CONS of WordPress.com
- WordPress is not the best option for complete beginners as it requires more work and some technical skills.
- Free domain is not included in many plans. Buying a domain name through WordPress.com will cost you $22/year (not the cheapest)
- Many cheaper plans are very limited. For example, not all templates are included in all plans and you aren’t allowed to add PayPal buttons.
- WordPress has 200+ themes to choose from, but not all of them can be used to drag and drop.
PROS of WordPress.com
- WordPress is the most popular software to create a website. Nearly 50% of top websites run on WordPress engine.
- As long as you’re OK with learning WordPress, it can be an excellent eCommerce option. Adding an online store to your site will cost you extra on pretty much all site builders. However, it’s free on WordPress with WooCommerce.
- We managed to create a pretty good test site – see it yourself.
- WordPress had a chat-with-us form (for paid users). And a rep connected within three minutes. The rep was more than helpful, ready to help fix our problem (as opposed to just sending us a how-to link).
- If you don’t want to set up your own hosting account, you can pay for it through WordPress directly. The Personal plan for most sites is pretty affordable at only $60/year. When we signed up the Personal plan cost $4.00 a month, and that’s exactly what we were billed:
- And the last bit of good news is that WordPress obviously knows how to host a site, delivering an untouchable >99.99% uptime and ~300ms load time. Not bad.
Recommended?
Not for beginners.
WordPress is perfect for advanced users who want more control, and are willing to handle the workload.
It’s a good ‘next step’ beyond a typical website builder. But it requires a lot more maintenance and has a bigger learning curve.
Beginners, or even people who just don’t want to have to do all the upkeep on a WordPress site, should probably stick to a more traditional website builder.
Visit WordPress.com
Here’s our 5-minute test site.