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How to Install Plugins in WordPress Without a Business Plan: A Step-by-Step Guide

More Wordpress Editors

Updated on: June 18, 2023

Installing plugins in WordPress is an essential task that can help you add extra functionality to your website. However, if you’re using WordPress without a business plan, you may find it challenging to install plugins. Fortunately, there are several ways to install plugins in WordPress without having a business plan.

One way to install plugins in WordPress without a business plan is by using the built-in plugin installer. To access this feature, go to your WordPress dashboard and select the “Plugins” link from the left-hand sidebar. From there, you can search for the plugin you want to install and click the “Install Now” button. This method is straightforward and convenient, making it an ideal option for beginners.

Another way to install plugins in WordPress without a business plan is by manually uploading the plugin to your WordPress site. This method involves downloading the plugin from a trusted source and uploading it to your WordPress site using an FTP client. While this method may seem more complicated, it allows you to install plugins that are not available in the WordPress plugin repository.

Understanding WordPress Plans

WordPress is a popular content management system that offers different plans to cater to the needs of its users. The plans include free, personal, premium, and business. Each plan has its unique features and limitations.

If you are using the free plan, you can only use the basic features of WordPress. You cannot install plugins or themes, and you have limited storage space. On the other hand, the personal plan allows you to install custom plugins and themes, but you are still limited in terms of storage space and bandwidth.

The premium plan offers more advanced features, including more storage space, advanced customization options, and access to premium themes and plugins. However, you still cannot install custom plugins or themes.

The business plan is the most advanced plan offered by WordPress. It offers all the features of the premium plan, but you can install custom plugins and themes. You also get access to priority support and the ability to monetize your website.

It is important to note that WordPress.com and WordPress.org are two different platforms. WordPress.com is a fully hosted platform, while WordPress.org is a self-hosted platform. If you are using WordPress.com, you will need to upgrade to the business plan to install custom plugins and themes. However, if you are using WordPress.org, you can install custom plugins and themes without any restrictions.

If you are using managed WordPress hosting, you may have additional limitations depending on your hosting plan. Some hosting providers may restrict certain plugins or themes due to security concerns. It is important to check with your hosting provider to ensure that you can install the plugins and themes you need.

In summary, understanding the different WordPress plans is crucial in determining the features and limitations of your website. If you want to install custom plugins and themes without any restrictions, you will need to use the self-hosted WordPress.org platform or upgrade to the business plan on WordPress.com.

Why You Might Need Plugins

Plugins are essential for any website built on WordPress, regardless of whether you have a business plan or not. These tools can help you to customize your website, improve its functionality, and enhance the user experience.

One of the primary reasons you might need plugins is to improve the speed of your website. A slow website can have a significant impact on user experience and can lead to lower search engine rankings. By installing plugins such as WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache, you can optimize your website’s performance and ensure that it loads quickly.

Plugins can also help you to customize your website. If you have a specific idea or design in mind, you can use plugins to add new features and functionality to your website. For example, you can use plugins to add social media buttons, create contact forms, or add a search bar to your website.

Content management is another area where plugins can be useful. Plugins such as Yoast SEO or All in One SEO Pack can help you to optimize your content for search engines, while plugins like Jetpack can help you to manage your website’s security and backups.

In conclusion, plugins are an essential part of any WordPress website, and they can help you to improve your website’s speed, customize its functionality, and manage your content. Whether you have a business plan or not, there are plenty of free and paid plugins available that can help you to take your website to the next level.

Exploring Free and Paid Plugins

Installing plugins in WordPress is an essential part of customizing your website’s functionality. There are plenty of free and paid plugins available that can help you achieve your desired results without having to upgrade to a business plan.

Free Plugins

WordPress.org has a vast repository of free plugins that you can browse and download. These plugins are developed and maintained by the WordPress community, and they cover a wide range of functionality, from SEO optimization to social media integration.

One of the benefits of using free plugins is that they are well-tested and reliable. They are also easy to install and update, and you can find plenty of documentation and support online.

Paid Plugins

If you need more advanced functionality, you can consider purchasing a premium plugin. Paid plugins usually offer more features and customization options than their free counterparts. They are also typically better supported and come with dedicated customer support.

Codecanyon is a popular marketplace for premium WordPress plugins. You can find a wide range of plugins there, from e-commerce solutions to membership plugins. However, it’s important to do your research before purchasing a plugin to ensure that it’s reliable and well-supported.

Choosing the Right Plugin

When choosing a plugin, it’s important to consider your specific needs and requirements. Here are some factors to consider:

Compatibility: Make sure that the plugin is compatible with your version of WordPress and other plugins that you are using.

Ratings and Reviews: Check the ratings and reviews of the plugin to see what other users are saying about it.

Support and Documentation: Make sure that the plugin comes with adequate documentation and support.

Features: Consider the features that the plugin offers and whether they meet your needs.

In conclusion, there are plenty of free and paid plugins available that can help you customize your WordPress website’s functionality. By considering your specific needs and requirements, you can choose the right plugin for your website.

Finding Plugins on WordPress

WordPress offers a vast selection of plugins to choose from, making it easy to find plugins that suit your website’s needs. The WordPress dashboard is the central hub for managing your website, including installing and managing plugins.

To find plugins, navigate to the WordPress dashboard and click on the “Plugins” tab on the left-hand side of the screen. Here, you can browse through the featured plugins, popular plugins, and recommended plugins. You can also search for plugins by entering keywords in the search bar.

The WordPress plugin directory is another excellent resource for finding plugins. It is a repository of thousands of free plugins that you can browse by category, popularity, or rating. You can also use the search bar to find plugins by entering keywords.

Another option is to use a plugin repository like WP Super Cache or Add to WP. These repositories automatically install any new updates for you, and they are both free to use. Additionally, you can use plugin search engines like pluginindex.org or wpmudev.org to find plugins specific to your needs.

It is essential to note that not all plugins are created equal. Before installing a plugin, it is crucial to read reviews, check the plugin’s compatibility with your version of WordPress, and verify that the plugin is actively maintained and updated.

In conclusion, finding plugins in WordPress is a straightforward process that can be done through the WordPress dashboard, the WordPress plugin directory, or plugin repositories. It is essential to take the time to research and verify the quality and compatibility of plugins before installing them on your website.

How to Install Plugins in WordPress

Installing plugins in WordPress is a simple process that can be done in a few easy steps. However, if you’re using the free version of WordPress, you may not have access to all the features of the platform. This means that you may not be able to install certain plugins without upgrading to a premium plan.

To install a plugin in WordPress, you can either search for it in the WordPress plugin repository or upload it manually. To search for a plugin, go to the ‘Plugins’ tab in your WordPress dashboard and click ‘Add New’. From there, you can search for the plugin you want and click ‘Install Now’ to install it.

If you have a plugin that you’ve downloaded from a third-party website, you can upload it manually by going to the ‘Plugins’ tab in your dashboard and clicking ‘Add New’. From there, click ‘Upload Plugin’ and select the file you want to upload. Once the upload is complete, click ‘Activate’ to activate the plugin.

It’s important to note that not all plugins are compatible with all versions of WordPress. Before you install a plugin, make sure that it’s compatible with your version of WordPress and that you have the necessary permissions to install it.

In summary, installing plugins in WordPress is a straightforward process that can be done in a few easy steps. Whether you’re searching for a plugin in the WordPress repository or uploading it manually, make sure that it’s compatible with your version of WordPress and that you have the necessary permissions to install it.

Activating and Managing Plugins

After installing a plugin, you will need to activate it. To activate a plugin, navigate to the Plugins section of your WordPress dashboard, find the plugin you want to activate, and click the Activate button. Once activated, you can manage the plugin’s settings by clicking on the Settings link that appears under the plugin’s name.

Managing plugins is a crucial part of maintaining your WordPress site. It is recommended that you keep your plugins updated to ensure that they are compatible with the latest version of WordPress and to avoid security vulnerabilities. To manage your plugins, go to the Plugins section of your WordPress dashboard. From there, you can activate, deactivate, update, and delete plugins.

In addition to managing plugins, you can also search for new plugins to install. To do this, go to the Plugins section of your WordPress dashboard and click on the Add New button. From there, you can search for plugins by keyword, author, or tag. Once you find a plugin you want to install, click the Install Now button.

It is important to note that not all plugins are created equal. Some plugins may slow down your site or cause conflicts with other plugins. It is recommended that you research plugins before installing them and only install plugins from reputable sources.

In summary, activating and managing plugins is an essential part of maintaining your WordPress site. Keep your plugins updated, manage them regularly, and only install plugins from reputable sources to ensure the best performance and security for your site.

Using Third-Party Plugins

If you’re looking to install plugins in WordPress without a business plan, you can use third-party plugins. These plugins are available outside of the WordPress repository and can be installed manually. However, it’s important to be cautious when using third-party plugins, as they may not be as secure or reliable as those available in the WordPress repository.

One popular third-party plugin for WordPress is SiteGround Starter Plugin. This plugin includes a variety of features to help you get started with your WordPress site, including a one-click installer for WordPress, a free SSL certificate, and more. SiteGround also offers hosting services that are compatible with WordPress, making it a great option if you’re looking for a reliable hosting provider.

When using third-party plugins, it’s important to ensure that you’re downloading them from a reputable source. Look for plugins that have been reviewed and tested by other users, and check the plugin’s ratings and reviews before installing it on your site.

Another important consideration when using third-party plugins is your domain name. Make sure that you have a unique domain name that is easy to remember and relevant to your site’s content. This will help users find your site and improve your search engine rankings.

Overall, using third-party plugins can be a great way to enhance your WordPress site without a business plan. Just be sure to do your research and choose reputable plugins that are compatible with your site.

Overcoming Upload Limitations

One of the limitations of not having a WordPress business plan is the upload limit. WordPress.com users are restricted to a maximum upload limit of 3GB, which can be a problem for those who want to install multiple plugins. However, there are a few ways to overcome this limitation.

One option is to use a redirect service such as Dropbox or Google Drive to host your plugins. This way, you can upload your plugins to your Dropbox or Google Drive account and then link to them from your WordPress site. This method can help you save space on your WordPress site and avoid hitting the upload limit.

Another option is to upgrade your web hosting provider. Many web hosting providers offer plans with higher upload limits or even unlimited storage. Upgrading your hosting plan can help you overcome the upload limit and give you more flexibility in terms of the number of plugins you can install.

Lastly, you can consider switching to a self-hosted WordPress.org platform. With a self-hosted WordPress site, you have complete control over your site and can install as many plugins as you want without any upload limitations. However, self-hosting requires more technical knowledge and can be more expensive than using WordPress.com.

In summary, while not having a WordPress business plan can limit your upload capabilities, there are ways to overcome this limitation. Using a redirect service, upgrading your web hosting provider, or switching to a self-hosted WordPress.org platform can all help you install plugins without any upload limitations.

Using FTP for Plugin Installation

FTP (File Transfer Protocol) is a method of transferring files between a local computer and a remote server. It can be used to install WordPress plugins without the need for a business plan.

To use FTP for plugin installation, you will need an FTP client. Some popular FTP clients include FileZilla, Cyberduck, and WinSCP. Once you have an FTP client installed, follow these steps:

Connect to your website via FTP by entering your website’s FTP credentials in the FTP client. You can get these credentials from your hosting provider or your website’s administrator.

Navigate to the wp-content/plugins directory on your website.

Download the plugin zip file to your local computer.

Extract the plugin files from the zip file.

Upload the extracted plugin folder to the wp-content/plugins directory on your website via FTP.

Once the plugin is uploaded, log in to your WordPress dashboard and go to the Plugins section.

Find the plugin you just uploaded and click the Activate button to activate the plugin.

Using FTP for plugin installation is a great option if you are having trouble installing plugins through the WordPress dashboard. It can also be useful if you need to install a large number of plugins at once, as you can upload multiple plugins at the same time via FTP.

However, it’s important to note that using FTP for plugin installation can be more complicated than using the WordPress dashboard. If you are not familiar with FTP or are uncomfortable using it, it may be best to stick with the WordPress dashboard for plugin installation.

Advanced Plugin Installation Methods

For those who are comfortable with more advanced methods of plugin installation, there are a few options available. These methods require a bit more technical knowledge, but can be useful in certain situations.

WP-CLI is a command-line interface for WordPress that allows you to perform various tasks from the command line. One of the tasks that you can perform with WP-CLI is installing plugins.

To install a plugin with WP-CLI, you’ll need to have SSH access to your server. Once you’re logged into your server via SSH, you can navigate to the root directory of your WordPress installation and run the following command:

Replace “plugin-name” with the name of the plugin that you want to install. WP-CLI will automatically download and install the plugin for you.

If you don’t have access to WP-CLI, another option is to install plugins via SFTP. SFTP stands for Secure File Transfer Protocol, and it allows you to transfer files between your computer and your server securely.

To install a plugin via SFTP, you’ll need to download the plugin files from the WordPress plugin repository. Once you’ve downloaded the files, you can use an SFTP client to transfer the files to your server.

To do this, connect to your server via SFTP and navigate to the wp-content/plugins directory in your WordPress installation. Upload the plugin files to this directory, and then activate the plugin from the WordPress dashboard.

While the methods outlined in this section require a bit more technical knowledge, they can be useful in certain situations. WP-CLI is a powerful tool that can save you time and effort when installing plugins, while SFTP allows you to install plugins when you don’t have access to WP-CLI.

Security Concerns with Plugins

Plugins are a great way to add functionality to your WordPress site, but they can also pose a security risk. It is important to be mindful of these risks when installing and using plugins.

One of the biggest security concerns with plugins is that they can introduce vulnerabilities to your site. This can happen if the plugin is poorly coded or if it has not been updated in a while. Hackers can exploit these vulnerabilities to gain access to your site or to inject malicious code.

Another risk is that plugins can conflict with each other or with your WordPress theme. This can cause your site to crash or to display incorrectly. It is important to test plugins thoroughly before installing them on your live site to avoid these issues.

To minimize these risks, it is important to only install plugins from trusted sources. The WordPress repository is a good place to start, as all plugins are reviewed for security before being added to the repository. You can also check reviews and ratings from other users to get an idea of the quality of the plugin.

Additionally, it is important to keep your plugins updated. Developers release updates to fix security vulnerabilities and to improve performance. By keeping your plugins up-to-date, you can ensure that any security issues are addressed promptly.

