WordPress is the most popular way to build a website. It’s a software that you can use as the operating system of your website. In other words, WordPress is to your website whereas Microsoft Windows (or Mac OS) is to your computer. But despite its popularity, there’s one question that many new users still struggle with – what’s the difference between WordPress.com vs WordPress.org?
First of all, it needs to be said that, WordPress.org and WordPress.com are two entirely different websites/organizations/web solutions. Although they are officially separate entities, there are unofficial lines which can get blurred because Matt Mullenweg is both the founder of the WordPress Foundation and the founder of Automattic. As a result, the two entities remain closely linked.
What are the most significant differences between WordPress.com vs WordPress.org?
WordPress.com is a for-profit business owned by Automattic that uses the WordPress.org open-source software. The major benefits of WordPress.com are that it’s 100% free and external hosting (or even an external domain name) isn’t needed. All that’s required of you is to head to WordPress.com, sign up for your free account, and start building a professional-looking blog or website immediately. It gives you a free subdomain. Something like YOURSITE.wordpress.com.
If you want a custom domain, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan. You get basic security and backups handled for you. Everything about the technical performance of your website is handled by the team behind WordPress.com. If something doesn’t work at any point, you can’t do anything but wait for the team to fix the issue. Further, it offers a limited number of themes for you to choose from. It comes with limited customization options as well.
WordPress.org is an open-source software managed by the non-profit WordPress Foundation. It doesn’t come with free hosting. You’ll have to look for a host yourself, and pay for it separately. There’s some level of security from your web host, but for the most part, you need to secure your website yourself. The same goes for backups – those you need to enable via plugins as well.
WordPress.org offers you the freedom to install any free or premium plugin you want. This is vital if you want to customize your site to the point where it fits your needs hand-in-glove. Further, you can have as many ads and as many forms of monetization as you like (also, choose any ad service you want). The good news is that you keep 100% of your earnings.
Pros and Cons
WordPress.com PROS
It’s free for a simple and small site, and you get technical support. It takes less time to set up a WordPress.com site than it takes to set up a WordPress.org site. Also, it can be used by newbies. Even if it’s your first time launching a website, you will still be able to do everything yourself. Takes care of updating and backing up your site automatically, so you don’t have to worry about anything.
WordPress.com CONS
- Paid upgrades for advanced customization.
- No plugin uploads.
- A limited number of themes for free.
WordPress.org PROS
It’s a free and open-source platform. You can use custom themes and custom plugins. It gives you much more customization options than WordPress.com. Other than that, you’re in full control of your website. You can do whatever you want with it.
WordPress.org CONS
- Pay for hosting.
- Setup; you install WordPress yourself (or through your web hosting).
- You are responsible for managing for maintaining your website and server (although most web hosts handle basic tasks for you).
Which Should You Choose?
As you can see, both WordPress.com and WordPress.org have their pros and cons, and there’s no clear winner. It all depends on what you expect from your website platform, what your budget is, and what sort of website you want to launch.
If you want to launch a personal project, for testing or sharing your ideas, hobby site, etc., you can do it on Wordpress.com You can get started for free, the setup is easy, and you don’t have to worry about any maintenance at all.
If you want to launch a more serious website such as for a business site, a project site, a pro-blogging project – do it on WordPress.org software. This is also your choice if you want to monetize your website in any way, or if you want to get an unlimited number of possible customizations.
Summary
However, in the end, self-hosted WordPress.org is the best option for most serious websites. Its flexibility when it comes to installing extensions, changing functionality, and choosing monetization methods makes it superior to WordPress.com.