In this age of abundant opportunists, one should know how to grasp every chance to turn hardships of life into success. It seems like many of this generation’s writers have already adopted this mantra. Blogging is an absolute boon for the 21st century writers. It allows them to share their views and knowledge about several topics with the world. WordPress is the leader of providing blogging platforms. However, a comparison ‘WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org’ often troubles the content writers. This article presents some benefits of WordPress.com and advantages of WordPress.org so that you may decide which one will benefit you.
WordPress is the leading service provider for blogging and website designing as over 30% of the total websites on the internet are created from WordPress. One can create his blog with additional features like themes, plug-ins, etc. and that too for free. But a major setback that users find while beginning with the blogging is the comparison between the community version and the other version of the site i.e. WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org. Thus, they often end up using wrong version. To help you with this problem, here are some benefits of WordPress.com and some advantages of WordPress.org:
WordPress.org
This is the real WordPress. All the great things that you have heard about WordPress are found here. Also known as the self-hosted WordPress, this community website platform is an open source and 100% free to use for anyone. The only things you need to have is a domain name and website hosting by signing up on the website. You will also need to install the WordPress software on a web server. Some of the advantages of WordPress.org are mentioned below:
- Hosting: The WordPress.org gives you the freedom to choose from a dozen of web hosting companies. You would have to pay web hosting fee monthly to the web hosting company. Bluehost and GoDaddy are some of the reputed web hosting servers to plan hosting for blog websites on WordPress.
- Themes & Plug-ins: WordPress.org gives you flexibility to use any free, custom or paid plug-ins and themes of your choice. It also has a large variety of themes and plug-ins of its own. Some of them are free, but you have to buy the premium ones.
- Monetizing Business: The WordPress.org gives you freedom to run as many ads as you want. It also gives you the choice to run ‘Powered by’ links on your website. And moreover, all the revenue generated will be 100% yours. You can also create an online store in your blog to sell items and accept payments.
- Domain name: The domain name will be of your choice while signing up for a blog through WordPress.org. You can customize your domain name but you would have to pay a domain registration fee yearly.
- Maintenance: You will be responsible for all the maintenance of your blog website. You would have to keep your site updated with regular updates from WordPress.org. Keeping regular backups, checking on SPAM control and keeping the site optimized would be your duty.
- Analytical tools: WordPress.org lets you use third party analytical tools like MixPanel, KissMetrics, etc. which are considered powerful tools for analysis. You can also install Google Analytics for the insights of your content.
WordPress.com
WordPress.com is a hosting website created by Matt Mullenweg, the co-founder of the WordPress.org. Since both have the same founder, it is one of the reasons why users get confused all the time between both the websites. There are different plans you can choose according to your needs. There is one free plan and four paid plans. Here are some of the benefits of WordPress.com :
- Hosting: The free plan of WordPress.com provides a 3 GB of storage space for web hosting. After that, you will have to upgrade to the paid plans for more space. You can upgrade to plans according to the storage space you need, but you can’t sign up with a third party website hosting company.
- Themes & Plug-ins: WordPress.com have a theme repository and built-in plug-in like features and you are limited to them only. You can’t access or upload or link any third party or custom themes and plug-ins in your blog in the free plan, unless you sign up for the paid plans.
- Monetizing business: You can’t run or sell ads on your blog website. The WordPress.com will run their own selected ads on your blog, from which you will not make any money. Although, you can upgrade to the paid plans to remove their ads and run your own, but you still won’t be able to sell anything from your blog.
- Domain name: You will be given the option of subdomain along with your blog site, for example- abcxyz.wordpress.com. You can change it by upgrading to paid plans and then only you can have your own, personalized domain name.
- Maintenance: On WordPress.com, you won’t have to worry about the maintenance of your blog website. The automatic staff is a feature which will be looking after the updates from the WordPress backups and site optimization for you.
- Analytical tools: WordPress.com offers you in-built stats for analysis but you can’t install third party analytical tools while using the free plan. However, you can upgrade to business plan (paid) to install and use the other powerful analytical tools.
Our verdict for WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org- Your Choice
After stating all the above points for benefits of WordPress.com and advantages of WordPress.org, it can be said that it is your needs and choice that really make the verdict for WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org discussion. The only main difference in both the platforms is the ‘hosting’. If you want to run a personal blog without an intention to make real money and are not interested to pay anyone for managing your hosting and web server, then you better go for the free WordPress.com. It may not follow up with your expectations for your blog in terms of creativity, domain name, etc., but it is really the content what matters.
If you want to run a business out of your blog, then we suggest you to use the self-hosted WordPress.org. It gives you freedom and flexibility in almost every aspect of your blog website. You can select your themes from third party websites and can have your personalized domain name. Although, paid plans of WordPress.com can also be used for this intention.
These are the advantages of WordPress.org and benefits of WordPress.com to answer your questions regarding the confusion in WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org. Choose wisely according to your needs to save up prodigal expenses and share your stories and expertise with others.