This post is a guest article by one of our content contributors at honestcollege.com, our sister website.
When starting out as a WordPress webmaster, many people are confused whether they should get free accounts on WordPress.com or purchase paid WordPress hosts. It’s really hard to make a decision as WordPress.com has great advantages on free of charge while paid web hosts are highlighted for full control, flexibility, customizability and technical support. To come out the answer, we have experienced the two options personally and have gone through so many online resources like this WordPress.org vs WordPress.com comparison. As a result, we recommend you to choose a budget-friendly WordPress host so that you can start at an affordable price and get full control over your site. In below, we explain the top 5 reasons why a budget web host is better than free WordPress.com in detail.
Full Feature & Control
WordPress.com attracts a large number of users for the free of charge. However, you get what you pay for. It limits the features and control over your website. For example, it only supports 3 GB free disk space and provides sub-domain names, but displays text ads on your websites. If you expect more space, you are required to pay $19.97/yr for 5 GB and $289.97/yr for 100 GB. And it costs $29.97/yr if you want to remove the ads.
On the other hand, paid web hosts offer full features and complete control over the website. Paying a few dollars per month, you can get a large amount of disk space, bandwidth, email accounts, databases and so forth to build a comprehensive website. No additional fees!
Compared with WordPress.com that deletes website content without any warnings sometimes, you have full control over the site on paid web host, including the website coding, designing, themes, plugins, databases, contents, and so on. No one can modify or change the site without your consent.
Flexible
On WordPress.com, you can only control your content, but have no authority to modify the website framework, change the appearance, or add some third party plugins you need.
However, choosing a paid hosting, you can design and develop the websites by yourself, and have full control over the structures, data, files, and so on. Besides, you can easily transfer the site to another web host if you need.
You can also upload and install any free, paid or custom plugins to extend website functionality, which allows you to maximize the potential of WordPress and use it as a CMS. With thousands of free plugins available on the Internet, this is a really powerful and inexpensive way to boost a website.
Customizable
Running a website, you may want to customize it for personal preference or some specific requirements. However, you are limited on wordPress.com, which only allows you to utilize free themes in WordPress theme repository. You cannot modify the CSS and other codes within the theme, unless you pay the additional CSS upgradability for $30 per year.
By contrast, a paid WordPress host allows you to customize and beautify website appearance as you like. You can use 1500+ free themes on WordPress community, purchase commercial themes on the marketplace, or even develop custom theme by yourself. Besides, you can modify, customize, and even do anything with the site.
Make Money
Many individuals and businesses start a website for making money online. Actually, the most effective method is selling advertisements. However, you are hard to achieve it on WordPress.com which does not allow selling ads unless your website has over 25,000 page views per month.
With full control on the self-hosted website, you can use any ad service and be free to sell as many ads as you want. Moreover, you keep 100% income of the website.
Technical Support
Technical support is a significant factor of self-hosted websites. Many web hosts offer 24×7 professional technical support to help users with solutions for all possible questions and troubles. So whenever you meet problems, you can contact the support team and there is always someone prepared to help you. With WordPress.com, however, you cannot enjoy this benefit.
Conclusion
As for the above reasons, we can see that a paid WordPress host has more advantages than free WordPress.com. Therefore, you’d better choose a truly budget hosting instead of resorting to a free account. To do this, you can go through some WordPress resources sites like WPMatter, with which you can easily find a web host pricing at an affordable rate but coming with superb hosting service for WordPress.
I totally agree with you that it is worth to spend in order to get full control over your site. Thanks for sharing this informative post.
Hey Nice blog.
I second you. I think hosting a WordPress theme using a shared hosting service a way better than free hosting because of the various benefits that you get when you take shared hosting services from a web host.
IMHO, I think its better to review some service providers and analyse their key characteristics. Do check out for options providing coupons codes, which when availed gets you discounts.
The site is http://www.hostingreviwed.com
cheers.
Hi Greg,
What if later on down the line I decide, for whatever reason, that I want to change my hosting site? Say from HostGator to BlueHost. Is my domain able to move with me? Will I be able to move the content of my (hopefully awesome) website/blog to the new host site or would I have to start from scratch? I am ready and excited to start using Word Press, but am worried my lack of foresight in what I will want in the future from a hosting site will potentially cause me to select the wrong one.
Thanks!
Hey Kelly,
Don’t worry too much about this. There are lots of negative reviews on the web from people who had to switch hosts but these cases are VERY rare. Often times the new host will offer you a free transfer too because they want your business, so that usually works out. I would just choose the host that best suits you and stick with them! I recommend HostGator, as many of my articles will tell ya.
Thank you for sharing this detailed article. Spending money always provide some benefits than what we get for free. Control, Flexibility, customization and technical support are the best reasons to go for paid hosting.
Keep doing good work.
Well said!