In this blog post I am going to be comparing Free WordPress Blogs and Self-Hosted WordPress blogs, many people ask me this question that which is better and I am going to try my best to provide you all the details in this post.

WordPress.org Benefits:

• The biggest benefit is that it’s free and extremely easy to use.
• You have access to all the content and important data. You can mess with the core files and customize the themes. And no one is going to delete your blog (personal experience) just because you share a picture or video that you don’t know.
• You have the authority to install and use any plugin that you like.
• You can create or customize and use any custom themes.
• You can also start making money online by promoting your own products or services or by promoting 3rd party items – like how to cure cystic acne – or any way you like it!
• You can use any Custom Analytics and 3rd party tracking service.

WordPress.org Cons

• The most important thing is web hosting, you need a good web host and this is going to cost you some money $3-$7 every month, however, once your site grows and starts generating revenue you can easily cover the cost of web hosting from it! 😉
• You have to update the plugins and installation manually but with a single click which I guess is not very hard eh.
• The most annoying thing about having a self-hosted blog is that you have to frequently back-up your website and it used to be a hectic job and I hated it but now I am using a 3rd party service Code Guard which automatically creates and sends me the backup of my website daily.
• You have to fight the SPAM and it can be a pain in the ass however, if you enable Akismet (which is already available and is a default built-in WordPress.org plugin), then it’ll automatically filter out the real comments and delete the spammy ones.

WordPress.com Benefits

• The biggest benefit is that it offers 3GB space for free and in case your blog exceeds that limit then you will have to pay for the additional space ($19.95/yr. For 5GB space) or ($289.97/yr. for 100GB space).
• They backup your blog on daily basis.
• Blog owners cannot sell ads on their blogs until their blog starts getting more than 25,000 page views every month. And you will still need approval and an add-on known as Ad Control to start running ads, the approval does not cost money however, you will have to share 50 of your blog’s revenue with them.
• With the version of wordpress.com you can only use limited plugins but if you want to use premium plugins you will have to upgrade your account. You cannot use customized themes you have to choose a free theme from the list that they provide you and in order to use a premium theme you will normally have to purchase the theme by paying $20-$80, they also offer a feature with which you can edit and modify the current CSS of the free themes but this upgrade costs $30 per year, but even with this feature you will get limited options.
• You have to use the default tracking service that comes with wordpress.com and you are not allowed to use 3rd party services like Google Analytics etc.
• They can Delete, Disable your account anytime they want without any notification, they can remove your blog posts, pictures, videos without your permission or any prior notification.
• After upgrading your account you will still have to keep that ugly footer link which says ‘Powered by WordPress’, you cannot edit the footer links!

Final Words:

If you are a blogger who wants to start a personal blog and will only be sharing pictures, videos then you should go with WordPress. And if you are a blogger who wants to make money online with blogging, then I would suggest that you should go with a Self-Hosted WordPress blog. Many times people would say it is going to cost you money but that’s not the case it’ll only cost you $50-$80 every year including web hosting and domain name to start a normal blog and once you start making money you can upgrade your hosting account and customize your website according to your needs. That’s more than worth it and its far less than any kind of effective cystic acne treatment would cost you.

Let’s assume that you sign up for WordPress.com blog, after that you purchase a custom domain through WordPress.com which will cost you $17 per year and after that your sign up for the Ad-Free package which will cost you around $30/year and if you want to customize the theme and layout it is going to cost you an additional $30 per year and yet you will not have complete access to the files of your blog.

So the total so far is: $77 per year

However, if you choose WordPress.org and use BlueHost or any good web hosting company you can easily get a web hosting account for $3.95 per month or for $47.4 per year and normally you will get a free domain as well or you can also purchase a domain name through Namecheap or GoDaddy for $10 maximum, the total would be $57.4 per year, the best part is that you will have full control over your blog and you can do whatever you want to do with it, modify/customize the themes, edit the core files and that is why I always recommend using wordpress.org for starting a website or blog because it is extremely easy to use and very flexible!