WordPress.com offers five plans tailored to meet specific needs.
Free
Price: Free
Best for: Personal use
WordPress has a free plan however it is extremely limited. The plan includes an SSL certificate, one gigabyte of storage and access to dozens of free themes, but that is about it. This plan is best for those who want a bare-bones website.
Personal
Price: $4 per month, billed yearly
Best for: Personal use
WordPress’ starter plan is great for personal use. At $4 a month (if billed annually), the plan includes 6GB of storage, a free domain for a year, about a dozen free themes, best-in-class hosting, SSL encryption for security, the ability to accept payments and unlimited email support. This is the perfect plan for a simple website or portfolio. Users are able to remove the ads that are included in the free version but still contain the WordPress.com branding in the footer.
The downside of the Personal plan is the limited customization options, advanced SEO tools and lack of premium themes and plugins mean the site cannot be fully customized. Besides offering a portfolio, creating a paid newsletter or subscriber-only content, there is not much else users can do with this plan.
Premium
Price: $8 per month, billed yearly
Best for: Freelancers
At $8 a month (if billed annually), the Premium plan begins to unlock customization features lacking in the Personal plan. The extra features include access to advanced theme templates including templates specifically tailored for businesses. Premium plan users can also customize their selected themes with extended color schemes, background designs and complete control over CSS.
The plan also unlocks useful marketing and monetization tools such as the ability to accept PayPal payments, the ability to schedule social media updates, Google Analytics integration for a deeper understanding of website visitors and customers and VideoPress support to easily upload videos.
Business
Price: $25 per month, billed yearly
Best for: Small businesses
The Business plan is a great fit for small businesses that want constant branding on their websites. At $25 per month (if billed annually), the plan allows for further customization with the ability to install custom plugins and themes purchased elsewhere or created specifically for your company. Business plan users also receive SFTP (SSH File Transfer Protocol) and Database access, which gives them complete control of their website.
This plan also comes with a huge jump in storage—200GB up from 13GB with the Premium plan. Other upgraded features include the ability to upload custom themes and the removal of the WordPress.com branding from the website footer, the addition of SEO tools to enhance site content for better search engine results and one-click rewind to restore the site to an exact moment in time.
Commerce
Price: $45 per month, billed yearly
Best for: Online stores
The Commerce plan is for businesses looking to sell products or services online. The plan has all the advanced features of the Business plan with the addition of tools specifically for online stores. The plan includes the ability to accept payments from more than 60 countries, the ability to add and sell an unlimited number of products and a set of ecommerce marketing tools and integrations with top shipping carriers. WordPress’ Store Setup Checklist helps you easily add products, create shipping zones, set up taxes, select payment gateway options, customize your theme and more.
Paying for a full year upfront will cost $540 ($45 per month), which may feel like a large commitment. The savings may be worth it, however, as the month-to-month payment option is $50 per month, or $708 over the course of the year.