In October 2018 I wrote a series of post on Blogging terminology for all of us to understand what is what. Just as a way of getting use to all the jargon. At the bottom of this post I have included all of these post, the caveat has to be some of the information may be old (eg Mailchimp the advice there has changed and how to set up on wordpress.com has also changed with the blocks technology) and I am not an expert; as always do your research too.

Back then I wrote about what I thought was the difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com and in that I showed the pricing model of wordpress.com at that time, click here to read it.

Since then WordPress.com have significantly changed and enhanced their pricing model, I include an excel spreadsheet of the pricing model as at 13th May 2020.

The reason I included an attachment is as it captures in history what was offered on this date 13th May 2020, so that in a year or two’s time I can see what wordpress.com has changed. I find all of this interesting, because wordpress.com have really increased what they offer to paid plans and they have introduced many new paid plans.

For example back in 2018 the plan options were, Free, Personal, Premium, and Business. Now in May 2020: we have, Free, Personal, Premium, Business and Ecommerce.

To be Self-hosted or not? That is the question?

WordPress.org is associated with those who are self hosted.

WordPress.com means you are not self hosted.

What does hosted mean click here to see the post I wrote back in October 2018. The terminology around ” Hosting, Domain and website” does not change, it will mean the exact same thing in 2020 as it did in 2018.

Why I will NOT go SELF HOSTED.

I had already mentioned in my post back in 2018 that I would not go self hosted. I am still of the same opinion.

My reasons are simple:

• I don’t want to be responsible for all the technical stuff. For example: plugins, being compliant with GDPR, spam filters, security certificates, HTML and any breaks. Why should I when WordPress.com does it all for me
• WordPress.com will take care of all of this on each plan, even the free plan from a technical and compliance level.
• WordPress.com gives you updates and enhancements be it on a free plan or paid plan,and you don’t have to keep an eye on that.
• WordPress.com doesn’t require me to employ a developer or a technical person to take care of my site.
• WordPress.com plans offer a great deal of monetising options.
• WordPress.com is always evolving.
• I am lazy! I don’t want the self hosting headache as I see it. I am not a developer. Well I was a developer but not of internet web pages; that is probably why I do not want to go into developer mode again.
• Not being self hosted allows me to blog and write and have fun. With out technical stuff.
• I believe the whole need to be self hosted is an myth from the early days of blogging. And is not a necessity. Just look at sites likes square space and wix they offer what wordpress.com is offering. But, with wordpress.com you get a community of free or paid members helping each other out.
• The owner of wordpress.org and wordpress.com is the same! Meaning, we wordpress.com users benefit from any wordpress.org development. Albeit the .com offering will be cut down and will be split by the relevant paid option.
• I can cancel being paid and go back to free anytime. I might have an issue with all my media files.
• I know that everyone out there says be self hosted. It might be cheaper in the long run. But, I don’t want the headache of worrying about spam filters, security certificates, broken xyz. WordPress.com does it all for me.

Why not try to Upgrade to a Personal WordPress.com Plan.

If you are looking to monetize your blog, the cheapest plan would be a personal plan.

• Your domain gets paid for one year. So instead of your blog url being myblog.wordpress.com your url looks like myblog.com. This looks more professional and they say the Google SEO responds better to blogs that don’t have .wordpress.com or .wix, or .squarespace in them.
• You get email and basic chat support.
• You get 6GB of storage space
• You can remove wordpress.com ads of your site making it look more professional
• You get the ability to monetize your blog using recurring payments.
• You can alway try and cancel and get a refund. I have often upgrade and then cancelled in the cancellation period.
• I am a one man band.

I hope you find this post interesting and food for thought. I am not an expert when it comes to the internet, but I do seem to have a strong opinion on NOT being self hosted. May be I am just a rebel ( I can be a bit like that!)

I honestly think that self hosted is a thing of the past, and not necessary for all blogger. It might be necessary if you want to be a Tony Robbins or Gabby Bernstein and you have a team to manage your blog and other items.

So I leave you with my thoughts, my non expert thoughts. For you to do your own investigation and make your own choices.