Finally, it is a good idea to limit the number of plugins you use. The more plugins you have installed, the greater the risk of conflicts and vulnerabilities. Only install plugins that you really need and remove any that you are no longer using.

By being mindful of these security concerns and taking steps to minimize the risks, you can safely use plugins to add functionality to your WordPress site.

Getting Support for Plugin Issues

If you encounter any issues with a plugin, getting support can be essential in resolving the problem. Here are some tips to help you get the support you need:

1. Check the Plugin Documentation

Before reaching out to support, check the plugin documentation. Many plugins have extensive documentation that can help you troubleshoot common issues. The documentation may also include step-by-step guides on how to use the plugin’s features.

2. Contact Customer Support

If you can’t find a solution in the documentation, contact customer support. Most plugin developers offer customer support through email, chat, or a ticket system. Make sure you have your username and password to access your WordPress site ready before contacting support.

3. Be Clear and Specific

When contacting support, be clear and specific about the issue you’re experiencing. Include any error messages you’re seeing and steps you’ve taken to try to resolve the issue. The more information you can provide, the easier it will be for support to help you.

4. Trust the Experts

When contacting support, trust the experts. They have extensive knowledge of the plugin and can help you resolve the issue quickly. Don’t be afraid to ask for help, and follow their instructions carefully.

By following these tips, you can get the support you need to resolve any issues you encounter with your WordPress plugins. Remember to check the documentation first, contact customer support if needed, be clear and specific about the issue, and trust the experts.

In conclusion, installing plugins in WordPress without a business plan is possible, but it comes with some risks. You can use the built-in plugin installer to add plugins to your WordPress site. However, some plugins may not be available for free, so you may need to purchase them or find a suitable alternative.

It is important to carefully review the plugin’s terms of service before installing it. Some plugins may have restrictions on how they can be used, and violating these terms can result in your site being suspended or even permanently banned.

Additionally, keep in mind that installing too many plugins can slow down your site’s performance. Only install plugins that you really need, and make sure to regularly remove any plugins that are no longer necessary.

If you are unsure about how to install plugins without a business plan, consider consulting with a WordPress expert or reaching out to the WordPress community for assistance. With the right knowledge and tools, you can safely and effectively add plugins to your WordPress site without a business plan.

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How do i get a free wordpress business plan.

If you’re thinking about starting your own WordPress business, it can be helpful to have a business plan in place. A business plan can help you organize your thoughts, track your progress, and make sure your business is on track.

There are a number of resources available to help you create a free WordPress business plan. Here are four tips for getting started:.

1. Start by gathering information. The first step in creating a free WordPress business plan is gathering information.

This includes gathering information about your business, your market, and your competition. You can find this information by doing research online, talking to friends, or by reading business books.

2. Organize your information.

Once you have your information, you need to organize it into a format that will make sense to you. You can use a spreadsheet to organize your information, or you can use a journal to track your progress.

3. Make a timeline.

Once you have your information organized, you need to create a timeline for your business. This timeline will show you how long it will take you to achieve your goals, and it will also show you how you will progress along the way.

4. Get financing.

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Hosting VS Blogger

Web Hosting & Website Builder Comparison

WordPress Business Plan Review

Here is an in-depth WordPress Business plan review! Let’s find out if the Business plan is worth it for your website. Are you thinking about upgrading from your free WordPress plan? The WordPress Business plan is the largest of all of the  WordPress.com  plans. If you desire to create a website with WP.com, then this would be the best plan to choose because it comes with the most perks. Although it comes with the most perks, is it the best overall choice? 

This is what we are going to answer today. Before you pay $300 for a website, make sure to read this review article. I will help you with making the best choice and below I will help you with creating a successful blog site today.  

WordPress business plan price 

You save more money when you self-host your website instead of using the WordPress.com Business plan. 

How much is the WordPress business plan cost? Let’s find out!

The Business plan is one of the most expensive website builders that you will find. Is WordPress business worth it at $25 a month? To me this is a ridiculous price for a beginner to pay to have a website. 

The WordPress Premium plan costs $8 a month . The Business plan is $17 per month more than the WordPress Premium blog, which is the most popular paid plan that WordPress offers. The Personal plan costs $4 a month. The Business plan is $21 more than the WordPress Personal plan. Yearly you will be paying $32 with Personal. You will be paying $96 a year with Premium. With the Business plan, you will be paying $300 a year.

Instead of paying these prices, you are better off self-hosting your website with  SiteGround . It makes more sense. You can get web hosting with SiteGround for as low as $6.99 a month with their Startup web hosting plan.

Would you rather pay $84 a year or $300 a year? SiteGround has other plans such as their GrowBig plan. GrowBig is currently 60% off and costs $9.99/mo. Once again, would you rather pay $120 a year or $300? The last shared hosting plan with SiteGround is their GoGeek plan which can be purchased at $14.99 a month. The GoGeek plan is over $120 cheaper than the Business plan. It is wiser to self-host because you will receive the perks of self-hosting and you will pay less than the Business plan with an affordable monthly web hosting package such as SiteGround. 

Let’s do one last comparison with the top website builders. 

Wix  costs anywhere from $14 to $39 a month. Wix has gotten expensive throughout the years. All of their plans are over $10 a month and they come with website limitations.

Weebly  costs anywhere from $6 to $26 a month. Prices cost more when you pay monthly instead of annually.

Strikingly  can be purchased for $8 to $49 a month.

Duda’s  Business plan costs $14.25/mo and their Business + Ecommerce plan costs $44/mo.

Shopify  is one of the most expensive ecommerce platforms in the world. Their lowest plan will cost you $29 a month. Their plans range from $29 to $299 per month.

SiteGround  – Not only is SiteGround cheaper than the WordPress Business plan, but at $6.99 a month it is also cheaper than the top website builders in the world.

Start SiteGround here (60% off web hosting discount)

WordPress business plan features

–  When you self-host your WordPress website you will have more features available to you.

For the most part WordPress.com sites include only basic features and widgets that you would expect for a site builder. There is nothing that wows you with any of the other WordPress plans besides Business. All WordPress plans come with Jetpack Essential Features. This is a plugin that includes SEO, spam protection, social sharing, site stats, and more. WordPress comes with built-in features such as an importer, infinite scroll, related posts, email subscription, contact forms, security scanning, video planning, backup & export, and a few more basic plugins.

WordPress Business has just given their users the ability to install custom plugins on their site. This is the only plan that allows you to install custom plugins.In order for your Business site to be compatible with plugins a domain or a subdomain must be added to your website. If you have multiple administrators only the one who owns the plan will be able to install plugins for the first time. When you self-host your WordPress website you will receive the full of extent of the WordPress features list. You will even receive features from your web hosting company.

Features might be the biggest reason that top bloggers and website owners self-host. It is almost impossible to find a full-time blogger who makes over $50,000 a year that doesn’t self-host his/her WordPress website.

SiteGround comes packed with features to increase your search engine presence and offers features such as cPanel & SSH Access that will make life much easier for you. cPanel in itself comes with features such as file manager, FTP connections, file restoration, backup wizard, zone editor, redirects, SSH access, bandwidth usage, and more. WordPress.org  users are given over 50,000 free plugins that they can install onto their website. To get access to these plugins you must go the plugins section in your WordPress dashboard.

You can activate their featured plugins, popular plugins, recommended plugins or you can search for a plugin that you might desire. For example, let’s say that you wanted to add customer reviews onto your website, which is known to boost sales. All that you would have to do is type in customer reviews in the search box and install one of the many plugins. If you wanted to create a community site similar to Facebook or other social media platforms you could install a plugin such as ProfileGrid.

This plugin allows you to easily create user profiles, groups, communities, paid memberships, directories, and more. If you wanted a coupon code for your business you can install plugins such as Events Manager, WP Coupons and Deals, Coupon Creator, and more. If you wanted to turn your website into an ecommerce platform or if you wanted a section to have an online store, then you could easily download the Woocommerce plugin. WordPress.org is filled with endless possibilities and you are given more opportunities to increase revenue than with any other platform. 

WordPress websites that are self-hosted rank better than WordPress sites hosted with the Business plan.

  SEO might be the most important factor when it comes to having a successful online business. Positive SEO brings more visitors to your website, it gives your website credibility when you rank above the competition, it increases the popularity of your brand, it increases your ROI, and it helps you to understand your visitors and customers. Millions of people have a website, but they never rank and this leads to discouragement and quitting on your dreams. Make sure that you start with a platform that gives you the best SEO to succeed.

Most professional bloggers self-host because when you self-host you are given the full extent of WordPress’s capabilities. With WordPress.org you can install various SEO extensions to increase your site speed and make your website more SEO efficient. You are given plugins such as LiteSpeed Cache, Hummingbird Page Speed Optimization, Autoptimize, Speed Booster Pack, Yoast, WP Meta SEO, and more.

The revamped Business plan now gives you plugins so you are able to install SEO plugins and SEO tools as well. What the Business plan does not give you is the SEO features of SiteGround. SiteGround offers various built-in features to make your website run more efficiently. With SiteGround you are given some of the best server technology such as NGINX server speed, the newest network protocol, top speed PHP execution, multiple data centers, and more. All of these hosting features contribute to an 300ms average load response time which is among the best in the industry. 

Self-hosting gives you the ability to host multiple websites. 

WordPress Business does not allow you to host multiple websites and this is one of their drawbacks if you have a growing business. Most business owners have more than one website. One website can be used to promote one website and increase sales and another website can be used as a backup site. You can even use another website to start working in a different niche. There are many reasons to have more than one website.

With SiteGround you will be able to have more than one domain when you select their GrowBig or GoGeek plan. Maybe you might only desire one website now but I guarantee that you will create more sites later. Make sure that you don’t put a block to all of your ideas. I never thought I would have more than one website when I created my first site. A couple of weeks later I already had about 3 other sites in my mind that I was ready to create. Never put limits on your dreams!

Start a website with SiteGround . 

WordPress business plan themes

Self-hosting gives you a larger selection of WordPress themes. 

One of the most exciting times for me as a site owner is when it is time for me to get the perfect design for my website. You are going to want everything set up to your liking. WordPress Premium and Business are similar. They give you unlimited access to their Premium themes. However, these themes are basic in comparison to the library of themes that are available to you when you self-host. Not only are they basic, but you might end up paying $50 or more for one of their themes. These themes are not the best for SEO and you will not have FTP access.

When you use WordPress.org you will have 2000+ free themes to choose from. If you don’t want a free theme, then you can purchase a theme from third-party theme sites such as Theme Forest, Themler, ThemeIsle, Rocket Theme, and more. WordPress.com even gives you more SEO themes such as Genesis. I recommend Genesis to new bloggers who want to rank well. The top bloggers are using Genesis which is saying something about the SEO functionality of their Framework.Lastly, when you use WordPress.org you can go beyond the average custom CSS changes. WordPress offers user management, HTTP requests, translations, databases, URL routing, and more. 

Self-hosting gives you phone support through your web hosting company. 

None of the WordPress plans give you phone support. This is dangerous. Imagine if you are operating a business that is generating $3000 a month and out of the blue your website goes offline. You are going to want to talk to someone ASAP to fix the issue with your website. WordPress does give you a community forum, email, and live chat support. However, a growing business desires more than email and live chat. Believe me, you want phone support!

Phone support gives you a sense of security as your problem is being resolved. Phone support offers faster response to your issues instead of having to wait for someone to write out ways to fix your website problems. Through  SiteGround  you are given 24/7 phone support for your website. You are also given anti-hack systems and 24/7 ticket and email support. 

WordPress Business limits ways that you can make money.

The more monetizing strategies available to you the more money that you can possibly make. With the Business plan you can add ads to your website through their AdWords program, but that is about out. With their Business plan, you will not be able to use AdSense, Infolinks, Chitika, etc. When you self-host you own that site and you can do whatever you want on your website.  

Is WordPress business plan worth it?

Although there are many disadvantages of using Business such as the cost, the small number of themes, etc. there are some advantages compared to the other plans. The advantages of using WordPress Business vs their free plan or other plans include: the ability to remove WordPress.com branding, you will receive Google analytics integration, you are able to attend live courses, your site will have ecommerce abilities, you are given SEO tools, you have unlimited storage space, etc. WordPress Business even gives you a free trial and a 30-day refund policy. Although there are some advantages, you could easily do the same thing when you self-host at a much more affordable price.  

Is it easy to create a website with WordPress?

If you are a beginner, then you don’t have to worry about ease of use. You don’t have to have coding skills to use WP. WordPress is by far easier to use than popular drag and drop website builders and it is also easier to use than Joomla and Drupal. Even if you are a beginner you can easily create a WordPress website in under 5 minutes, which is not an exaggeration.  SiteGround  gives you the option of having WordPress preinstalled which saves you time. Overall using WordPress.com is the cheaper option, it providers more features, and more support for your website. SiteGround gives you a large number of website tutorials if you ever need any help with anything. Below I will guide you through a quick website setup guide. 

Create your online business now  – 5 Minutes

Start SiteGround here at (60% off) .

• Go to and click on the WordPress services tab.
• Follow the setup process.
• Choose the preinstall wizard option.
• Create your WordPress username and password.
• Log into your dashboard.
• Install your desired themes and plugins.
• You’ve done it!

 Quote – “The important thing is not being afraid to take a chance. Remember, the greatest failure is to not try. Once you find something you love to do, be the best at doing it.” – Debbi Fields, found Mrs. Fields Cookies

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WordPress.com Business Plan Review – What You Get And Is It Worth It?

By joe fylan.

• Last updated: May 30, 2023

If you’re an experienced WordPress user, you’ve probably disregarded hosting your website with WordPress.com .

However, thanks to the launch of the WordPress.com ‘Business’ plan , many of the reasons why WordPress.com has been overlooked as a serious web host have been overcome (such as the ability to use your own plugins and themes, for example).

Not only that, but, in addition to overcoming the drawbacks of hosting your website with WordPress.com, the Business plan also includes some genuinely useful features and functionalities.

Below, we’ll explore all of the pros and cons of this service to help you to decide if this really is the best host for your website. Plus, we’ll also take a look at some results from our own independent website load speed tests and performance monitoring so you can see how it compares to other options.

Those who are brand new to WordPress may be wondering why hosting a website with WordPress.com — a company deeply connected with the founding and development of the WordPress software — isn’t the obvious choice. Below, we’ll help to explain why this is the case, but also why — with the arrival of the Business plan — many of the usual objections don’t really apply anymore!

