion on wordpress.org’s own web page they do recommend using a hosting company because it’s a much simpler process.
So to summarize wordpress.org is an open-source platform that offers themes plugins e-commerce functionalities all for free plus learning wordpress is really easy you’ll need some guidance to understand where to start I think that also leads to some sort of confusion, but I do have many articles on how to make a website with wordpress it’s really easy and I’ll leave those tutorials for you in the article?
So now that you guys know about WordPress.org now let’s go ahead and talk about WordPress.com
So when you first go to wordpress.com they’ll ask to host your website and they offer four different plans the personal premium business and e-commerce plan these plans are very different from each other so first let’s talk about the personal and the premium plan.
First, you might have noticed the interface is much different from the wordpress.com they use their own interface that works a little different from the wordpress.org version that we saw earlier the biggest drawback is the personal and the premium plan do not allow you to upload plugins or upload your own themes making these plans extremely limited.
You’ve also noticed many of the free themes that you’ve come to love like Astra or OceanWP are not available in these plans either instead, wordpress has its own unique themes to select from you’ll also be bombarded with advertisements asking you to upgrade offering additional services and asking you to sign up for various services like;
Jetpack which to me just comes off as very annoying your only option to build a website with these plans are using their default Gutenberg builder and these generic themes which I’m not too familiar with and if you’re looking to create something creative or more complicated like an e-commerce website or a booking website you cannot with these plans.
Overall I wouldn’t recommend either of these plans because it’s just something that I wouldn’t want to pay money for next let’s talk about the business and e-commerce plan the biggest difference with these two plans is now you’ll have available access to plugins and also all of the wordpress.org themes you may also purchase themes that you now find on the internet and use them on your wordpress.com website.
Another confusing situation is wordpress is sort of integrating two platforms here wordpress.com and wordpress.org you’ll notice right here how we have the default generic themes that come with wordpress.com and themes like – Astra will not be available, however.
If you click on the install theme way up here at the top right you will then have access to the wordpress.org themes like – WP Astra, Ocean WP, Neve, Divi Elegant and so forth.
So this does cause a lot of confusion with a lot of first-time users now the difference between the two plans the business and the commerce plan is with the e-commerce plan you will be allowed to accept payments with the business plan you cannot accept payments so those are the key differences between both plans, however.
If you think about it the person on the premium or wordpress.com and the business and the e-commerce are sort of wordpress.org they’re kind of two different platforms and they’re kind of merged together.
So that’s where a lot of users kind of get confused probably the biggest pro with wordpress.com is they will manage the hosting for you I’m not really sure how much traffic they can handle.
so that’s something that you might want to ask them before signing up overall these are decent plans to go with I personally don’t like the interface and they do try to constantly upsell you within your dashboard and I just find that a little annoying however this is still a huge upgrade from their base plans.
Next, let’s talk about pricing :
WordPress.com offers monthly and annual prices it’s cheaper if you go with the annual plans the plans start at $4/month all the way to $48 a month to gain full access to WordPress.
You’ll need to purchase the business or the e-commerce plan they do have cheaper plans like the personal or the premium yet to be quite honest I can’t give you a real good reason to sign up with those plans because of the limitations you have on your website you also lose access to all the plugins and premium themes with those two starter plans with wordpress.org
You’ll be able to find much cheaper prices since wordpress.org is set up through hosting companies you’ll find competitive prices trying to earn your business web hosting companies offer plans at around three dollars a month.
if you sign up for a longer period you can shop around to any web hosting company of your choice and then sign up to purchase your domain and hosting package install wordpress and you are all ready to build your websites.
I personally recommend a A2hosting or Hostinger it’s really easy to get set up they are really affordable and your website will be fast now before I let you go I do have one quick disclaimer about web hosting and I get a lot of these questions in my Whatsapp group.
if you’re a first-time user do not go with managed hosting companies like ;
Cloudways, Kinsta, or Get Fastcomet because they do not sell domains and you will need to have server knowledge like migrating your website you also have to point your own name servers.
So unless you have preview experience with web hosting I would just avoid them because it causes a lot of confusion with beginners but if you do have previous web hosting experience then yeah they’re suitable options for sure.
So whenever you hear people talk about wordpress about 90 of the time they’re referring to wordpress.org or WordPress business and e-commerce plan.
So I know it’s very confusing and I don’t blame you even to me it just baffles me about why this is the way it is you know but if you guys are going to ask me right now how do I get started I would definitely recommend A2hosting I do have an including link to hosting sign up for hosting you guys can install wordpress and get started with your website right away.
I hope this article kind of cleared the confusion with you because again it is very confusing even to me when I first started using wordpress I went to wordpress.com starter plan and I was like what is this you know it wasn’t exactly what I had in mind.
