The SixFive Guide To WordPress.com Vs. WordPress.Org

In my time designing and developing sites, I have heard one question over and over again.  Is it better to use WordPress.org or the free WordPress.com? Today, I want to contrast WordPress.com and WordPress.org with advantages and disadvantages and try to answer the question once and for all.

WordPress.org is what our team at SixFive uses.  In fact, the site you are browsing right now uses the WordPress.org Content Management System (CMS).  Not bad right? We absolutely love WordPress.org and always recommend it to our customers.

WordPress.org Advantages

• It is open-source
• It is free and easy to install and use
• You control your own information and do not have to worry about going against someone’s terms of service.
• You can earn money from it using your personal advertisement or platforms such as Google Adsense.
• Customized tracking and analytics
• There is a powerful suite of free and paid plugins that you can use
• WordPress.org is completely customizable and offers custom themes.

WordPress.org Disadvantages

• Like other websites, you require good web hosting. This can cost you cash someplace from around $3 – $7 monthly.  You may also need to bump up this plan as you scale your business and website.
• You are in charge of updates. Otherwise, you can have conflicts and errors on your site.  Wordpress does make this as easy as possible.
• You are accountable for back-ups, however, there are lots of outstanding plugins are around like BackupBuddy.
• You have to to take care of SPAM.  Again WordPress provides a great solution for this with Askimet (which comes integrated with WordPress.org).

WordPress.com Advantages

• It’s cost-free up to 3GB. Afterward, you will have to scale up ($19.95 annually for 5GB) or ($289.97 each year for 100GB).
• They make routine back-ups of your website.
• You don’t have to worry about spam
• There is free support
• It is very simple to use.  In fact, a baby may be able to do it. Okay, maybe not a baby.

WordPress.com Disadvantages

• They position advertisements on all cost-free sites. You can pay them $29.97 each year to maintain your website ad-free if you do not want your users to see ads.
• You are not permitted to market advertisements on your website unless you get 25,000 pageviews each month. Then, you need to apply.  The authorization procedure does not cost you any kind of cash, however, you need to divide your profits 50/50 with them.  Damn.
• You can not use plugins.
• There are no custom themes. Many of the themes that come with WordPress are already being use across millions of sites.
• You are limited to their analytics. Due to the fact that you could not include customized codes, you could not make use of custom-made analytics software application.
• If they assume it breaks their Terms of Service, WordPress could erase your website at any time.
• Even if you pay for their upgrades, you still need to inform others that your website is run by WordPress.com.

Battle Royale

The Verdict

If you are an individual blog writer that does not care about monetizing your site, WordPress.com is a safe option. If you are a blog writer attempting to make a living or trying to grow your business, I wholeheartedly recommend WordPress.org.  Many people get worried about the cost and technical skill-set needed for WordPress.org, but in the long-run, I can promise you it is a much better option.

Let’s dig into the numbers: if you use WordPress.com, get their personalized domain name ($17 annually), pay for the ad-free solution ($29.97 each year), and get a customized design ($30 each year), that total amount is $76.97.  On the other hand, with WordPress.org, you could use a company like SiteGround (only $3.95 a month with my affiliate link here) and a free domain which only comes out to $47.40 each year.  I had my own doubts, but even when meeting with other big agency owners and professional marketers, they recommend WordPress.org.

If you are looking for more support on this, feel free to contact us.  We specialize in WordPress.org and have used the platform for over 10 years. We’ve got a couple tricks in the bag.  We also have a full guide to WordPress coming out soon which I am excited to share with you. Until then, keep hustling!