WordPress.com hosting , and their Business plan in particular, still isn’t for everyone, though. So, to ensure this review is entirely balanced (as all good reviews should be, of course), we’ll also go into the cons/negatives of the service.

Let’s begin…

Table of Contents

Freedom to use your choice of themes and plugins, website creation help, website backups and site restoration, hosting from wordpress experts, no bandwidth limits, access to premium themes and plugins, support for custom code, best-of-both-worlds approach to content publishing and website management, access to server space and databases, what about the other wordpress.com hosting plans, why not just use regular web hosting, plugin restrictions and conditions, transferable client sites, multiple website environments, ecommerce support, lightweight theme speed test results, multipurpose theme speed test results, wordpress.com page speed summary, wordpress.com business plan vs the competition, wordpress.com load impact performance testing, wordpress.com uptime test results, wordpress.com business hosting technical details, final thoughts, main features of wordpress.com business hosting.

Before we get to the reasons why you may not want to sign up with WordPress.com Business hosting, here are some of the best reasons to consider this option for your website.

Being able to use any theme you like or install all of the plugins you want may not sound like much to anyone who’s hosted a WordPress website with companies such as Bluehost , GoDaddy or SiteGround ( read our comparison post here ).

However, up until relatively recently, if you wanted to use the WordPress.com hosting services, you were severely limited when it came to which themes and plugins you could use on your website.

Now, though, customers of the WordPress.com Business hosting plan can not only search for and install themes and plugins directly from within their WordPress dashboard, but they can also upload themes and plugins from their computer — including those they’ve purchased directly from other sources, or even ones they’ve created themselves.

There are some plugins that aren’t allowed , such as WP Super Cache, BackWPup and Advanced Database Cleaner. However, having a list of prohibited plugins is a pretty common practice with many managed WordPress hosts, including WP Engine and Kinsta (read our comparison here ), who also ban plugins that might negatively affect the service they provide.

Fortunately, the features of the banned plugins, such as caching, website backups and other optimization tools are available to you as part of the WordPress.com Business hosting plan. Because of this, you’re not really missing out on any essential functionality. Instead, you’re just getting access to these features directly from your web host, rather than from third-party plugin developers. This could even be a benefit, because if anything goes wrong, or if you need help, you’ve only got one company to deal with, rather than multiple providers.

Whether you’re new to creating websites or you need some inspiration for your next project, you should find the WordPress.com website creation wizard useful. Although you can use the default WordPress user experience that’s available with self-hosted websites, with WordPress.com hosting, you also get the option of walking through the setup process to launch your site.

( click to enlarge )

As well as the helpful checklist, the wizard also lays the foundation for your site by asking what type of project you’re working on. Throughout the wizard, the live chat icon is displayed, giving you a quick way to get help from the support staff should you need it.

After you’ve chosen the type of website you want to create, such as a blog or business site, you can then apply one of the prebuilt styles or demos. There are lots of them to choose from, so, no matter what you’re working on, you should find a relevant option.

Once you’ve defined what type of website you want to create, the wizard will add some content and show you the relevant options related to themes and other design decisions.

You can also quickly choose from the available formatting styles through the wizard, enabling you to change the fonts, colors and other display properties of your site.

Once the site is starting to take shape, you can begin editing the placeholder content and adding your own text through the intuitive interface. Simply click on the text you want to edit, and you can type directly into the page.

Finally, you can choose a domain name or address for your website. The WordPress.com wizard will help you to find a suitable address and domain name extension, and you get the domain name free for the first year as part of the WordPress.com Business plan (although you will have to pay to renew it each following year).

As part of the service, Business plan customers can also schedule a one-on-one session with a member of the WordPress.com support staff to help set up their site and learn more about the WordPress software.

Although you don’t have to use the wizard, as you can see, it’s a comprehensive tool that will help new website owners and WordPress users quickly build the outline of their site. While there are lots of third-party website builder tools for WordPress, it’s nice to have access to one that’s been built by the WordPress team, and that integrates seamlessly into the WordPress software.

Everything’s Managed for You

Not only do they help you to launch your website, but they’ll also manage it for you — or at least many of the most important aspects of running a WordPress website.

What this means in practice is that the WordPress.com team will do their best to ensure your website is running smoothly and securely. So, for example, if your website suddenly becomes popular, maybe after an article has gone viral or your audience has gradually grown, extra server resources will be seamlessly allocated to your site. This is all done without the need to upgrade your plan or move your website, as can be the case with some other hosts.

You can also set the plugins you’ve installed to be automatically updated (although, even if you don’t enable this feature, some plugins will be updated anyway if a security-related fix is made available).

As part of this managed service, your website is automatically backed up each day. Restoring a backup and rewinding your site to one of the backup points is very straightforward, and you can also download the backup files for safekeeping.

As this functionality is provided via the premium VaultPress service, also from Automattic (the company behind WordPress.com, whose founder also helped to create WordPress), you get access to one of the best WordPress backup solutions around as part of the WordPress.com Business plan. If you do download a backup, the extracted archive gives you access to all of the files that make up your website, including the WordPress database.

Another really nice feature of the WordPress.com Business hosting service is that you can view a list of the last thousand activities that have been carried out on your site from your dashboard. This includes who has logged in, when and from which IP address.

Although not everything is logged, a lot of activities are, including plugin-related activity, content creation and deletion, and other changes to your site. From the activity log, it’s possible to rewind to before a previous action was performed.

So, if you’ve accidentally deleted a page, for example, you should be able to effectively undo this action via the activity log. However, you will lose any of the other changes you made to your site since that point.

Although the backups and restore points can be accessed through your website dashboard, if your site is down or unavailable, perhaps due to a fatal error, it’s still possible to use the backup functionality to restore your site to a previous point.

While most web hosts provide some type of backup solution, this VaultPress-powered system from WordPress.com is the most functional and easy to use so far.

Many of the best managed and shared WordPress hosts pride themselves on hiring expert support staff to look after the websites of their customers and provide them with assistance when they need help.

These companies also optimize their servers and the other technology they use to get the best performance out of WordPress.

While that’s great, if you choose to become a WordPress.com Business customer, you’ll effectively be cutting out the middleman and hosting your website directly with the company whose founder helped to create WordPress, and who continues to support the development of this software.

You also get 24/7 access to the WordPress.com support staff, or Happiness Engineers as they like to call them, via the live chat and email ticketing channels. During testing for this WordPress.com Business review, the support staff was both responsive and helpful.

So, in theory, if there’s anyone who knows how to host, manage and support WordPress websites and their owners, it should be WordPress.com.

The WordPress.com and WordPress.org connection doesn’t guarantee a high-end service, though. So, to help establish what type of service customers do get access to, the speed tests, uptime monitoring and load handling results later on in this review will reveal what the actual situation is.

There are no bandwidth or visitor limits in place on the Business plan, something that is pretty rare when it comes to managed WordPress hosting.

The 200 GB storage space is generous too, making the WordPress.com Business plan an attractive option if you want to host large files or receive lots of traffic to your website — especially in this price range.

The WordPress.com plans now also have improved support for hosting podcasts , so, if you’re thinking about starting your own show, this is another reason to consider this host for your website. Video hosting is also well accommodated, thanks to the VideoPress player and support on the Business plan.

Customers on the Business plan (and lower-priced Premium plan) get access to a selection of themes they’d otherwise have to pay to use. At the time of writing, there were more than 200 premium themes to choose from , as well as even more free themes.

The themes cover a wide range of styles and purposes, so, whatever type of website you’re going to build, there’s a good chance you won’t have to pay for a premium theme from elsewhere if you sign up with the Business plan from WordPress.com.

Also, as these themes are available from inside your WordPress.com dashboard, they can be easily accessed and quickly applied to your website. The interface makes it easy to filter the themes by their features and what type of website they’re suited to creating. Furthermore, they’ve all been approved by the WordPress theme review team , so they should have all been produced to a high standard.

However, if access to premium WordPress themes at no extra cost is important to you, then you may be interested to know that WP Engine customers get access to all of the StudioPress themes as part of their hosting plans.

When it comes to premium plugins, Jetpack from Automattic — the company behind WordPress.com — is activated on your site by default. Although Jetpack and its core features are free for anyone to use, customers on the WordPress.com Business plan get access to some of the Jetpack modules from the paid plans , which would cost from $11.97 a month if purchased separately.

Among the features of the Professional Jetpack plan are tools to increase the performance of your site, extra security features, and social media automation functionality. You can find out more about the tools you get access to in our recent guide to the Jetpack plugin .

Of course, as covered earlier, one of the key features of the Business plan, over the cheaper options from WordPress.com, is that you can install your choice of free and paid plugins from other providers.

As well as having the freedom to install your choice of themes and plugins (apart from those in the list of incompatible extensions), as a WordPress.com Business user you can also customize your website through the use of custom code. So, if you want to modify a theme beyond what’s possible through its options and settings, edit an existing plugin or customize the WordPress functionality in some other way, you can do so.

That said, if you really want to make major custom code-related changes to your WordPress website, you should contact the WordPress.com support staff before signing up to discuss your needs and find out if they can be accommodated, just in case they go against the terms of service .

When it comes to managing your WordPress website, including configuring the settings, creating content, and installing plugins and themes, this functionality can be accessed through the WordPress.com custom dashboard.

This WordPress.com dashboard is different from the default dashboard of self-hosted WordPress websites, and it does a good job of simplifying the default WordPress user experience. However, you can also use the default WordPress dashboard if you want the ‘true’ WordPress experience.

With access to both user interfaces, those who are new to WordPress, as well as those who’ve found the default WordPress user interface overwhelming or confusing, should appreciate the simplified dashboard of the WordPress.com service.

However, those who prefer the pure WordPress user experience, with direct access to all of the features and functionality of the default WordPress dashboard, should be happy to know they can manage their site and create content in this way.

Some of the features of the WordPress.com Business plan, such as the backup system and the premium theme library, are only accessible through the WordPress.com dashboard. Therefore, it’s good to see that you can quickly switch between the two interfaces as needed.

This choice of user interfaces and experiences should help the WordPress.com Business plan appeal to anyone who has a self-hosted WordPress website and is worried about a potential loss in functionality when migrating to the WordPress.com service. At the other end of the spectrum, those who prefer a more streamlined approach to website management should find the choice of dashboards appealing, too.

As the default WordPress dashboard and admin area has grown in functionality over the years, it has become a little overwhelming, especially for those new to WordPress.

To overcome this, more and more web hosts are now attempting to implement their own user interfaces for simplifying the WordPress user experience. However, the WordPress.com team have probably come up with the best solution so far for creating a user-friendly interface that simplifies managing a website without sacrificing any functionality.

Most but not all managed WordPress hosting services let you use an online file manager or FTP software to access the server space where your website is stored. With this access, you can create, delete and edit the files on your server. You can also upload files, such as plugins, themes, and any other types permitted by your host.

One of the benefits of this server access is that you can quickly edit the files that make up your WordPress website, such as the wp-config.php file, allowing you to change how WordPress works or fix certain issues, such as the database connection error .

In the past, it wasn’t possible to access your server space in this way or access the database for your WordPress website. Now though, this access is available on the WordPress.com Business plan.

Relatively Affordable

After looking at the features of the WordPress.com Business plan, it’s clear this service can legitimately be called managed WordPress hosting; the results from our performance testing of the two sites hosted on the WordPress.com Business plan (which we’re about to get to) also demonstrate this.

So, with that in mind, and the fact that the entry-level plans from popular managed WordPress hosting companies such as WP Engine and Kinsta also come in at $25 (if you pay for a year upfront), the $25-a-month price of the WordPress.com Business plan makes this a relatively affordable option, provided you choose to pay annually.

If you decide to pay monthly, then the fee is $33 a month. You also lose access to a few features by paying monthly instead of annually, such as the free one-year domain registration and live chat support.

Although you can pay much less by choosing budget shared hosting from a company such as HostGator or Bluehost , you won’t get access to the same level of features or performance as you do from the WordPress.com Business plan.

It’s worth pointing out that the prices listed above are for customers in the US. You might pay a different rate based on your location.

If you’re on a tight budget, but would still like your website to be hosted by WordPress.com, the other lower-priced plans may be of interest:

• Personal: $4 a month, billed yearly with 6 GB storage space.
• Premium: $8 a month, billed yearly with 13 GB storage space.
• Business: $25 a month, billed yearly with 200 GB storage space.
• eCommerce: $45 a month, billed yearly with 200 GB storage space.

The main drawback of the cheaper plans (Personal and Premium), compared with the Business plan, is that you can’t upload themes and install plugins. You can’t remove the WordPress.com branding either, and there are limits on storage space.

If you’d like to know more about the different plans, you can view all of their details on the WordPress.com website .

Now that the WordPress.com Business hosting plan gives you pretty much the same freedom with plugins and themes as regular shared and managed WordPress hosting, why not just use a company such as SiteGround or WP Engine to host your website?

That’s a good question, and, hopefully, one the results from our performance tests will help you to answer. But it’s not just about site speed. As this review has hopefully shown, features like the powerful and intuitive backup system, the user-friendly WordPress.com dashboard and the website setup wizard make this service an appealing hosting option.

Drawbacks of WordPress.com Business Hosting

Before we get to the test data, there are some reasons why WordPress.com Business hosting may not be right for you.

As mentioned earlier in this review, there are a few plugins you can’t install on your website.

While the list of incompatible plugins shouldn’t contain any surprises to those who’ve looked at managed hosting before and seen the lists of plugins those companies disallow, you should definitely check the list yourself before signing up with WordPress.com Business hosting.

At the other end of the spectrum, websites hosted on the WordPress.com Business plan must use the Akismet anti-spam plugin and the Jetpack plugin. Although the Jetpack plugin has some excellent features , some people may resent having to use it. However, it’s not uncommon for other WordPress hosts to have mandatory plugins that their customers must install, such as caching and site management tools.

Lacking Some Features Found Elsewhere

If you choose premium managed WordPress hosting from a company such as WP Engine or Flywheel , or even some lower-priced shared hosting plans, including those from SiteGround, you get access to some features that aren’t available on the WordPress.com Business hosting plan.

One such feature is the ability to create private sites for your clients that aren’t publicly available or billed for until they’re ready to go live. So, if you’re a web designer looking for a host that can help you collaborate with clients, and conveniently transfer ownership of the sites you create, there are probably better options out there than WordPress.com Business hosting.

