WordPress.org vs. WordPress.com – Which WordPress is best for My Blog?

Those who want to develop a blog for themselves might get confused with the different options available to them, especially when they select WordPress for their blog. Here is my blog on WordPress.org vs. WordPress.com – which WordPress is best for my blog?

I know I am writing a blog for my Tech Acid blog after a huge gap and so I thought to write on something special. It is all about the basics of blogging and so I came up with the post on which WordPress option is best when you decided to have a blog in WordPress. As you all know that WordPress is one of the most popular Content Management System, and preferred by many bloggers out there in the world, so whenever a newbie plans to develop a blog choosing WordPress, they might get confused with the two options available there.

Those who are not familiar with these things, for them WordPress.com is a free option available with the help of which they can develop a free blog, just like they can do with Blogger, or BlogSpot one. On the other hand, WordPress.org provides a software with the help of which you can develop a beautiful blog or a fully functional website, even you can develop an eCommerce website with the help of it too.

WordPress.org vs. WordPress.com!

To begin with, the first question which might come into the mind of different readers is why do we blog? After all what pleasure do we get in writing blogs? To solve all your queries you can also read one of the blog written by my wife on why do we blog and can understand the top 7 reasons why you should blog?

The objective of this blog is to give light on the pros and cons of the different options of WordPress and not only that you can also compare the benefits and can then decide what option you want to go ahead with your first or new blog. Read on to understand the differences between WordPress.org and WordPress.com:

Cost wise Analysis

It is normally said that WordPress is a free tool. Undoubtedly, WordPress is free only and you can use the same with WordPress.com, but if you want to use the WordPress.org software then you needs not to pay something for it, it is also free for lifetime, but to run it you need to pay something to other things like Domain Name and Web Hosting.

Let me elaborate it.

For WordPress.org you need to invest on two things primarily, one will be the domain name and the web hosting one. Usually, a domain name comes into the range of around 10-20 $ while a web hosting can be obtained at a price of around $5 per month basis. You can also check my blog on WordPress Hosting Options.

On the other hand, WordPress.com blogs are totally free, but with certain conditions. These blogs are free if it is consuming less than 3 GB space. Normally WordPress.com will display some ads on your blog to your readers. You will get a subdomain like yourblogname.wordpress.com for your blog while you can also upgrade to your own custom domain and it will cost you $16 per year basis. If you don’t want WordPress to show ads on your blog, you can also select the same, but it will cost you around $30 per year basis.

Blog Monetization

One of the most common reasons why people blog is actually the monetization opportunity which blogs provide to the blogger, and if you compare the WordPress.org and WordPress.com options from Monetization aspect, then you will find that WordPress.org is far better than the WordPress.com one.

Let me elaborate it. With sites or blogs developed in WordPress.org, the user is free to sell as many ads as they want, they can pick any ad service for displaying their ads on their blog, and the blogger need not share any amount with anyone which they earn from their blog. Other than it, with Self-Hosted Blog you can also sell your own products to earn from your site.

On the other hand, there is a clause with WordPress.com blogs. No blogger is allowed to sell ads on their blog, unless and until they do have 25K + page views on their blog, which normally take so much of time to achieve. It is not like that if you have more than 25,000 page views per month then you are free to display any ads which you want, but you then can apply for a feature called Ad Control, and yes also remember the fact that you are still not free to get 100% of your earnings, but you need to share it 50-50.

SEO Wise Analysis

As far as the success of a blog is concerned, it is measured by the traffic which it receives. Although getting traffic on a blog entirely depends on the efforts which that particular blogger is giving. There was a time when my blogs were getting around 60K visitors per month, but now it has reduced to around 3K monthly visitors only, and the reasons being I am not that much active with my blogs since more than one year. So ultimately my established blog too had to suffer because of inactivity of mine.

But yes, it is also a fact that the traffic on a blog depends on the SEO efforts and work done on that blog too. If you search Google for benefits of cell phone, cell phone benefits, etc. keywords, you will always find the link to the blog written by me on the top of the search results.

