What’s the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org? This is one of the questions every WordPress beginner asks when they start using WordPress.
The simple difference is :
WordPress.org is software you download and install on your own web server and is much more customizable than a site on WordPress.com.
WordPress.com is a ready made website solution where you can set up your blog or website, think of this like a service such as Shopify or Wix.
Let’s look at some other differences, pros
Differences between WordPress.org
and WordPress.com
| WordPress.org | WordPress.com |
| Use web host of your choice. | Requires premium plan for more features. |
| Customizations allowed. | No SFTP access / Customizations limited. |
| Community Support. | Professional Customer Support. |
| Custom domains. | Free plan has wordpress.com in your domain name. |
Pros and Cons of WordPress.org
Pros of WordPress.org
- Highly customizable and open-source.
- Allowed to install any plugin/theme.
- You don’t have to pay for a plan, the WordPress.org software is free.
Cons of WordPress.org
- You have to do all the customization yourself.
- Setting up WordPress may be a bit difficult on some hosting providers.
- You do need to sign-up with a web host, although this is not a con it’s still a cost to incur for running your website.
- You may need to setup additional security for your site.
Pros and Cons of WordPress.com
Pros of WordPress.com
- It is easy to
setup , - It is less technical.
- You don’t have to worry about web hosting, you get a free WordPress subdomain to host your website (yourwebsite.wordpress.com)
- Maintained for you by professionals, includes better security and caching.
Cons of WordPress.com
- The free plan limits you to 3 GB of data and doesn’t support custom domains.
- Pricing may be expensive for some.
- Only Business Plan users may install third-party plugins/themes.
- No File Manager/FTP access.
Summary
In this article you should have a clearer understanding of WordPress.com and WordPress.org solutions. In short, WordPress.com is great for users that don’t want to fuss with managing the ‘nitty gritty’ side of hosting a website. We prefer WordPress.org because of the customizations that are available there. Our site is running on WordPress.org! Happy building!
Photo by Noel Lopez on Unsplash
Thanks for sharing such beautiful information with us.
I hope you will share some more info about web hosting .
Thanks for the kind feedback, we will definitely be looking into adding in more website hosting related topics to our blog.