Also, if you’d like the ability to work on a development or staging version of your website, before pushing those changes to your live site at the touch of a button, this functionality isn’t available from WordPress.com Business hosting.

Another set of functionality not available on the WordPress.com Business plan is the ability to create an eCommerce store. Although you can add a simple PayPal button to your website that does allow you to sell items online, if you want to create a fully-featured online store, you’ll need to upgrade to the more expensive $45-a-month eCommerce plan .

Lastly, while the WordPress.com user interface is well designed, it isn’t as nice to look at as the stylish Flywheel customer portal .

WordPress.com Business Performance Test Results

So, now we’ve covered the pros and cons of the WordPress.com Business hosting plan, let’s take a look at perhaps the most important factors to take into consideration when choosing a web host — the site speed, uptime levels and ability to handle multiple visitors at once.

WordPress.com Loading Time Test Results

First up, to test the speed of this host, two WordPress websites were created on two different WordPress.com Business accounts. On one site, the default and lightweight Twenty Nineteen theme was used, and, on the other, the popular and heavyweight Avada theme was installed and activated.

Testing the performance of the websites using these two contrasting themes should give you an idea of how quickly your website could load, depending on the style of theme you plan to use, and type of website you’ll be managing.

For the speed tests, the loading times of a URL from each site was monitored by Pingdom. On the site using the heavyweight Avada theme, the URL of the homepage was monitored, and for the lightweight Twenty Nineteen theme, a blog post.

The loading times of those URLs were recorded by Pingdom every 30 minutes over a period of seven days, giving an average load time for each site.

The Twenty Nineteen theme is activated on new WordPress websites by default, and is a good example of a lightweight theme someone may use for a simple blog or basic business site. Once the site was set up, a basic page was created that included some text and an image. The rest of the site, including the settings and plugins installed by WordPress.com, were left in their default state.

After seven days of monitoring, where the speed of the site was recorded every 30 minutes, the average loading time of the test page of the website hosted on the WordPress.com Business plan was 603 milliseconds.

This average loading time is very respectable, and indicates that the WordPress.com Business plan is more than capable of hosting blogs and simple websites. Now, on to the results of the website using the heavyweight theme.

As Avada is one of the most popular WordPress themes around — if not the most popular — it’s a suitable choice for creating feature-rich websites for testing.

Once the second site hosted on the other WordPress.com Business plan was set up, the premium Avada theme was installed, and one of the demos from its library of options was imported. The Avada Agency website demo was chosen for this test as it included lots of popular features, such as sliders and video backgrounds.

As well as the plugins that are automatically applied to any website hosted on the WordPress.com Business plan, the Avada theme also activates a few plugins when it’s installed. All of these plugins, as well as the WordPress settings, were left in their default states.

The file size of the page being tested from this site was much larger than the test page on the other site, and, because of this, the average loading time after seven days of monitoring by Pingdom was 1.06 seconds or 1,060 milliseconds.

As the image above shows, the test page on the site using the heavyweight Avada time loaded in an impressive amount of time. This was despite the file size of the page being much larger than the test page from the site using the lightweight theme.

To summarize, both of the test websites hosted on the WordPress.com Business plan performed well in the Pingdom page speed tests:

• Lightweight Twenty Nineteen theme average loading time: 603 milliseconds (382.39 KB page size).
• Heavyweight Avada theme average loading time: 1.06 seconds (5.29 MB page size).

However, as the test site using the heavyweight Avada theme performed especially well, it appears the WordPress.com Business plan is a particularly good choice for anyone using this type of theme or creating pages with large file sizes.

It’s also worth pointing out that no efforts were made to optimize the test sites. Therefore, if you focused on making your WordPress website load faster , by, for example, reducing image file sizes, minifying files, or enabling gzip compression, you could be able to get even better results from your WordPress.com hosted site.

In a recent comparison of WP Engine and Kinsta , we also tested the loading times of a website using the Avada theme.

Although this article isn’t a comparison of these hosts, it’s interesting to note that the site using the same heavyweight theme had better loading times on the WordPress.com Business plan, compared with the times of the sites hosted on the entry-level WP Engine and Kinsta plans.

However, the site hosted by WordPress.com that was using the lightweight Twenty Nineteen theme wasn’t as fast when compared with the Kinsta and WP Engine-hosted sites using the same theme.

Interestingly, in tests we carried out for our SiteGround GoGeek vs StartUp comparison , when it came to the lightweight theme, the sites hosted on these cheaper plans loaded in similar times to those on the WordPress.com Business plan.

However, when it came to the heavyweight theme, the loading times of the site hosted on the shared SiteGround plans weren’t as impressive as those hosted on the WordPress.com Business plan.

These results support the point made earlier that, if you’re planning to create a simple site using a lightweight theme, the loading times from a good shared host such as SiteGround may be similar to those you’d get from the WordPress.com Business plan.

However, if you’re going to use a popular multipurpose theme such as Divi or Avada , or your website will contain lots of images and other assets with large file sizes, you’ll likely get better performance from the WordPress.com Business plan.

Pure page speed isn’t the only metric we looked at for our WordPress.com Business plan review. We also wanted to know how well the sites hosted on this plan could handle multiple visitors accessing them at the same time.

As our test sites don’t actually receive any traffic, we used the Load Impact service to simulate multiple visitors accessing the site simultaneously.

For this performance test, the homepage of the website using the heavyweight Avada theme was monitored by Load Impact. The service simulated 250 users accessing the page, increasing from one virtual user to 250 simultaneous users at a steady rate during a ten-minute test.

In the graph below, the blue line represents the number of virtual users (VU) accessing the site at the same time, while the green line displays the load time of the page.

As you can see from the graph above, the load time of the site didn’t suffer as the number of virtual users simultaneously accessing it increased to 250. You can see the results and other details from this test for yourself on the Load Impact website .

As this level of performance compares well with the results from the same Load Impact tests from our Kinsta and WP Engine reviews, it puts the WordPress.com Business plan in the same category as the similarly priced entry-level plans from those two managed WordPress hosts when it comes to the ability to handle the load of multiple users simultaneously accessing the site.

Measuring the downtime of a website is another good way to test the performance of a host. So, for ten days, we monitored the availability of our test sites with the Pingdom uptime checker service.

As the results show, one of our test sites didn’t experience any downtime, while the other was unavailable for one minute during ten days of monitoring.

Considering uptime is even more important than page speed, it’s great to see that our test sites were available for at least 99.99 percent of the time.

Before we conclude this WordPress.com Business hosting review, here are some technical details about the service that you may be interested in:

• Website caching: Custom caching solution that’s able to scale when needed, without intervention from site owners.
• Content Delivery Network (CDN): Website content is automatically distributed to servers around the world .
• PHP: Currently PHP version 7.2.19 is in use, and it isn’t possible to change versions. Latest version information can be found here .
• HTTP/2.0: HTTP/2.0 is supported.
• SSL: Free SSL certificates from Let’s Encrypt are applied to your site, but there isn’t an option to use your own certificates from elsewhere.
• SFTP: FTP access to the servers or storage space is now available.
• Server file manager: No online browser-based file manager for access to the server or support for file manager plugins.
• Database access: PHPMyAdmin and MySQL access are now available on the WordPress.com Business plan.
• Email service: There’s no email service, but you can use email forwarding or use a third-party email provider with your domain.
• WordPress website management: The WordPress software is updated automatically.
• Plugin restrictions: There’s a list of incompatible plugins that aren’t allowed.
• Security measures: Traffic is monitored to detect suspicious activity, and site security is regularly tested as part of the WordPress.com security measures .
• Post-hack clean-up services: WordPress.com will provide assistance if your site is hacked.
• Data center locations: You cannot choose a data center location or decide where your website will be hosted. However, the CDN distributes your website content to multiple global locations .
• Staging sites: There’s no facility for creating staging sites under your WordPress.com account, and staging plugins aren’t supported.
• WordPress website migration: You can use the All in One WP Migration plugin or follow the instructions to move your WordPress website to WordPress.com Business hosting.
• Uptime checks and guarantee: There are no uptime guarantees in place or monitoring for downtime.
• Support channels: WordPress.com Business plan customers have access to the email live chat support service 24/7.

Hopefully, that answers any remaining questions you may have about the service. If not, feel free to leave a comment, or contact the very helpful and responsive WordPress.com pre-sales team via their live chat channel.

The WordPress.com Business plan is very impressive.

The ability to install your own choice of themes and plugins means that the WordPress.com Business plan should be included in any discussion of the best managed WordPress hosts . As well as functionality, the results from the testing show that this service can compete on performance with the best hosts in this price range.

Add in the extra benefits of the WordPress.com Business plan, such as access to premium themes, the powerful backup system, and website setup wizard, not to mention the competitive pricing, and this service emerges as one of the best options for WordPress website owners looking for premium hosting.

In the past, the hosted WordPress.com service has been considered an inferior alternative to the self-hosted WordPress experience. Now, though, the Business plan from WordPress.com overcomes nearly all of the objections anyone may have to choosing this service over traditional web hosting.

So, if you’re looking for the best hosting experience for your website, the WordPress.com Business plan should definitely be on your shortlist.

Used/using WordPress.com Business hosting? Thoughts?

Related Reading:

• WordPress Hosting Explained: Shared, VPS, Dedicated or Managed WordPress Hosting – Which to Choose and Why?!
• SiteGround vs WordPress.com – Which is the Best Host for a WordPress Website?
• Bluehost vs WordPress.com – Which Offers The Best WordPress Hosting?
• DreamHost vs WordPress.com – Which Is The Best Choice For Hosting A WordPress Website?
• WordPress.com WooCommerce Hosting Reviewed – How Good Is It? Worth The Money?

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Great review – this is a solid analysis and I appreciated the specific points you were testing vs just raw pagespeed. Thanks for your work!

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WordPress Pricing And Plans (2024 Guide)

Updated: Jul 9, 2024, 9:28am

Table of Contents

What is wordpress, wordpress.org pricing and plans, wordpress.com pricing and plans, top wordpress alternatives, frequently asked questions.

WordPress has come a long way since 2003. What started out as a simple blogging tool has evolved into a major content management system that powers almost half of the world’s websites. WordPress.org and its related site WordPress.com help small business owners create an online store, artists build a portfolio to showcase talent and service providers build an appointment-based website. Read our WordPress pricing guide to discover the best option for your needs and budget.

Featured Partners

$17 per month

On Wix's Website

Squarespace

$16 per month

On Squarespace's Website

$15 per month

AI Content Assistant, drag-and-drop editor, premium hosting, live chat

On Hubspot's Website

$1.95 per month; code BUILD50 for 50% off annual purchase

Customizable templates, Easy drag-and-drop technology, SSL certificate

On Web.com's Website

WordPress started as a simple blogging tool but has evolved into the most popular content management system (CMS) in the world. Every day individuals and businesses of all sizes use it to build websites, run blogs and sell products online.

WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org

It is important to make the distinction between WordPress.org and WordPress.com . While there are several differences between the platforms, the main difference is WordPress.com is a hosted blogging service that allows you to create a website with the WordPress software while WordPress.org is a self-hosted version that allows you to build a website on your own.

Generally, WordPress.org is good for those who want to build their website from the ground up and maintain complete control over their site. This requires coding knowledge and is not for novice website designers. WordPress.com, on the other hand, is much more user-friendly but does not allow for advanced website customization unless you purchase an expensive plan.

One of the main benefits of WordPress.org is the fact that it is free, however, as we all know, free doesn’t always mean completely free. To build a website with WordPress.org, you will first need to find a hosting company to host your website. There are several different types of hosting plans that can range in price from under $3 per month to $100 per month or more. Security, uptime, bandwidth, storage and customer support all factor into the cost of a web hosting plan.

Two popular web hosting services, Dreamhost and HostGator, are both official WordPress.org recommended hosting solutions. They are optimized specifically for WordPress.org, have a one-click install for WordPress and provide unique in-house WordPress speed and security solutions. Many top hosting companies include a free domain name. However, for those that do not, you will have to purchase a domain name separately from a domain name registrar for around $12 to 15 per year.

Other costs associated with creating a website using WordPress.org can include custom themes, templates and plugins. While most hosting plans provide free customizable themes, you might want to purchase a more advanced theme to further customize your website to meet your specific needs. Premium WordPress themes can cost anywhere from $20 to thousands of dollars depending on how much specialization and tweaking the theme requires. WordPress.org allows users to be as creative as they want to be with the installation of themes, templates and plugins, but that creativity can come at a hefty monetary price.

WordPress.org includes many free SEO tools, but there may come a time when your site grows beyond what the built-in options can offer. Once you’ve mastered your on-page WordPress SEO , you can use SEO software to bolster your site’s rankings in search results.

WordPress.com offers five plans tailored to meet specific needs.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

WordPress is a powerful content management system that can help individuals and businesses create top-of-the-line websites, but it is not the only one on the market. There is a wide range of platforms that require less coding knowledge and offer more intuitive design solutions. Here is how WordPress stacks up against its top competitors.

WordPress Pricing vs. Competitors

• Drupal Vs. WordPress
• Webflow Vs. WordPress
• Blogger Vs. WordPress

Bottom Line

You have plenty of options to create the website of your dreams between WordPress.org and WordPress.com. If you have coding know-how (or have the means to hire a developer) and want to create a website from the ground up, WordPress.org is a no-brainer. For those who want an easy way to get online instantly, WordPress.com is your best bet. The downside of WordPress.com is that you might not be able to customize the site as much as you would like unless you purchase one of the two top plans.

Is WordPress free?

It depends on which WordPress you are referring to. WordPress.org is free, although users will have to pony up some money for a hosting service. WordPress.com has a free plan but it is very limited. Its paid plans range from $4 per month to $59 per month.

Is WordPress.com the same as WordPress.org?

No, WordPress.com is a hosted website builder that allows users to build a website using WordPress software. WordPress.org is a self-hosted, open-source website builder that allows users to build a website from the ground up.

Which is better for beginners, WordPress.com or WordPress.org?

If you are new to the world of website development, WordPress.com is better suited for you. The fully hosted website solution helps users create websites that are up and running in no time. WordPress.org requires users to know at least coding basics to launch a basic website.

How many plugins does WordPress have?

WordPress has one of the largest plugin libraries in the world with more than 59,000 plugins available.

Does WordPress offer customer support?