This is because of Search Engine Optimization, which is popularly known as SEO. You too can do so and get huge traffic from search engines like Google, Bing, etc.

But here is a glitch over here. You know that my blog is a self-hosted WordPress.org blog and this being the reason why it is getting an advantage over other blogs in SEO. Do you remember which WordPress.com blog you last saw in Google search results?

I can say that you won’t remember any name of any WordPress.com blog which is showing on Google search. But it is also not true that any WordPress.com blog will never display in SERP, my friend Pinal Dave who runs squauthority.com on WordPress.com only dominates search engine results page with his useful and informative blogs. So what is the difference?

Well, you can run a blog on WordPress.com but you certainly need a custom domain to get search engine love. While with WordPress.org option you are already running it on a custom domain so it doesn’t require anything special to get SEO love.

Theme Wise Analysis

Do you know the reasons why I do love WordPress? Read one of my blog on top 7 reasons why you should use WordPress? One of the most important reason being the flexibility of themes which we do have with WordPress. As one of my friends Shwetabh Mathur, who is running his blog shwetabhmathur.in on BlogSpot with a custom domain name, and he will tell you that how difficult it is to get a perfect theme for any Blogger blog.

While it is not the case with the WordPress blogs, especially if you are using the WordPress.org software, you can use any theme be it a custom theme or a commercial one or any free one too. WordPress.org has plenty and variety of themes, which you can modify as per your need, customizes as per your need, or does anything which you like to make it better. On the other hand, with WordPress.com blogs, you are restricted to a few themes only which are available for free only, just like the blogger one. You cannot even make any change in the CSS of the themes.

Although, these days you can have the option of purchasing a few commercial themes at WordPress.com, but still compared to Self Hosted WordPress blog the options are very limited. You can also read one of my blog on why to choose WordPress as your blogging platform?

Plugins Analysis

Plugins are something which gives wings to your blog. It is one of the most loved features of WordPress. With plugins, you can set different functionalities on your blog. Unfortunately, the same is not much available with the free WordPress.com option while the same is available with so many options in Self Hosted WordPress.org blogs.

You can upload any free or paid plugin in WordPress.org option. You can even use some custom plugin for your WordPress.org blog.

So, does it mean that WordPress.org is far better than WordPress.com? What is my take on it?

I will let you know about my opinion on it a bit later, but first let me tell you a few more analysis of the two different options.

Maintenance Wise Analysis

Your WordPress.org blog requires full maintenance. You need to take care of all the files on your server, you need to take care of the regular backups, you need to take care of the spams happening on your site, and most importantly it is you only who need to take care of the optimization of your blog. When I am saying optimization here, it simply doesn’t mean the Search Engine Optimization only, but it also includes speed optimization and performance optimization of your blog. Also, you need to update your blog on a regular blog, you can also read one of my recent blogs on how to recover your WordPress blog when it is showing a Blank Screen?

With WordPress.com blogs, you need not worry at all about the maintenance of your blog. It is being taken care by the WordPress.com team only.

My Opinion about WordPress.org or WordPress.com

I am dead sure about one thing, if you are a newbie and just wanted to start your blog just for the fun purpose, then I would suggest using the WordPress.com option, but if you are a person who is a bit serious about blogging then you should always look for the Self Hosted WordPress.org blog.

What I believe is that, with Free WordPress.com blogs, you just explore different options available with WordPress, while with WordPress.org blog you realize the real potential of WordPress. The benefits which WordPress.org blogs are having include Themes, Plugins, Monetization, SEO, etc. and you can understand how effective are these?

Although I do understand that setting up a new blog with WordPress.org is a bit difficult for a newbie blogger, or those who are already running their blog on either Blogger or WordPress.com platform, but you can anytime contact me for any help. I have helped many friends of mine in setting up their self-hosted WordPress blog, and can help you too.

Also check my infographics on the same over here: infographics on WordPress.org vs. WordPress.com