WordPress Review, Features, Pricing, Theme, Plugin
Websites and hosting from the leading CMS
WordPress Full Blog Review
- WordPress Review
- WordPress Features
- WordPress Pricing
- WordPress Theme
- WordPress Plugin
- WordPress: What's New?
- WordPress Test
- WordPress Competition
OUR DECISION
WordPress.com offers an easy way to get a WordPress website, and the performance is excellent, but it has a steeper learning curve than other website builders.
GOOD
- The massive list of potential themes
- Good performance
- Top blogging features
BAD
- Expensive for eCommerce
- Complex editor
WordPress Review
WordPress is the world's most popular content management system (CMS), accounting for about 42% of all websites online today. One of the simplest ways to start a WordPress website of your own is to get WordPress hosting on WordPress.com, and it rivals the best website builders, while also being able to be hosted by the best web hosting services.
You can use WordPress.com to have a website, and rarely have to worry about things like installing software, system upgrades, security patches, and ongoing maintenance. In our WordPress review, we evaluate WordPress.com against what's available today, so you can decide whether it's the best place to build your website.
WordPress: Snapshot
ordPress.com's offerings range from generous entry-level plans to powerful, expensive eCommerce plans. It has fast response times and 24/7 live chat support, making it a solid choice for hosting a WordPress website. There is a huge list of themes and plugins to choose from, so it is possible to build any kind of website with WordPress.com.
Unfortunately, this high level of control means that WordPress.com is relatively cumbersome to use, and has little hands-on for those who haven't used WordPress before. Wix is a better choice for technical beginners, as it has the most intuitive interface, and Squarespace has better designs out of the box.
WordPress.com's competitors
WordPress: WordPress Key Features
There is a significant difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org. WordPress.org is where you'll find the open-source CMS software WordPress that can be installed on your web hosting of choice.
WordPress.com has more in common with website builders like Wix and Squarespace. It doesn't offer every WordPress CMS feature but makes it easy to build a WordPress site quickly. You don't have to worry about installation and ongoing maintenance, as it's all taken care of.
You get started on WordPress.com through a short site setup wizard, where you choose the site name, homepage design, and navigation menu. The second step introduces you to the WordPress visual editor.
There's not much to hand here - you're left in a relatively complicated editor interface and expected to work it out on your own. Your new website's default text forces you to visit Learn.wordpress.com, but that site feels more like an overview of WordPress.com as a whole, rather than a step-by-step guide to using the visual editor. does.
The WordPress.com editor uses a "block system". Everything from headings and paragraphs to image galleries and videos is blocked. You can drag and edit it on the page. To rearrange blocks, you simply drag them around the page, though you're limited in exactly where you can place blocks.
Once you get a handle on that, the WordPress.com visual editor is powerful and has a long list of nice blocks to add to your pages. But it has a higher learning curve than competing website builders like Wix, Weebly, and Squarespace.
WordPress.com: Key features and highlights
You can quickly change the look of your website by choosing an alternate theme. The free accounts have 114 themes to choose from, or you can purchase one of 83 premium themes for $49 to $125. Premium and Business users get all premium themes unlocked as part of their plans.
If you want to use another theme, you'll need Business or Ecommerce plans. With either of these, you have the option to upload and install your own theme. There are thousands of ready-made WordPress CMS themes out there, available for any other website editor.
You can further customize your theme by choosing your own colors and backgrounds, menu options, and fonts. It is possible to change your site's CSS, but you will need a premium plan to do so.
Selling through WordPress.com is available to various degrees depending on your payment plan. With a premium plan, you can combine payments with the PayPal button to accept credit card payments through the payment processor. Even if you have a free or personal plan, you can add a PayPal button manually by creating a custom HTML block and pasting some code from PayPal.
Business plans offer the option to install the WooCommerce platform. It is automatically included in the eCommerce plan. WooCommerce is an extremely powerful and versatile eCommerce platform that fits right into a WordPress website. You can embed products on your pages and include product ratings and reviews.
Products can have categories, tags, and attributes, making them easier for customers to find. You can set up an unlimited variety of products (such as sizes and colors). You have the option to sell physical or digital goods, sell affiliate products, and set up complex shipping options. Various additional plugins allow you to create virtually any type of online store.
This power comes with a downside, and that is the complexity. It takes time and effort to get a WooCommerce store working exactly the way you want it. And because WordPress was not initially designed as an eCommerce platform, there are some quirks in how it all works together which take some time to get used to. You'll need to spend more time getting to grips with it than with Squarespace or Wix.
