If you have chosen to use WordPress, you’ve made a great choice! 74 million bloggers also use WordPress! But when you type WordPress into a search engine it comes up with 2 choices- .com and .org, what’s the difference? Let’s discuss it.
Hosting
Firstly, let’s start with .org:
- It’s free
- You need to buy a third-party hosting service and a custom domain name
- You are able to edit a lot with plugins and themes
Now for .com:
- Your default host will be WordPress.com
- It is free but you will have to pay to do any custom work
- The website you get will have WordPress.com in the name, for example, if your site was scentedcandles.com it would be scentedcandles.wordpress.com
- To remove this, you will have to pay
Amount of Freedom
The amount of freedom and control you get with hosting services is arguably one of the most important criteria, so below are the comparisons:
.org:
- Choose the hosting service for as long as you want or need it
- You decide on the amount of control you give to the hosts
- .org is a fully customizable blogging software
.com:
- This will become your management system and your host automatically
- Your plan will need to be picked by one of the WordPress.com packages
- Storage available is between 6 and 13Gb
- You will probably need to upgrade, which costs
Optimization and Analytics
Google Analytics is arguably the best tool that a lot of bloggers use, it shows how much traffic you had and what those users were doing. It will also tell you which of your blogs are doing the best.
WordPress.org will allow you to install Google analytics whereas WordPress.com has a simple analytics dashboard, with the option to upgrade to the most expensive plan to have the ability to download the Google version. This is definitely something to think about when choosing between the two.
Security
There are two big differences between the two WordPress sites when it comes to security. WordPress.org is just a platform used to build your blog or site, so it doesn’t offer any security as such, as it is hosted by the web host of your choice it will only have the security offered by this host.
Whereas WordPress.com is a hosting solution so has its own SSL certificates and offers a lot of safety. If you are planning on using WordPress.org, make sure the web host you choose also has a SSL certificate so you can be assured the site is safe.
Help and Support
If you are ever stuck and in need of help you need to remember WordPress.org is not a web host, so it has no help or support offered with its packages, it is instead your web hosts job to help and support you so check this out before deciding to use it.
WordPress.com is a web host so offers support for any technical issues you may have. Very much like the security, make sure you check these out. You can also find support pages made by bloggers or users of WordPress which can help out if you can’t get the help you need from WordPress themselves.
Overall, there aren’t many similarities at all between the two, WordPress.org offers freedom but on the other hand, you will need to find a web host. WordPress.com offers all of this, but less of the custom options. Whichever you choose, both are great for starting a blog or website!
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