WordPress.org does not offer customer support, however, there are plenty of community resources and forums where people go to for help. WordPress.com offers email, live chat and 24/7 priority live chat support.

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Jennifer Simonson draws on two decades as a journalist covering everything from local economic developement to small business marketing. Beyond writing, she tested entrepreneurial waters by launching a mobile massage service, a content marketing firm and an e-commerce venture. These experiences enriched her understanding of small business management and marketing strategies. Today, she channels this first-hand knowledge into her articles for Forbes Advisor.

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How to Build a WordPress Website

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If you’ve never done it before, creating a WordPress website can feel more than a little intimidating. But don’t let that feeling scare you off; in terms of customization and control, you can’t find a better platform than WordPress.

Fortunately, with just a little know-how, building a WordPress site becomes very doable. In this article, we’ll show you exactly what we mean as we walk you through the steps of building a small-business website with WordPress—from planning your site to putting it on the web. Whether you’re starting a recipe blog, an online store for punny t-shirts, or just a simple website for your pet grooming service, we’ve got you covered.

Let’s do this.

Building your WordPress website

• Do some prep work
• Register your domain
• Set up your hosting provider
• Find a WordPress theme
• Install your plugins
• Start editing your site
• Get some help (if you need it)

1. Do some prep work

A little preliminary work on your part can make the website building process go as quickly and smoothly as possible. So before you build your website, make sure you’ve got everything in order.

Begin by choosing a domain for your website. In most cases, you’ll probably want this to be similar, if not the same as, your business name . You might want to think of a few variations, though; when you purchase a domain name (in the next step), your exact business name might be unavailable. So brainstorm a list of possible URLs.

Next, make a list of things you’ll need on your website. This can be as basic as deciding you want a home page, about page, and contact page. But for maximum usefulness, you can also list specific features you want—whether that’s a hamburger-style navigation menu, a sticky top menu, or an online store (or all three). Deciding on your needs now will make it much easier to find the right themes and plugins later.

Not sure where to start? Take some time to browse the websites of your favorite businesses. What works and what doesn't? What elements on their pages would be great for your site? List everything you need, and keep that wishlist in mind when you choose your themes and plugins.

You can also start gathering all the assets you’ll need for your website. For example, you might find some stock images that you can use, or you can start writing the text for each page. Again, this helps the actual building process go faster later.

This is also a good time to make sure you’ve taken care of all the legal legwork for your business, like getting a business license and a tax ID. If you want to speed up the process, you can use a filing software like BizFilings.

2. Register your domain

With your prep done, you can start setting up your website. First, you’ll want to finalize your domain name. If you already brainstormed a few ideas in step one, you can use that list to see what URLs are actually available.

To do this, go ahead and choose a domain registrar, then search for available domains there. Most registrars will even give you a list of similar URLs you can choose from, in case your desired one is unavailable or too expensive.

Alternative suggestions for an unavailable domain

We recommend using Bluehost as your registrar, since it offers both domain registration and top-notch WordPress hosting (more on that in the third step), but you have plenty of other options for domain registrars , including well-known companies like GoDaddy.

Of course, choosing your domain registrar won’t lock you into using the company for other services, like hosting. But it does make it easier if you have to keep track of only one username and password to manage your website, rather than several.

Either way, once you have a domain, you can work on finding hosting.

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3. Set up your hosting

Before we get into finding the right web hosting service for you, let’s review what hosting even is. Basically (emphasis on the basic), if your domain is your street address, the building (the web space) at that address is owned by your hosting company, and they’re leasing it to you. All your stuff—your actual website—is inside the building.

Again, that’s a gross oversimplification, but what it essentially means is that you need a web host so your visitors have an actual website to visit—not just a web address.

As we already mentioned, many domain registrars offer web hosting too (like Bluehost and GoDaddy). So you can always choose to go with the same company for both, or you can check out our list of the best small-business website hosting out there.

But let’s be honest: it can be hard to tell how one hosting company really differs from another. After all, at the end of the day, they all put your website on the internet. They do have some key differences, though. Choose a web hosting company that offers

• one-click WordPress installation,
• plenty of site storage,
• at least a 99% uptime guarantee,
• an SSL certificate, and
• 24/7 support.

A link for Bluehost’s one-click WordPress installation

If you get your domain and your web hosting from different companies, you’ll need to make sure that your domain actually points to where your website is being hosted. This requires you to update your name servers. We know, it sounds complicated, but it really isn’t. Any domain registrar worth its salt will have a tutorial to walk you through it ( here , for example, is Bluehost’s), and it really just requires some copying and pasting.

Updating the name servers with a domain registrar

But if you choose a host with one-click installation (and honestly, most of the big hosts offer it), then at least you won’t have to worry about installing WordPress yourself. Instead, you should find a convenient link from your host that allows you to get started in your WordPress dashboard.​

4. Find a WordPress theme

Once you get into WordPress, you’ll want to start customizing by choosing a theme, or template, for your website. Remember back in step one when you listed features your website had to have? Here’s where you can break out that list again to help you find the right theme.

WordPress itself offers plenty of themes, which you can filter by features or layouts. Clicking on a theme will give you more details about the theme, including its unique features and support options. If you see a theme you like, you can install it with just one click and then start editing.

But while WordPress has a lot of themes, they’re not all winners. If you want something different, you always have the option of uploading a theme that you either created or purchased elsewhere.

We like ThemeForest as a source for feature-packed, well-designed WordPress themes. Its themes start as low as $19, and the vast majority cost less than $100. That’s much easier on your budget than hiring a designer; plus ThemeForest themes come with templates and features specifically for certain types of businesses, which means you can save time on trying to edit a default WordPress theme to your liking.

For example, the BoxShop theme provides several high-impact layouts for ecommerce sites, letting you change everything from product layout to top navigation to drive sales. Mommy bloggers might prefer the Admania theme, which makes it easy for ad-driven blogs to fold ads into their layout and get visitors clicking. And the Dendrite theme has all the building blocks creative types and freelancers need to showcase their portfolios.

BoxShop : Best for ecommerce sites Admania : Best for ad-driven blogs Dendrite : Best for creative portfolios

And if you want something truly one of a kind to make your website stand out from the competition, you can always get a custom WordPress theme. For example, 99designs lets you describe what you want in a theme and then choose from several designer submissions.

Of course, a custom theme will cost you a bit more (99designs starts at $599). But if a high-quality website will help you convert more users into customers, that investment might be worth it.

Wherever you go to get your theme, just make sure to choose one you actually like. While you certainly can change your theme later, you’ll save yourself a world of inconvenience if you start with the theme you intend to use. Otherwise, you’ll have to do all sorts of tweaking and troubleshooting when you change your theme later in the building process.

5. Install your plugins

With a theme in place, you’re ready to choose some plugins. These will increase your website’s functionality. Again, we suggest referring to your previous list of website needs to decide exactly which plugins you’ll need.

No matter what, you’ll probably want to install Jetpack . If you chose a WordPress host with one-click installation, Jetpack might come pre-installed for you. That’s because it’s one of the most essential WordPress plugins.

Jetpack can do a lot for your website: it gives you basic stats about your website traffic, helps protect your site from attacks, improves your site’s speed, and filters out spam comments. It also includes features that can do everything from checking your grammar to adding links to related posts at the bottom of your blog posts. And that’s only the free version.

The paid version gives you access to more SEO (search engine optimization) tools, backs up your website periodically to preserve your data, and connects with Google Analytics to give you a more in-depth view of your website’s traffic.

Whether or not you plan to use all of Jetpack’s features, you’ll probably like at least some of them. So definitely plan to install this powerful plugin.

But Jetpack is just the beginning; you have plenty of other options for plugins. You can browse through lots of them in WordPress (under the “plugins” tab, unsurprisingly). As with themes, you have thousands of options. We’ll just highlight a few of the most useful.

WooCommerce : Best for ecommerce sites Yoast : Best for advanced SEO WP Live Chat : Best for communicating with customers WPForms : Best for collecting leads

If you’re creating an e-commerce site to sell your dinosaur-themed vinyl vehicle decals, you might want to get WooCommerce . This free plugin provides you with all the ecommerce features you could need to do things like accept payments or manage your inventory. It also offers additional extensions, many of which are paid, that give you extra features for your online store, such as shipment tracking.

If you’re more interested in getting as many eyes as possible on your food blog, you might want Yoast . Yoast gives you access to just about any SEO feature you could want, which will help potential customers find you via search engines.

And if you want to stay in touch with your customers, you can also get plugins to help you with that. WP Live Chat lets you embed a chat box on your website, so customers can chat with someone at your business as they browse. WPForms helps you create interactive forms, perfect for getting visitors to sign up for your newsletter.

Keep in mind, those are just a few of your options—you have thousands more plugins available, and more get released all the time.

6. Start editing your site

With a theme chosen and plugins in place, you can get down to the actual building process. Precisely what this will look like depends on your site’s purpose, your theme, and your plugins, but there are a few general steps that should apply to most websites.

First, you’ll want to customize your site’s appearance (under the “Appearance” or “Customize” tabs). You can change basic things like the default text typeface, size, and color, as well as more advanced settings like the appearance of your navigation menu.

Once you’ve got your site looking how you want it to, you can start adding pages. You can either use the layouts provided by your theme or build a page from scratch, using WordPress’s block builder. These blocks include common layout elements (like text plus an image or three columns of text) to simplify your building process.

Building a page with WordPress’s blocks

With your basic pages complete, you might want to add a blog. The blog-building process is pretty similar to building pages, down to the ability to use building blocks. The difference? You’ll be working under the “Posts” tab instead of the “Pages” tab, and WordPress will automatically update your blog page as you publish posts.

Creating a new blog post in WordPress

And speaking of publishing, don’t forget to do just that. Your WordPress site won’t go live until you press the publish button. So whenever you’re ready to launch your site, press that button to finish up.

For a more complete walkthrough, you can check out our WordPress review to see how we built our site, or check out our video walkthrough below. (WordPress.com uses a version of the WordPress software—more about that in the FAQs in just a moment.)

Customize your website with an easy-to-use site builder that’ll make your brand look professional and polished in no time.

7. Get some help (if you need it)

If all this sounds a little too complicated, or if you run into some roadblocks, don’t hesitate to get some help. We all need a hand sometimes—especially with WordPress.

In some cases, getting help might be as simple as asking a question on the WordPress forums . They’re full of people willing to help you with questions, from the basic (How do I install WordPress?) to the niche (How do I change the spacing in my top navigation menu on the Sela theme?).

But sometimes, you may need more specialized help. If you get really stuck, consider hiring a WordPress developer to do some or all of the work for you. While it might seem cost prohibitive, can you really afford to spend hours upon hours troubleshooting WordPress yourself? Hiring some help can get your business site up sooner and get you back to work—maybe not a bad return on your investment.

If you don’t happen to know any developers, you can always use Upwork to find a freelance developer.

FAQs about building a WordPress website

What’s the difference between wordpress.org and wordpress.com.

Great question. Put simply, WordPress.org is a software; WordPress.com is a service.

Less simply, WordPress.org is an open-source software used to create and manage websites. Thanks to its open-source status, you can download and use WordPress for free. You can use WordPress with lots of different hosts, and you’ll find hosting companies that offer managed WordPress hosting (hosting accounts that take care of the more technical parts of WordPress, like optimizing site speed and installing updates).

Its lower-tier plans do limit WordPress’s capabilities (you can’t install plugins, for example), but high-tier plans like the Business plan give you pretty much all the capabilities you’d get from using WordPress on a different host. You might even think of WordPress.com as a managed WordPress host.

That’s all you really need to know to sound smart at parties (assuming you go to parties where people discuss how WordPress.com compares to WordPress.org ). But if you want even more details, you can check out our full breakdown of WordPress.com vs. WordPress.org.

Is building a website with WordPress as hard as everyone says?

Kind of, yeah. If you’ve never used it before, WordPress often feels confusing and complex. Editing options aren’t always where you’d expect on the menu, and the visual editor isn’t nearly as easy to use as a drag-and-drop builder like Wix or Squarespace.

At the same time, most WordPress users can master the platform. Including you. Sure, you might have to do some googling and ask questions in the support forum from time to time, but there’s no reason you can’t become an expert WordPress user.

Now as to whether or not you want to invest that much time into learning how to use Wordpress? That’s another question entirely—one only you can answer.

Should I use WordPress?

That depends. Do you want something that’s fast and easy to learn? Then no, you probably shouldn’t use WordPress. (You can find an alternative, like Wix or Squarespace, on our list of best website builders .)

But if you’re willing to invest some time and effort, then WordPress does offer greater control and flexibility than just about any other website builder. Plus, with thousands of plugins, you can make your WordPress site do just about anything. And if that end result matters more to you than how much time you spend, then WordPress sounds like a great choice.

The takeaway

Here’s the good news: now that you’ve read this article, you’re one step closer to creating your own WordPress site. You know the essential steps to get your site up and running on the web, and you even have some recommended tools to use.

With that knowledge, you have what you need to get started on your small-business website. We believe in you. You’ve totally got this. (And remember, you can always get help if you don’t got this.)

And if creating a website with WordPress still sounds too intimidating, no worries; you can always check out our favorite website builders to find a site building platform that’s more your style.

At Business.org, our research is meant to offer general product and service recommendations. We don't guarantee that our suggestions will work best for each individual or business, so consider your unique needs when choosing products and services.

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• Unlimited products Unlimited products Grow your store as big as you want with the ability to add unlimited products and services.
• Display products by brand Display products by brand Create, assign and list brands for products, and allow customers to view by brand.
• Product add-ons Product add-ons Increase your revenue with add-ons like gift wrapping or personalizations like engraving.
• Assembled products and kits Assembled products and kits Give customers the freedom to build their own products utilizing your existing items.
• Min/max order quantities Min/max order quantities Specify the minimum and maximum allowed product quantities for orders.
• Back-in-stock notifications Back-in-stock notifications Automatically notify customers when your products are restocked.
• Dynamic product upsells Dynamic product upsells Earn more revenue with automated upsell and cross-sell product recommendations.
• Custom marketing automation Custom marketing automation Advanced email marketing functionality, including subscriber segmentation, advanced analytics, and automation.
• Offer bulk discounts Offer bulk discounts Offer personalized packages and bulk discounts.
• Inventory management Inventory management Keep inventory up-to-date with POS integrations and real-time tracking.
• Streamlined checkout Streamlined checkout Remove the friction from checkout by giving your customers multiple ways to pay.
• Sell in 60+ countries Sell in 60+ countries Grow globally by accepting 135+ currencies.
• Integrations with top shipping carriers Integrations with top shipping carriers Get real-time shipping prices, print labels and give your customers tracking codes.
• 0% commission fee (plus standard processing fee) for payments 0% commission fee (plus standard processing fee) for payments Credit card fees are applied in addition to commission fees for payments.