WordPress: What's New?
Updates to WordPress CMS are immediately visible on WordPress.com. This year, changes to the system are focused on the block editor and mobile app.
In April 2021, the block editor gained the page layout picker and improved spacing options. Page layouts are pre-designed templates for creating pages. This is part of WordPress' ongoing efforts to become a better website builder that works for a wider range of applications.
New features have also been given in the WordPress mobile app. You can now view stats for your site's pages from the app, and set up push notifications to remind you of the blog on specific days.
WordPress: WordPress Pricing
You can get a WordPress.com site for free, but site customization is limited and ads will be shown on your site. WordPress.com has four paid plans. You can pay monthly or annually. Annual plans include up to 43% off on monthly plans.
If you choose an annual plan you get a free domain for the first year through WordPress.com. The renewal price for the following years is relatively high (for example, a .com domain costs $18 per year when purchased through WordPress.com). However, you have the option of using your own domain name, purchased from another domain name registrar, on your WordPress.com site.
WordPress: WordPress Test
To comprehensively compare WordPress to the competition, we analyzed a range of its features and tools to see how it performs. This includes its uptime and response time, as these factors are important when considering website building.
WordPress: How reliable is WordPress.com?
A website that is regularly unavailable to your visitors makes the customer experience poor. As part of our testing, we did a two-week uptime test using uptime.com on a site installed on WordPress.com. For two weeks, website availability was checked every five minutes.
WordPress performed well in this test, recording 100% uptime. It would require a lengthy test to uncover systemic issues with website availability, but WordPress certainly gets a passing grade in this round.
WordPress: How responsive is WordPress.com?
Website load speed has a significant impact on customer satisfaction, and search engines often rank better performing websites higher in their rankings. Many factors affect how fast a website feels, and its initial response time is important.
We conducted a two-week response-time test on our WordPress.com website from servers in New York, Los Angeles, and Dallas to get an idea of the average response speed for US visitors.
On average, our WordPress.com site responded within 123ms. Most of the time, the pace was consistent. The site response time reached 2000ms only once during testing. In this instance, it took about two hours to return to normal speed.
Overall, these response speeds are excellent, so visitors to the WordPress.com website should realize that the service is fast. In comparison, competitor Wix had the same average response time at 120ms, while Squarespace came in at a sluggish 423ms.
WordPress: The Competition
WordPress.com has a lot of competition. Even if you are dead set on WordPress as your CMS, there are many other website builders out there, as well as the best WordPress hosting providers. If you're browsing for a website builder, Wix and Squarespace arguably have better options.
WordPress.com is a blogging platform with website builder features, while Wix and Squarespace were built with website building in mind. While WordPress is a more versatile solution, thanks to its vast plugin library, the focused nature of Wix and Squarespace makes them easier to use, faster to pick up, and less prone to error.
Wix has an improved website editor that allows you to drag and drop elements anywhere on the page. Squarespace's editor is closer to WordPress's block-based editing, but still significantly more streamlined and easier to use. Be sure to read our Wix review and our Squarespace review to learn more about both of these website builders, and our comparison of all three, WordPress vs Wix vs Squarespace.
WordPress: Decision
Creating a site on WordPress.com gives you the peace of mind that your managed WordPress hosting company is most responsible for the success of the CMS. The free plan, while limited and supported by ads, is a great way to get a personal site off the ground, and with plans starting at $4 per month, it's an excellent one for small, blog-based sites. is option.
We were impressed with the performance of our site hosted on WordPress. This suggests that if you build your site there, it will load quickly for your visitors and will rarely feel sluggish. WordPress' blogging features are also exceptional, while the eCommerce features offered by WooCommerce are among the best in the business, only with dedicated eCommerce platforms like Shopify-worthy competitors. However, they come at a hefty price tag.
As a website builder, WordPress.com is pretty clunky to use and has more steps than dedicated website builders like Squarespace and Weebly to get things done. While it is certainly possible to build a gorgeous WordPress website that breaks the mold, it often feels like you are fighting against WordPress' deep roots as a blogging platform.
The do-it-all versatility of WordPress.com is a double-edged sword, as many things seem unnecessarily complicated. The extensive eCommerce features, for example, are great for huge stores but create a steep learning curve for SMEs.
That's why WordPress.com can be recommended for a wide range of site types, especially if you value versatility, with the caveat that it has a steep learning curve compared to other website builders on the market today.
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