Every new comer in the WordPress community, whenever he/she wants to learn about WordPress, definitely get confused with this matter, WordPress.org and WordPress.com; which is what? Honestly, I got confused too when I started learning WordPress a few years ago. It is a common problem. Once I get to know them both, WordPress.org and WordPress.org; know about what are they, how do they work, their pros and cons, I found them super easy and understandable.
In this article, I’m going to explain about
- what is WordPress.org and WordPress.com,
- the key differences between WordPress.org and WordPress.com,
- pros and cons of WordPress.org and WordPress.com
as far as I can and as easily as I can. Now pay your attention!
What are WordPress.org and WordPress.com
WordPress.org – WordPress.org is run by WordPress foundation and the foundation is run by donations donated by the beneficiaries of the WordPress Community. To tell the tale of the WordPress, we must start with the creation of WordPress dated long back 16 years ago. In 2003, this most popular and amazing CMS WordPress was created by Matt Mullenweg and Mike little by customizing another CMS b2 and then developed day by day to its mesmerizing dynamic features. And this whole CMS is free to use, open source, that means anyone can customize it by own self and WordPress.org is serving you this free CMS for your personal or commercial use. That’s WordPress.org.
WordPress.com – on the other hand, after Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little created WordPress and declared this CMS as free and open source, they built WordPress.com using WordPress CMS for their own business purpose. People can easily create their own website without any coding or any developing knowledge but it will be under a subdomain like me.wordpress.com and definitely have some limitations. So, that’s WordPress.com
Key Difference between WordPress.org & WordPress.com
The major difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com is ‘hosting’. Which means, who’s hosting your site; you or another platform? Simply put,
In WordPress.org, you download the CMS WordPress from the site, install it in your computer, make your own website, in your own design, you buy your domain and hosting. Everything is yours; you are responsible for your website and its visibility, functionality and also it will be your responsibility. Got it?
On the other hand, WordPress.com, someone- a very special ‘someone’ created it using WordPress CMS and allow others to create their own website under a subdomain. There are some built in preferences and designs to moderate and customize your website. You don’t need to think about hosting. WordPress.com gives you 3gb of hosting for free. but of course, there are some limitations. We will talk about them in the next segment of our discussion.
WordPress.org vs WordPress.com: pros & cons
WordPress.org pros
- 100% free to download, use and customize
- You’re the boss of your website (you know what I mean) i.e. website developing, domain, hosting etc. will be directly under your surveillance.
- Free, paid or customized themes and plugins.
- Use of powerful tools like – google analytics.
WordPress.org cons
In my point view, there are no cons using WordPress.org but for writing sake here are some points some may find as cons.
- Hosting can cost depending on your websites size.
- Setup and update WordPress on a regular basis.
- Maintaining the site and managing your web server regularly.
WordPress.com pros
- According to WordPress.com, it is free to use up to 3GB and have five other plans starting from $3 to $45 on different criteria like blogger, personal, premium, business, ecommerce.
- Easy to use in a limited environment.
- You do not need to worry about updating WordPress or backup the site.
WordPress.com cons
- If you want to do something big, WordPress.com is not for you. Because in order to do something big you need pay for premium hosting and domain.
- You cannot use any plugins.
- A very limited collection of themes.
- You cannot use it for your ecommerce purpose as it doesn’t provide any payment gateway.
- You cannot use tools like google analytics to check your sites traffic and stats.
In the end, I just want to say that both websites have their own purposes. This articles only shows the general and functional description with explanation about these two giant sites coming from the same creator. Hope, you, as a beginner understand the differences between WordPress.org and WordPress.com