Compare our plans and find yours

Free free personal premium business commerce, personal free personal premium business commerce, premium free personal premium business commerce, business free personal premium business commerce, commerce free personal premium business commerce.

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Agency Hosting by Pressable

Looking to manage multiple sites with ease? Discover Pressable’s powerful and intuitive platform that goes beyond traditional WordPress hosting. Ideal for agencies and web professionals.

Building sites for customers? Here’s how to earn more

Earn up to 50% revenue share and get volume discounts on WordPress.com hosting when you migrate sites to our platform and promote Automattic’s products to clients.

Your site. Built by us.

Let our team of experts build your WordPress.com site. Whether you need a landing page or a full ecommerce site, we can build it for you.

The best way to WordPress.

From the free plan on up, when you build with WordPress.com you get all of the benefits of fast, secure managed WordPress hosting.

Stress‑free refund policy

If you change your mind, our no‑questions‑asked refund policy has your back.

Superlative support

Get free, expert help in our community forums, or upgrade to any plan for expert support.

End-to-end security

Superior security comes with every plan, keeping your site safe and protected around the clock.

The speed you need

Your site runs lightning fast, wherever in the world it’s accessed from. 

There’s beauty in everything.

Make your website look stunning with our custom‑made patterns and themes. Transform your design with a click, then magically drag and drop breathtaking layouts.

Easily create a mobile friendly website, optimized for every device, so your visitors can access your content from anywhere.

Bring your online store to life with our selection of customizable themes. Choose from a variety of designs that match your brand’s unique style and start selling in no time.

Personalize the blank canvas of any page with Patterns – a range of flexible, intuitive, instant layouts.

Your audience is out there.

Your site is the start of something. Connect with your audience and reach new people by meeting them where they are.

Say it with a Newsletter.

Write directly to your audience. Every WordPress.com site is a newsletter waiting to happen.

Spread the word.

Reach more people across your socials and promote your posts with Blaze.

Meet the Reader.

With the Reader, you can keep up with what’s new and find your people.

Keep them up to date.

RSS makes it simple for your audience to subscribe to your latest updates and never miss a beat.

Frequently asked questions

No worries, we get your questions answered.

Yes, you can easily move your content to WordPress.com from other platforms such as Blogger, GoDaddy, Wix, Medium, Squarespace, and many more. Additionally, our import tool allows you to transfer your content seamlessly from a self‑hosted WordPress site.

If you have an active subscription on WordPress.com, you have the flexibility to switch to a different plan at any time. Any remaining funds from your current plan will be applied towards your new plan as a discount.

We have many domain extensions available, including popular ones like .com, .net, and .org. If you sign up for a yearly or two-year plan, you’ll get a free domain included for the first year. You can also use a domain you already own by connecting it to your WordPress.com site or transferring it to us for easy management.

Yes, we provide free hosting for all WordPress.com sites with all plans.

WordPress plugins are tools that you can add to your site to give it additional features and functionalities. With plugins, you can easily add a contact form, social media icons, a slideshow, an e‑commerce store, and much more, without needing to know how to code. You can access over 50,000 WordPress plugins, starting with the Business plan.

Yes, there are many ways to monetize your WordPress.com site, such as charging for premium content, selling products, creating memberships, and more. You can also publish sponsored posts or use affiliate links in your content. Additionally, you can apply to join WordAds, our advertising program.

Yes, you can create your site in any language you prefer, as WordPress.com supports a wide range of languages. For more information, please visit our support page all about setting up multilingual sites.

Yes, WordPress.com offers several email solutions to choose from. Our own Professional Email service – for custom domains registered on our platform – brings your inbox to your site’s dashboard. You can also set up free email forwarding or, alternatively, use our Google Workspace integration to manage your emails. For more information about these options, take a look at our dedicated support page.

You can cancel anytime within the refund period and get 100% of your money back, no questions asked.

You can pay for your WordPress.com plan, add‑ons, or domains using any major credit card, debit card, Apple Pay, Google Pay, or PayPal. In addition to these, we also support a number of  local payment methods  in select countries.

Rooted in the Automattic family and WordPress, WordPress VIP is the ideal fit for these companies. It marries the ease and flexibility of WordPress with unmatched scalability, security, and data-driven capabilities they require. It powers many of the web’s largest websites, businesses, and government agencies, helping them produce content without barriers, and at scale.

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WordPress.com Business Plan Review

Complete review to explore all the pros and cons of WordPress.com business plan and share if the hosting services are worth your money

In today’s article, we’ll share all the functions and features of the WordPress.com business hosting plan review and share If it worth the price. you’re an experienced WordPress user, you’ve probably disregarded hosting your website with WordPress.com. However, thanks to the launch of the WordPress.com ‘Business’ plan. Many of the reasons why WordPress.com is in focus as a serious web host has overcome. Such as the ability to use your own plugins and themes, for example. In this complete review, we’ll explore all the pros and cons of WordPress.com business plan and share if the hosting services are worth your money.

WordPress.com Business Plain Review

Not only that but, in addition to overcoming the drawbacks of hosting your website with WordPress.com, the Business plan also includes some genuinely useful features and functionalities. Moreover, the ability to install premium WordPress themes .

Before we get to the reasons why you may not want to sign up with WordPress.com Business hosting, here are some of the best reasons to consider this option for your website.

Select The Themes and Plugins That You Want

Being able to use any theme you like or install all of the plugins you want may not sound like much to anyone who’s hosts a WordPress website. With companies such as Bluehost, GoDaddy or SiteGround. However, up until relatively recently, if you want to use the WordPress.com hosting services. You were severely limited when it came to which themes and plugins you could use on your website with WordPress.com business pros and cons.

Now, though, customers of the WordPress.com Business hosting plan can: search for and install themes and plugins. Directly from within their WordPress dashboard. However, they can also upload themes and plugins from their computer. Including those they’ve purchased directly from other sources or even ones they’ve created themselves. Let’s move to the next point of the WordPress.com business plan review.

Site Usage Support

Whether you’re new to creating websites or need inspiration for your next project, you should find the WordPress.com website creation helpful wizard. Although you can use the default WordPress user experience that’s available with self-hosted websites, with WordPress.com hosting, you also get the option of walking through the setup process to launch your site.

The checklist makes it easy to see what tasks. What still needs to be done to help you to launch your new site. As well as the helpful checklist, the wizard lays the foundation for your site. I was asking what type of project you’re working on. Throughout the wizard, the live chat icon appears. Giving you a quick way to get help from the support staff should you need it.

WordPress.com Business Plan Performance Test and Review

Pure page speed isn’t the only metric we looked at for our WordPress.com Business plan review. We also wanted to know how well the sites hosted on this plan could handle multiple visitors accessing them at the same time. As our test sites don’t receive any traffic, we used the Load Impact service to simulate multiple visitors accessing the site simultaneously.

This level of performance compares well with the results from the same Load Impact tests. It puts the WordPress.com Business plan in the same category as the similarly priced entry-level plans. From those two managed WordPress hosts . When it comes to handling a load of multiple users simultaneously accessing the site using WordPress.com hosting services review.

• The best option for a blogging website – WordPress.com has specific templates and features to make your blog a success.
• An abundance of features – you get tons of tailored features designed to make building and running a blog easier.
• Sensible prices – you can build and publish your blog for free or choose to upgrade for more advanced features.
• Too many templates for blogging – you’ll struggle if you want to build anything other than a blog.
• Not very beginner-friendly – although WordPress.com is more beginner-friendly than WordPress.org, you’ll still need to know some code to get the most out of it.
• Price point is higher compared to basic plans.

Key Features: WordPress.com Business Plan Review

• Custom Domain Name : Your website will stand out with a professional custom domain name, included free for the first year.
• Unlimited Premium Themes : Access a vast library of professionally designed themes to suit any business type or personal brand.
• Advanced Design Customization : Tweaking the design becomes effortless with advanced tools and custom CSS capabilities.
• 200 GB Storage : Generous storage space ensures you never run out of room for your media, documents, and files.
• SEO Tools : Built-in SEO tools ensure your site is search-engine friendly and ranks well on Google and other search engines.
• Plugin Installation : Extend your site’s functionality with the ability to install from thousands of plugins available.
• E-commerce Capabilities : Simple payment buttons to full-blown online stores can be integrated, making selling products or services a breeze.
• Priority Live Chat Support : Get instant help with any issues or questions from WordPress.com’s expert support team. Complete review to explore all the pros and cons of WordPress.com business plan and share if the hosting services are worth your money.

WordPress.com Business Plan Review Conclusion

The WordPress.com Business Plan offers a complete package for businesses and professionals aiming to build a strong online presence. With its advanced customization features, SEO tools, and plugin ecosystem, it gives users unparalleled control and flexibility over their website. While the price might be a deterrent for some, the value provided, especially in terms of support and e-commerce capabilities, justifies the investment. For businesses serious about their online image, the Business Plan is a commendable choice.

Claudio Pires is the co-founder of Visualmodo, a renowned company in web development and design. With over 15 years of experience, Claudio has honed his skills in content creation, web development support, and senior web designer. A trilingual expert fluent in English, Portuguese, and Spanish, he brings a global perspective to his work. Beyond his professional endeavors, Claudio is an active YouTuber, sharing his insights and expertise with a broader audience. Based in Brazil, Claudio continues to push the boundaries of web design and digital content, making him a pivotal figure in the industry.

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WordPress Plans Explained: WordPress.com or Self-Hosted?

Decided to finally start your own blog and considering WordPress as your platform? That’s great! However, there are many WordPress plans available, so it can be challenging to pick the right one.

This article will give you an overview of WordPress plans and explain the differences between WordPress.com and the self-hosted version. Let’s go!

📚 Table of contents:

• The difference between WordPress.com vs WordPress.org
• 👉 WordPress plans IN DETAIL

Which WordPress plan is best for blogging?

A quick explanation of the difference between wordpress.com vs wordpress.org.

First, let’s talk about the main difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org (or self-hosted WordPress).

WordPress.com is a fully hosted solution, which means you can sign up for an account, make a few tweaks to your theme, and launch your blog immediately. However, its features are limited, and you’ll have to invest in more pricey plans to access many of the customization options.

On the other hand, self-hosted WordPress (WordPress.org) requires an additional web hosting service , so you can’t use it on its own. However, even the cheapest hosting plan will grant you access to the platform’s full set of features.

You can choose from several types of WordPress hosting plans . Most starting bloggers opt for shared hosting as it’s the most affordable and sufficient for small sites. However, as your website grows, you might need to consider more powerful plans.

Many providers offer beginner-friendly WordPress services, including Bluehost , SiteGround , or Hostinger . They all feature one-click WordPress installation and intuitive dashboards, so even inexperienced users should be able to navigate them.

On the other hand, WordPress.com makes things simple by offering you an all-in-one solution. Apart from the free version, you can choose from four plans that are suitable for different kinds of websites:

• Personal: Entry-level plan for users who want to use a custom domain.
• Premium: More advanced features for professional bloggers.
• Business: Access to custom plugins and themes.
• eCommerce: Designed for online stores.

Let’s look at some blogger-friendly options in more detail.

WordPress plans explained (four top options)

First, we’ll give you an overview of WordPress.com. Note that the Business and eCommerce packages are not designed for bloggers. Therefore we’ll focus on the free, Personal , and Premium plans. Then we’ll explain the difference between WordPress personal and premium plans and discuss the benefits of self-hosted WordPress for bloggers.

1. WordPress.com Free

If you don’t mind a generic subdomain name (such as example.wordpress.com ), you can opt for a free WordPress.com blog. This option includes:

• Free SSL certificate
• 3 GB storage
• Essential Jetpack plugin features
• Access to free themes

The features are severely limited, so you won’t be able to remove the WordPress.com ads or monetize the site yourself. You also won’t be able to use plugins, and you’ll be stuck with free themes. Plus, there’s no customer support available with the free plan, so it may not be an appealing option for serious bloggers.

2. WordPress.com Personal Plan

The Personal plan gives you 6 GB of storage and basic personalization options, such as a custom domain and the ability to remove WordPress.com ads. You can also create paid newsletters and subscriber-only content, which requires an additional plugin to set up with the self-hosted version of the platform.

However, you won’t be able to do much else, and you can only reach customer support via email. This plan costs $4 per month.

3. WordPress.com Premium Plan

To unlock extra features, you’ll need to invest $8 per month for the WordPress.com Premium plan. This option gives you access to 13 GB storage and premium themes, which you can customize with CSS.

It also comes with handy monetization and marketing features such as Google Analytics integration , WordAds, the ability to accept payments via PayPal, and a social media scheduling tool. However, you still won’t be able to install plugins or choose custom themes for your blog.

4. What is the difference between WordPress personal and premium

You probably already got somewhat of an idea of the difference between the two WordPress pricing plans from reading above. Aside from the fact that the WordPress premium plan is double the cost of the WordPress personal plan, the two plans also differ on some key features. The main ones that you can get with the WordPress premium plan that you can’t get with the WordPress personal plan include the following:

• Live chat support
• Earn ad revenue
• Google analytics integration
• Accept payments via PayPal
• Advanced social media functions
• Ability to upload videos via VideoPress
• Access to premium WordPress themes
• Control over your WordPress site’s CSS code

Despite these differences, regardless of which WordPress pricing plan you go with, you’ll still be able to collect payments (only the premium plan supports PayPal though); receive email support from WordPress customer service; and the ads for WordPress.com will be removed from your site. Oh, and you’ll also be set up with a pre-installed SSL certificate to help you strengthen your site security and also boost your SEO. Below is a visual recap of some of the differences between WordPress personal and premium:

5. Self-hosted WordPress

As an alternative to using WordPress.com’s plans, you can also take the open-source WordPress.org software and “self-host” it on your own web hosting.

With this approach, you will be able to use any widgets, themes, or plugins you like.

The only limitation you’ll encounter will be your server’s capabilities, but this shouldn’t be an issue unless you expect abnormally high traffic. Plus, the WordPress software is free, so you’re only paying for the web host of your choice.

