Why a Self-Hosted WordPress.org Site is Preferable for Your Business than a Free WordPress.com Site?

Before we set off the discussion, let us know the difference between a self-hosted WordPress.org site and a free WordPress.com site. The prime difference is that you can customize and modify the former to any extent whereas the latter doesn't let you do it. Also, if you need to download WordPress files then you can do it from WordPress.org.

Here we discuss few reasons why WordPress specialists recommend having a WordPress website from WordPress.org rather than from WordPress.com:

1. Full theme and plugin support

With WordPress.org you get full control over your themes and plugins as you can either use free ones or install paid premium ones. You can customize and modify them as per your wish. Whereas, in a WordPress.com site you can only select from a set of free themes and moreover, you cannot modify any fonts, styles, colours or layouts on your web pages.

2. Complete marketing control

To reach out to your audience, increase traffic to your site or grow your customer base, you would need to market yourself which could be anything like signing up forms to subscribe your blog posts or newsletter to creating accounts for customers to have access to your products.

With a self-hosted website you can utilize all these marketing options through theme features and plugins. On the other hand, with a free one from WordPress.com you can at the most get your customers to sign up for blog subscription or contact form.

3. Monetize your website

When you are investing on a website, it is important that you derive some returns from it so that you can at least offset hosting and domain costs and the easiest way to realize that is by advertising from it.

With a self hosted one you are free to advertise in any way, either by placing Google AdSense ads or by any other type of link-based, text-based, or display advertising from anywhere your web pages.

However, with free WordPress.com sites you are not allowed to place any advertising unless your web content has 25,000 pageviews per month. Even if you achieve that many pageviews, you would be open to few options under WordPress Ad Control feature.

4. Control size and speed

Having the option to choose the best web hosting for your website means a lot for your business and it is possible when you opt for WordPress.org one. You are free to decide how much space to purchase for your website which in turn would impact optimization of your web pages for search engines as website speed is crucial for SEO. Moreover, you can select your email preferences and security for your website.

Furthermore, you can avail the benefit of setting up WordPress managed hosting which provides servers built for WordPress sites, updates version of your WordPress and plugins, repairs problems if at all they arise and also supports automatic back up of your site so that there is never any loss of data.

5. Optimize for search engines

As per data from Moz, primary domains usually out-rank subdomains and free website platforms in search engine rankings. So, if you use WordPress.com's free service then your website will be on a subdomain like mysite.wordpress.com rather than primary domain like, mysite.com.

Meanwhile, you can optimize every single page of your self-hosted website for the keywords you want it to rank for which is not applicable for free ones from WordPress.com.

From the above discussion, you might have well understood the ways you can benefit from owning a self-hosted WordPress.org site but you must keep in mind that you must have necessary funds for the services you would need for your self-hosted site. That can be managed by monetizing your web pages as discussed above. Moreover, for making the most out of your business website you may need PHP or CSS coding knowledge. For that rely on WordPress specialists to get professional and cost-effective solution.

View more information on Developpement Wordpress, Website Developpement Specialist and Wordpress Specialiste.

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