WordPress.com vs WordPress.org – How to Tell Apart?

Users new to WordPress don’t really understand the difference between dot com and dot org top-level domains. Although, these services are related but provide services in a different way.

In this article, we will examine the beginner’s dilemma with WordPress.com vs WordPress.org. We will discuss the types of services these platforms provide. We will also briefly touch on, how these services are different and how can these services used for the user-specific needs.

WordPress.com

This platform facilities the WordPress users in hosting and running with their WordPress powered websites. The basic free and more feature-rich premium services this platform provides can be categorized into following.

• Setup a site within hours not days as everything from hosting, domain, storage, installation, configuration to security and automatic updates are managed by the platform
• Access to some of the highly regarded WordPress plugins
• Ability to choose from tons of premium themes specific to the industry like a business site, blog, or portfolio
• Premium support from the company using numerous channels. These channels include documents, forums, videos, or one-on-one assistance by e‑mail or live chat with a support agent.

WordPress.org

Let’s take a look at the WordPress.org. It’s an online platform for free and open source software WordPress, which is a content management system. When people talk about WordPress, it usually means the WordPress content management system. Moreover, WordPress as free software is released under the terms of GPL v2.

The essential services this platform provides generally categorized into following.

• Official platform for stable and nightly builds of WordPress
• Full control to choose a host, install themes, plugins, and opportunity to access and engage with WordPress community
• Ability to choose any number of WordPress Themes and Plugins from official Directory
• Full access to customize the design, code in whatever way to make it fit your needs
• Free access to WordPress Theme and Plugin Directory for unlimited resources
• WordPress Supports forum powered by WordPress Community
• Tons of other free community supported services, centric around WordPress.

Conclusion

So when deciding to choose either platform, it all boils down to choosing between convenience over conviction. If you are non-technical and don’t want to get into nitty-gritty details of IT every time something goes down. Then stick with WordPress.com or hundreds of other services like this.

However, if you are after custom solution, you can choose WordPress.org. That is to say, if you don’t mind hiring an in-house developer or getting your hands dirty with code then go for self-hosted WordPress; it won’t let you down.

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