WordPress.com and WordPress.org
WordPress is a publishing platform that makes it easy for anyone to publish online, and proudly powers millions of websites. It comes in two flavors: the fully hosted WordPress.com, and the self-hosted version, whose software is available for free at WordPress.org.
| WordPress.com Focus on your beautiful content, and let us handle the rest. |
WordPress.com Business Plan Get the best of both worlds: the carefree ease of a managed platform while you focus on your content. |
WordPress.org Get your hands dirty, and host your website yourself. |
| Get Started | Start with Business | Visit WordPress.org |
| Premium hosting, security, and backups are included. You can even upgrade to a custom domain, like YourGroovyDomain.com. | Your custom domain, premium hosting, security, and backups are included. As secure as WordPress.com, as versatile as self-hosted. | You’ll need to find a host, and perform backups and maintenance yourself. We offer VaultPress for security and backups. |
| Choose from hundreds of beautiful themes. Make it your own with Custom Design. | Choose and customize any of our hundreds of beautiful themes or install your own custom theme. | Install custom themes. Build your own with PHP and CSS. |
| Integrate your site with Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and other social networks. | Sharing functionality is included, be it Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and other social networks. | Install a plugin, like Jetpack, to enable sharing functionality on your site. |
| Popular features like sharing, stats, comments, and polls are included. There’s no need to install plugins. | Popular features like sharing, stats, comments, and polls are included. You can install plugins to extend your site’s capabilities (e.g. to create your own WooCommerce store). |
Install plugins to extend your site’s functionality. |
| Personal support and the WordPress.com forums are always available. | A personal setup session, live chat and email support 24/7/360. | Visit the WordPress.org support forums for assistance. |
| You must register for an account on WordPress.com and abide by our Terms of Service. | You must register for an account on WordPress.com and abide by our Terms of Service. | No registration with WordPress.org is required. |
| Get Started | Start with Business | Visit WordPress.org |
WordPress is a community-driven project that’s developed by and for people like you. Many thousands of people from around the world contribute to the project, and many millions of websites are powered by it — 30% of the web, in all. From large company websites to personal blogs, and everything in between, everyone can publish with WordPress.
There are two ways to get started with WordPress. You can host a WordPress installation on your own server, or you can host your site here at WordPress.com and let us handle the technical bits.
Hosting your own WordPress site can be fun and rewarding, but it also requires some technical knowledge and places more responsibility on you, the publisher. You can download the WordPress software for free at http://wordpress.org, but it must be installed on a web server before it will work. You will need to research and install your own themes and plugins. Many hosting providers offer a one-click installation of WordPress — here are a few examples. There are also many web development agencies that specialize in building WordPress sites.
WordPress.com is different. Here at WordPress.com, you don’t have to download software, pay for hosting, or manage a web server. You can instead focus on creating wonderful content, and let us handle the rest!
WordPress.com is a great choice for bloggers, photographers, artists, plumbers, doctors, restaurateurs — almost anyone. However, techies that prefer to maintain full control over their code, should consider hosting their own WordPress installation. We provide a large number of themes and built-in plugin functionality so you won’t need to upload your own – though you can, if you are a business plan owner.
Publishing your website is always free here at WordPress.com, and premium upgrades are available to help you supercharge your site. These upgrades let you use a custom domain (like YourGroovyDomain.com), extensively customize the appearance of your site, upload HD video, and lots more.
WordPress.com is a commercial enterprise owned by Automattic, a company started by the founding developer of WordPress and staffed by full-time developers, designers, and support engineers. Automatticians (employees of Automattic) regularly contribute back to the WordPress software so that the entire community can benefit.
Not sure which way to go? Find out more about WordPress.com and WordPress.org to see which is best-suited for you.
Versatile plans and pricing
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Free
Best for students
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Personal
Best for hobbyists
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Premium
Best for freelancers
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Business
Best for small businesses
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