Let’s take Bluehost as an example. This provider gives you a choice of four shared hosting plans:

• Basic: from $1.99 per month
• Plus : from $3.99 per month
• Choice Plus: from $7.45 per month
• Pro: from $13.95 per month

The cheapest option already proves superior to any WordPress.com blogging plan. You get a free custom domain, SSL certificate, 50 GB storage, and access to 24/7 customer support from Bluehost.

Plus, you get to enjoy any theme you like, including premium ones from third-party developers. You can even use visual, drag-and-drop page building tools such as Elementor to build a stunning website without coding experience.

The downsides are that self-hosted WordPress has a slightly steeper learning curve than WordPress.com due to the vast amount of features, and you’ll have to take care of your website maintenance yourself. However, there are managed WordPress hosting options you can look into that will help mitigate these challenges.

Choosing a WordPress plan for blogging will depend on your goals and whether you need advanced customization options. For instance, if you just want a simple platform to write about your hobby, you can probably save your money and use the free WordPress.com plan.

On the other hand, if you want to appear more professional or monetize your content in the future, you’ll have to consider other options. WordPress premium might be the right choice for less tech-savvy users who don’t mind a higher price point.

It comes with handy features out of the box geared towards professional bloggers . You can easily create members-only content, integrate Google Analytics, and earn money from ads. However, you should only go for this option if you’re confident that you’ll be happy with limited theme choices. You also won’t be able to use any plugins to extend your website’s functionality.

Otherwise, self-hosted WordPress is by far the most versatile solution. With providers such as Bluehost, you can easily start a simple blog and scale it up in the future as your website grows.

You’ll have full control over the functionality and the branding of your site. You can also easily branch out and add a shop or portfolio if you like, which wouldn’t be possible with either of the WordPress plans offered by WordPress.com. With hosting costs as low as $1.99 per month, it’s an excellent value for money.

WordPress is a popular blogging platform that evolved into a powerful CMS. Most beginners are familiar with WordPress.com, which is a fully hosted solution. However, its features are limited, which is why you should consider self-hosted WordPress when deciding how to build your site.

To recap, we’ve discussed a few WordPress pricing plans that are geared towards bloggers. If you want full control over your website and unlimited customization features, you should consider using self-hosted WordPress with a hosting provider such as Bluehost . Otherwise, go for the free WordPress plan offered by WordPress.com if you want a simple hobby blog.

Do you have any questions about WordPress plans? Let us know in the comments section below!

By John Hughes

Themeisle contributor.

John is a self-taught WordPress designer and developer. He has been working with the CMS for over a decade, and has experience operating as a freelancer and as part of an agency. He’s dabbled in everything from accessible design to website security. Plus, he has extensive knowledge of online business topics like affiliate marketing.

Updated on:

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WPBeginner » Blog » Tutorials » How to Add Free Trial Subscriptions in WordPress (4 Methods)

How to Add Free Trial Subscriptions in WordPress (4 Methods)

Updated: August 15, 2024 by Editorial Staff | Reviewed by: Syed Balkhi | Reader Disclosure

After selling digital downloads for over a decade, we’ve realized the value of offering free trial subscriptions in WordPress. It’s a powerful way to grow your business, but setting it up can be tricky if you don’t know what you’re doing.

The method you use to enable free trials really depends on the type of product you’re offering and the plugin you’re using. For example, selling digital downloads requires a different approach than offering membership subscriptions or physical products.

In this guide, we’ll show you four proven methods to add free trial subscriptions to your WordPress site. Each method uses a different plugin, tailored to specific business needs.

Why Add Free Trial Subscriptions in WordPress?

By adding subscriptions to your website, you’ll have a more consistent cash flow, fewer payment errors, and fewer payment delays. However, customers often want to try before they buy, especially if you’re selling longer-term or more expensive subscriptions.

With that being said, it’s a good idea to offer a free trial period for all your subscriptions. For example, you might give customers a free month’s trial of your subscription box service or create a free one-week pass for your online yoga classes .

If customers enjoy the free trial, then they might pay for a premium subscription. Even if shoppers don’t sign up straight away, you can still use their contact information to do lead generation. For example, you might send them exclusive coupon codes or target them with web push notifications .

With that being said, let’s see how you can add free trial subscriptions in WordPress. Simply use the quick link below to jump straight to the method you want to use:

Method 1. Easy Digital Downloads (Free Trial for Software and Digital Products)

Method 2. memberpress (free trial for memberships or courses), method 3. woocommerce subscriptions (free trial for physical products), method 4. wp simple pay (free trial for custom services).

Do you want to offer a free trial subscription for digital products? Maybe you’re planning to sell subscriptions for online courses, a stock photography website, a digital music store , or something else.

The easiest way to offer free trial subscriptions for digital products is by using Easy Digital Downloads . This plugin lets you easily sell ebooks, PDF files, audio files, videos, and any other type of digital product.

Even better, if you’re a SiteGround customer then the Easy Digital Downloads plugin comes pre-installed, so you can start selling subscriptions and digital products straight away.

In this guide, we will show you how to create a free trial for an all-access pass. This pass will look just like any other digital product on your online store.

After signing up for the free trial, customers will be able to view, access, and download different products on your online store.

Customers can simply click on a link inside their account, to see all the products that are included in their free pass.

To stop customers from abusing their trial, you can set daily download limits, limit the free pass to specific product categories, and more.

With all that in mind, we’ll be using three extensions to create a user-friendly ‘all access’ free trial. You’ll need to buy the Extended or higher license for Easy Digital Downloads to download these three addons.

For step-by-step instructions on how to set up Easy Digital Downloads, please see our guide on how to sell digital downloads on WordPress .

Install Easy Digital Downloads Extensions

After setting up Easy Digital Downloads, it’s time to install the extensions by going to Downloads » Extensions .

On this screen, find the All Access, Free Downloads, and Recurring Payments extensions.

For each extension, click on the ‘Install’ button.

Create a Free Trial Subscription in WordPress

With that done, you’re ready to create a free all-access trial. To get started, head over to Downloads » Downloads in the WordPress dashboard.

On this screen, click ‘Add New.’

You can now type in a name for the subscription.

This will be visible to customers, so it’s a good idea to use something descriptive.

After that, scroll to the ‘Download Prices’ section. Under ‘Pricing Options,’ type in 0.

Next, check the box next to the following option: ‘Enable free trial for subscriptions.’

Now, it’s time to turn this subscription into a free all-access pass that customers can use across your entire online store .

To do this, simply scroll to the ‘All Access’ section and check the following option: Convert this product into an “All Access” pass.

Limit the Trial to Specific Product Categories (Optional)

By default, the free trial gives customers access to all your products. However, you can restrict the free trial to specific product categories. For example, if you create and sell ebooks then you might include some books in the free trial, and keep others for paid subscribers.

To restrict the free trial to specific categories, simply click on the ‘x’ next to ‘All Products.’

After that, you can click on the ‘Type to search categories’ dropdown and start typing in the category you want to include in the free trial.

When the right category appears, click to select it.

Set a Time Limit

With that done, you can choose whether to make the free trial permanent or to set a time limit.

If you’ve restricted the free trial to specific product categories, then it may make sense to choose ‘Never Expires.’ For example, if you sell digital art and graphics then you might allow customers to download as many watermarked images as they want, forever. However, they’ll need to buy a subscription in order to remove the watermark.

Just be aware that Easy Digital Downloads also allows you to set a download limit. This means you can use ‘Never Expires’ while also limiting how many items the customer can download.

To create a never-ending free trial, open the ‘All Access Duration’ dropdown menu and choose ‘Never Expires.’

Another option is to set a time limit. This works particularly well for digital products that take a while to get through or for products the customer will want to access over and over again.

For example, if you create and sell online courses then you could offer a two-day free trial, so customers will need to buy a subscription to finish their training.

To set a time limit, open the ‘All Access Duration’ dropdown and choose from years, months, weeks, or days. You can then type a number into the field that appears.

Add a Daily, Weekly, Monthly, or Yearly Download Limit

You can also type in a Download Limit. This can protect your site from customers who might try to abuse the free trial. For example, if you sell Excel or Google Spreadsheets in WordPress , then you might set a download limit so customers can’t download your entire product catalog while on a free trial.

By default, Easy Digital Downloads has a download limit of 0, which means the customer can download as many products as they want. To change this, type a number into the ‘Download Limit’ field.

You can then make this limit per day, week, month, or per year using the dropdown that appears.

Add Variable Pricing to Your Free Trial (Optional)

Are you using variable pricing on your online marketplace ? Then, you may want to include specific price variations in the free trial.

For example, if you’ve created Standard and Deluxe price variations, then you may want to include Standard in the free trial while keeping the Deluxe version for paying users only.

If you’ve enabled variable pricing, then Easy Digital Downloads includes all variations in its free trial by default.

To change this, find ‘Total Price Variations’ and type in how many variations you want to include in the free trial. Depending on the number you use, you’ll see a list of the different variations on your online store.

Simply check the box next to each variation you want to include in the free trial.

Customize the Purchase Confirmation Page and Email

When a customer downloads a product using their free trial pass, Easy Digital Downloads will show them a Purchase Confirmation page.

It will also send a confirmation message to their email address .

By default, both the Purchase Confirmation page and email contain the following link: Click here to use your All Access Pass. This takes the customer to a page where they can download their free products.

To change the link text, type into the ‘Receipts: All Access Link Message’ box.

You can also change the page where Easy Digital Downloads will send customers when they want to download their free products.

To do this, simply create a new page in WordPress and then add the following shortcode:

[downloads all_access_customer_downloads_only="yes"]

This will show all the products the customer can download while on a free trial. You can then add other content, such as text, images, a contact form , or anything else you want to include.

For more information on how to place the shortcode, please see our guide on how to add a shortcode in WordPress .

After publishing the page, simply add its URL to the ‘Receipts: Link URL’ field.

When you’re happy with how the free trial is set up, click on the ‘Publish’ button.

Create a Premium Subscription

With that done, you may want to create a premium’ all access’ subscription. When their free trial expires, customers can upgrade to this subscription and continue enjoying your content.

To create a premium subscription go to Downloads » Add New.

You can then type in a name for the subscription and set the price, by typing into the ‘Pricing Options’ field.

You can also make this a recurring subscription, add an optional sign-up fee, and more using the settings under ‘Download Prices.’

With that done, scroll to the ‘All Access’ section. At this point, you can turn the subscription into an all-access pass, add a download limit, and more by following the same process described above.

When you’re happy with how the premium all-access subscription is set up, don’t forget to click on ‘Publish’ to make it live.

Remove the Checkout for Free Trial Users

After creating the free trial subscription, you’ll want to get as many signups as possible. With that being said, it’s a good idea to allow customers to start the free trial without going through the checkout screen.

Easy Digital Downloads can hide the checkout screen when a customer is claiming a free product, including your free trial subscription.

To do this, simply go to Downloads » Settings , and then select the ‘Marketing’ tab. Next, click on ‘Free Downloads’ to hide the checkout.

After that, you can use ‘Button Label’ to specify the text you’ll show when products are available for free download.

By default, this is ‘Download Now.’

You can replace this with your own custom messaging.

Simply go ahead and type into the ‘Button Label’ field.

There are more settings that can help you do lead generation like a pro . For example, you can collect the person’s name and email address, even when they’re signing up for a free trial or downloading a free product.

However, we recommend keeping things simple, as this will often get you the most signups.

When you’re happy with the changes you’ve made, click on ‘Save Changes.’ Now, if you visit the free trial product page, you’ll see the new button text in action.

Create Expiration Reminder Emails

Free trials can generate leads, but the goal is to convert those people into paying customers.

With that in mind, you may want to email people when their free trial is about to expire. This will encourage them to buy a premium subscription so they can continue accessing your digital content.

​​Easy Digital Downloads integrates with all the best email marketing services . However, you can also create reminder emails using the Recurring Payments extension you installed earlier.

To use this extension, go to Download » Settings . Then, select the ‘Emails’ tab followed by the ‘Recurring Payments’ link.

On this screen, check the box next to ‘Send Expiration Reminders.’

After that, select ‘Add Expiration Reminder.’

This takes you to a screen where you can type in an email subject and a message.

To make the email more personal, it’s a good idea to use template tags. Easy Digital Downloads will replace these tags with real values such as the customer’s name, the expiration date, and the name of their subscription.

You can see all the available template tags underneath the small text editor.

Just be aware that Easy Digital Downloads will send the message to all customers, and not just the people on your free trial.

When you’re happy with the information you’ve typed in, click on Add Reminder Notice.

Now, Easy Digital Downloads should notify customers when their subscription is about to expire. However, sometimes your WordPress hosting server may not be properly configured, or email providers such as Gmail might use filters that wrongly flag your emails as spam.

To get more conversions, your emails need to arrive in the customer’s inbox and not in the spam folder. For that reason, we recommend using a WordPress SMTP plugin and provider to improve your email deliverability.

WP Mail SMTP is the best WordPress SMTP plugin on the market. It allows you to connect your WordPress site with a mailer service. This means your expiration reminder and other messages will always arrive safely in the customer’s inbox.

For more information, check out our article on how to fix WordPress not sending email issue .

A membership website allows users to pay for premium content, online courses, features, and access to a community. However, these members-only features are usually hidden behind a paywall in WordPress , so visitors can’t see what the paid membership includes.

With that in mind, you may want to offer visitors a free trial so they can try before they buy. The easiest way to do this is by using MemberPress .

MemberPress is an all-in-one membership plugin that allows you to accept payments, add unlimited membership levels, create gated content , restrict access based on different membership levels, and much more.

It’s actually what we use to set up our video membership site and grow our email list .

It also lets you create as many free trials as you want, including different trials for different membership levels.

First, you’ll need to install and activate the plugin. If you need help, then please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin .

You can now add payment methods, create members-only content, design a pricing page, and more. For step-by-step instructions, please see our ultimate guide to creating a WordPress membership site .

Once your site is set up, you’re ready to create a membership plan with a free trial.

Create a New Membership Level

To get started, head over to MemberPress » Memberships in the WordPress dashboard. Here, click on the ‘Add New’ button.

You can now type in a title for the membership plan, add an optional description, upload a featured image, and more.

For more information, please see our ultimate guide to creating a WordPress membership site .

