WordPress.com VS WordPress.org – Which Is the Right Option for Your Online Goal?

The issue of making a choice between WordPress.com and WordPress.org has been bewildering some hosting newbies through the ages. If you are also a green hand puzzling to select one to host a website, then this piece of article may do help. With the following detailed comparison, we make the answer clear by covering their differences.

In below, we firstly show you their essence by making an introduction. Afterwards, we reveal their distinction one by one with concise and clear comparison.

What is WordPress.com?

WordPress.com refers to a managed and shared hosting platform that copes with matters by itself including the security, upgrade and backup for all its users. This platform is created by a company consisting of employees who apply themselves to the development, maintenance and support with which you are able to start WordPress websites without charges.

What is WordPress.org?

Being different with WordPress.com, this one is the center of the WordPress community where you are capable of reaching downloadable software, community support forums, documentation, hosting recommendation, also some free themes and plugins. The key point is that hosting a website using WordPress.org demands you to purchase web hosting service from providers at the very beginning.

Can I Host A Self-Hosted Website with Them?

The answer is positive if you choose WordPress.org that enables you to download the WordPress platform straight from its homepage and complete the installation to wherever you demand.

On the contrary, WordPress.com offers no possibility to create a self-hosted website. Nevertheless, you don’t have to be disappointed because you are allowed to create a free sub domain on WordPress.com that comes with 3 GB of disk space. After the creation of a sub domain, you can get a URL. To be specific, let us take the website HostingReview360.com as an example, it can get a URL like HostingReview360.wordpress.com.

Are They Free?

Using WordPress.com, the Basic package is free. However, please note that a premium membership costs $99/yr by coming with 13 GB storage, advanced customization, direct email support and store videos.

By comparison, using WordPress.org, the free part is only the WordPress platform you have downloaded from its official website. Meanwhile, it takes you a few bucks per month for a domain and hosting service. If you are searching some cost-effective options, this post may help.

How About the Maintenance & Update?

The building of a website using WordPress.com is completely worry-free for you don’t have to shoulder responsibilities for the updates and backups. However, this characteristic also means you don’t have the permission to control the software or the database, which means that you cannot edit the database, install themes and plugins, and run advertisements, etc. Furthermore, FTP and access are not included.

Differently, hosting a website via WordPress.org requires a manual update by yourself. Also, we suggest doing scheduled backups as frequent as possible. In a general way, some top-notch web hosting providers in the market supports free backup which covers this concern.

What About the Themes and Plugins?

WordPress.com features a limited amount of themes and plugins. Specifically, it includes approximately 200 different themes and 20 to 30 plugins that are only available for those Premium users.

By contrast, there are more than 1500 free themes and 15,000 plugins which can be downloaded from http://wordpress.org. Furthermore, if your website grows bigger with increasing demands of customizability and flexibility, there are also some affordable and high-profile themes and plugins available in the field. Please refer to these articles if you need simple themes for WordPress.

Exactly Which One Should I Pick?

After the above comprehensive contrast, clearly, both WordPress.com and WordPress.org make contribution in their own way by meeting different requirements of webmasters.

• WordPress.com is suitable for those webmasters who want to build a website for free and don’t want to exert too much time and effort on the upgrade and maintenance of the websites.
• WordPress.org is recommended for those webmasters who have enough budget and time, and want to custom websites in their own styles via their endeavor.

If you have already made the decision to select WordPress.org to host websites, the companies in the following table may help because of their budget-friendly service coming with rich features that make sure a great deal of possibilities to build websites in minutes and maintain them with the least time and energy. Please refer to the table in below for more details.