With that done, you can set the price by typing into the ‘Price’ box.

This is how much members will pay once the free trial expires.

You can only create a free trial for recurring memberships. However, if you want to charge members a one-time fee then there’s a workaround, which we’ll be covering shortly.

With that being said, open the ‘Billing Type’ dropdown and choose ‘Recurring.’

Next, you need to set the billing interval for the recurring payment. This is how often your members will be charged once the free trial expires.

Simply open the ‘Interval’ dropdown and choose an option from the list, such as monthly or yearly billing.

Want to use a different interval? Then select ‘Custom’ instead.

You’ll now see some new controls where you can set a custom interval.

Create a Free Trial Membership Subscription

With that done, check the box next to ‘Free Trial.’

You can now specify how many days the free trial will last, by typing into the ‘Trial Duration’ field. For example, if you want to offer a one-month trial then you would type in ’30.’

After that, you’ll need to type in the ‘Trial Amount,’ which is the total cost of the subscription trial period before tax. You’ll typically want to type ‘0’ into this box.

Finally, you can choose whether to limit customers to one free trial by checking or unchecking the ‘Allow Only One Free Trial’ box. If you check this box, then customers who cancel their subscription and then re-subscribe won’t get another free trial.

You’ll typically want to leave the box checked so customers can’t abuse the free trial . However, if you only offer a very short trial then you may want to allow customers to have multiple free trials.

Just be aware that coupons will override this setting, so it’s still possible to offer multiple free trials to the same customer.

Create a Lifetime Membership (Optional)

As already mentioned, you can only offer a free trial for recurring memberships. However, it is possible to create a trial for lifetime memberships, by changing a few MemberPress settings.

To do this, check the ‘Limit Payment Cycles’ box and set the ‘Max # of Payments’ to 1.

After that, open the ‘Access After Last Cycle’ dropdown and select ‘Lifetime Access.’

Now, once the trial expires customers will need to pay a one-time fee for lifetime membership.

Publish the Free Trial Membership Subscription

With that done, you can make any other changes to the membership level.

When you’re happy with how the membership is set up, it’s time to make it live by clicking on the ‘Publish’ button.

To see how the membership looks to potential customers, go to MemberPress » Memberships . On this screen, you’ll see the membership level you just created.

Here, just hover your mouse over the membership level and click on the ‘View’ link.

WordPress will now show the membership signup form in a new tab.

Do you want to add a free trial to more membership levels? Then simply follow the same process described above.

For more trips and tricks on using MemberPress, check out these guides:

• How to Sell Group Memberships in WordPress for Corporate Teams
• How to Add Automatic Drip Content in Your WordPress Site
• How to Add Content Locking in WordPress

If you want to sell digital products online, then we recommend using Easy Digital Downloads. However, if you want to sell physical products, then WooCommerce is the world’s most popular eCommerce platform.

By default, WooCommerce doesn’t allow you to offer free trial subscriptions. However, it’s easy to add this missing feature using WooCommerce Subscriptions .

This plugin adds a new ‘simple subscription’ product type to your WooCommerce store. You can add this product type to any existing item, or create new subscription products.

For example, you might let shoppers try a product before they buy it, or maybe you will send them a sample subscription box from your online boutique shop .

When a customer visits a subscription product, they’ll see a ‘Sign up now’ button instead of the standard ‘Add to cart’ call to action button .

The WooCommerce checkout page will also show some information about the subscription.

This includes the length of your free trial.

Customers can manage all their subscriptions by logging into their WooCommerce account, and then visiting the new ‘My Subscriptions’ section.

Here, they can see when the subscription started, how much it costs, the subscription status, and more. The customer can also cancel, reactivate, and renew their subscriptions directly from this page, without having to contact you directly.

In this way, a customer who is enjoying a free trial can quickly and easily upgrade to a premium subscription.

In this guide, we’re going to assume you’ve already set up a WooCommerce store. If you haven’t, then you may want to check out our complete guide to WooCommerce made simple .

After that, you’ll need to install and activate the WooCommerce Subscriptions plugin . If you need help, then please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin .

As soon as the plugin is active, you’re ready to add free trial subscriptions to WooCommerce. Simply go to Products » Add New .

You can now create this product in exactly the same way you create any WooCommerce product. For example, you can type in the product’s title, add a description, or create a WooCommerce product gallery .

After entering all this information, scroll to the ‘Product Data’ box.

Here, open the dropdown menu and choose ‘Simple subscription.’

This adds some new settings that you can use to create a subscription and add a free trial.

To start, type in the ‘Subscription price.’

Then, use the dropdown menus to choose how long the subscription will last. In the following image, the subscription will cost $20 per month once the free trial expires.

You can now choose whether the subscription will last forever, or expire after a set amount of time.

Just be aware that the expiration length doesn’t include the free trial. This means that if the subscription expires in 1 month and you offer a one-month free trial, then the subscription will last for 2 months.

Another option is to give the customer lifetime access. To do this, open the ‘Expire After’ dropdown and choose ‘Never expire.’

Next, you may want to add a sign-up fee.

Just be aware that WooCommerce will charge this fee no matter whether the customer is buying a subscription or signing up for a free trial. With that in mind, we don’t recommend adding a sign-up fee to products that have a free trial subscription.

With that done, you can specify how long the free trial will last by opening the dropdown that shows ‘days’ by default and then choosing an option from the list.

After that, just type in how many days, weeks, months, or years the free trial should last. Note that the free trial can’t last longer than 90 days, 52 weeks, 24 months, or 5 years.

This method is for physical goods, but you can also use the plugin for setting up free trials for digital products as well.

To do this, you can check the ‘Virtual’ box as well as the ‘Downloadable’ box if there is a file that the customer needs to download post-purchase.

And if you do make your product downloadable, you can scroll down the page to add your file there.

You can also change the settings for how long the file is available and how many times it can be downloaded.

You can now make any other changes to the product. When you’re happy with how the product and subscription are set up, either click on ‘Update’ or ‘Publish’ to make the trial live.

You can now create free trial subscriptions for other products, by following the same process described above.

Once you’ve added one or more subscriptions to your WooCommerce website, you’ll want to get as many signups as possible. With that in mind, you should allow visitors to use their preferred payment method.

By adding the free Stripe Payment Gateway for WooCommerce plugin to your website, you can collect payments through Visa, MasterCard, Google Pay, Apple Pay, and more.

Simply install the plugin and the onboarding wizard will guide you through the process of adding more payment methods and enabling express checkout.

Other than that, you may want to add a WooCommerce subscription reminder email to remind users of an upcoming renewal date.

Many freelancers, consultants, trainers, and other business owners sell their services as a subscription. For example, if you run a yoga studio then you might offer a one-month free trial of your personalized training program.

The best way to offer a free trial for custom services is by using WP Simple Pay . It’s the best Stripe payment plugin for WordPress and lets you accept payments, manage invoices, and offer free trials without having to set up a shopping cart or add products to an online store.

Note:  There is a  free version of WP Simple Pay  that allows you to accept credit cards, Apple Pay, iDEAL, and other payment methods. However, in this guide, we’ll be using the premium plugin, as it allows you to offer free trials.

Set Up the WP Simple Pay Plugin

First, you’ll need to install and activate the WP Simple Pay plugin. If you need help, then please see our guide on how to install a WordPress plugin .

Upon activation, the plugin will automatically launch the setup wizard. Go ahead and click the ‘Let’s Get Started’ button.

After that, you’ll need to enter the license key. You can find this information under your account on the WP Simple Pay website .

With that done, click the ‘Activate and Continue’ button.

Connect WordPress to Your Stripe Account

In the next step, you’ll need to connect your Stripe account to WP Simple Pay. Stripe is a popular payment gateway, and it’s the easiest way to accept credit card payments in WordPress , so it’s a great way to sell custom services online.

To get started, simply click the ‘Connect with Stripe’ button. You can then either log into your Stripe account or create a new account if you haven’t already registered with Stripe.

After connecting WP Simple Pay with Stripe, the setup wizard will ask you to configure its emails. You can choose whether to receive emails for payment receipts, upcoming invoices, and payment notifications.

You’ll also need to enter the email address where WP Simple Pay will send the messages.

Simply click the ‘Save and Continue’ button when you’re done.

Create a Subscription Form With a Free Trial

Now, you’re ready to create a subscription form with a free trial functionality. Go ahead and click on the ‘Create a Payment Form’ button.

WP Simple Pay comes with a ton of ready-made templates that you can use to create ‘buy now pay later’ payment plans , get donations, accept Google Pay in WordPress , and more.

To offer a free trial, hover over the ‘Recurring Services with Trial Period Form’ template. When it appears, click on the ‘Use Template’ button.

This will take you to the payment form editor.

To start, you can rename the form and type in an optional description. By default, the description is ‘Try our service free for 30 days,’ but you can change this to anything you want.

By default, WP Simple Pay will create an on-site payment form. However, you may want to show a payment button instead. When the visitor clicks the button, they’ll see the payment form in a popup.

To create a popup, check the box next to the ‘Open in an overlay modal’ box.

Another option is to host the payment form on Stripe’s site, by opening the ‘Type’ dropdown.

Here, select ‘Off-site Stripe Checkout form.’

When a customer buys a subscription, WP Simple Pay will redirect them to its built-in Payment Success Page. If you want to send visitors to a different page, then select either ‘Specific Page’ or ‘Redirect URL.’

You can then either type in the URL or select the page you want to use instead. For example, you might send subscribers to a custom thank you page , or a page where they can manage their free trial.

Add a Price to Your Subscription Form

When you’re ready, select the ‘Payment’ tab.

Here, you can set the payment mode to either live or testing. Testing mode allows you to complete the purchasing process without getting charged, so it’s perfect for testing new subscriptions on your website.

If you do select ‘Test Mode,’ then remember to come back to this page and change the mode to ‘Live’ when you’re finished testing.

Next, you can set the price of your subscription and the currency using the ‘Amount’ settings.

With that done, you can choose how often WP Simple Pay should charge subscribers.

Simply open the ‘Billing Period’ dropdown and choose day, week, month, or year. Then, type a number into the field next to the dropdown menu.

By default, WP Simple Pay offers customers a 30-day free trial.

If you want to make the free trial longer or shorter, then simply type a number into the ‘Free Trial’ field.

Sometimes, you may want to charge subscribers a setup fee. For example, if you’re a life coach then this extra fee may cover the time and effort required to add new clients to your admin system.

To charge an additional fee, simply type an amount into the ‘Setup Fee’ field.

With that done, scroll to the ‘Payment Methods’ section.

Here, you can check the box next to any additional payment options you want to offer, such as Klarna payments or ACH payments .

By offering visitors a choice of payment methods, you may be able to get more subscribers. However, try not to offer too many options, as this can become confusing.

Depending on the payment methods you select, you may see a ‘Configure’ link. In this case, click on ‘Configure’ and then follow the onscreen instructions to set up the payment gateway or method.

Customize the WP Simple Pay Subscription Form

With that done, you’re ready to build the subscription form.

Simply click on ‘Form Fields’ to open WP Simple Pay’s form builder.

The template already collects some basic information about the customer, such as their email address and credit card information.

The following image shows how the default form will look on WordPress.

To customize any of the default fields, simply click select it.

The section will expand to show all the settings you can customize, such as changing the field’s label or adding some placeholder text.

You can also remove fields from the subscription form.

Simply click to expand the field, and then select ‘Remove.’

Do you need to collect more information from your new subscribers? For example, you might need their tax ID or phone number .

Just click on the ‘Form Fields’ dropdown and then choose a field from the list. After that, click on ‘Add Field.’

Finally, you can change the order of the fields that appear in your form using drag and drop.

As you’re customizing the form, you can click on ‘Preview’ to see how it will look on your blog or website.

When you’re happy with the form, click ‘Publish’ to store your settings.

Add the Subscription Form to Your WordPress Website

Now, you’re ready to add the form to your WordPress blog using either a block or shortcode.

The easiest method is to use a block, so open the page or post where you want to show the subscription form.

Then, click on the plus (+) sign and type in ‘WP Simple Pay.’

When the right block appears, click to add it to the page or post.

With that done, open the dropdown menu in the WP Simple Pay block and choose the form you want to display.

When you’re finished, click on either ‘Update’ or ‘Publish.’

Now, if you visit your website you’ll see the subscription payment form live.

Another option is to add the subscription form using a shortcode. To get the shortcode, head over to WP Simple Pay » Payment Forms in the WordPress dashboard.

Here, just find the subscription form and click on its ‘Copy Shortcode’ button.

Now you just need to paste the shortcode into any page, post, or widget-ready area. For step-by-step instructions on how to place the shortcode, please see our guide on how to add a shortcode in WordPress .

We hope this article helped you learn how to add free trial subscriptions in WordPress. You may also want to check out our guide on how to track customer journey using MemberPress and our expert picks of the best WordPress LMS plugins .

If you liked this article, then please subscribe to our  YouTube Channel  for WordPress video tutorials. You can also find us on  Twitter  and Facebook .

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Reader Interactions

6 comments leave a reply.

Syed Balkhi says

Sep 8, 2024 at 2:24 pm

Hey WPBeginner readers, Did you know you can win exciting prizes by commenting on WPBeginner? Every month, our top blog commenters will win HUGE rewards, including premium WordPress plugin licenses and cash prizes. You can get more details about the contest from here . Start sharing your thoughts below to stand a chance to win!

Nov 29, 2023 at 8:50 pm

I plan to open a website with free content for everyone to rank in SEO, more advanced articles for premium users, and this idea of showing them a glimpse of what is available with a subscription is great! What do you think is better? Give a free trial for a set number of days or articles? Medium uses, I think, 3 free articles and this caught my eye as a nice solution.

WPBeginner Support says

Nov 30, 2023 at 10:59 am

That would be something that you need to test what works best with your audience.

Jiří Vaněk says

Jul 11, 2024 at 2:36 am

Personally, I prefer limiting by the number of articles rather than by days. With a time limit, there’s a risk that a very active user could go through and download the website’s content in a day or two if they wanted to, and then might not return for a subscription unless they’re specifically interested in new articles. If you choose to limit by the number of articles, I believe it will significantly increase the likelihood of successful registrations for the paid version of the website.

Nov 29, 2023 at 5:08 pm

Thank you for the tutorials on MemberPress. I’m getting acquainted with it, and all these manuals are making my work easier.

Nov 30, 2023 at 10:29 am

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