WordPress.com is an excellent choice for creating a blog site from on the right foot, and you can expand your site with WordPress extensions that cover almost everything you could think of. However, for websites that don’t have blogging as the primary focus it’s necessary to invest much time changing the system to your preferences. If you’re a fan of the WordPress software it is possible to find WordPress hosting at a lower cost elsewhere.
What Is WordPress.com?
WordPress.com is a web-based website builder built on the well-known WordPress CMS (available on WordPress.org). With WordPress.com you can have an operational WordPress website online in a matter of minutes with the drag and drop editing tool. It is ideal for websites built around blogs due to its superb blogging capabilities.
Using WordPress.com Website Builder
If you are already planning to utilize WordPress to power your site, WordPress.com makes for an easy method to accomplish it. Instead of focusing on getting an domain name and hosting plan and creating the WordPress web site, WordPress.com offers all this in a single monthly installment and comes with a drag-and-drop editor to speed up the deployment of your website.
WordPress.com Features and tools
Hosting of websites
All WordPress.com plans come with hosting for websites included in your annual or monthly payment. Free accounts begin with 3GB of storage The most affordable paid plan comes with 6GB of storage, and the highest priced plans come with 200GB.
SSL certificates
Every site hosted on WordPress.com have the SSL certification from Let’s Encrypt that ensures the security of all information sent to and from your website. Websites that compete with Web.com cost hefty prices to obtain an SSL certificate.
The WordPress ecosystem
The WordPress CMS is for years the most widely used blogging platform available across the internet. As a result it has tens of thousands themes and plugins are being developed specifically for WordPress and nearly all of them are available for use on a site hosted on WordPress.com.
How to Create, Design, & Edit Your WordPress.com website
WordPress.com guides you through an easy website-building wizard in which you pick your website’s name and design. After that, you’ll be guided to the drag-and drop website visual editor.
As compared to the majority of website editors we’ve tested The WordPress.com visual editor is a bit old-fashioned, with a tendency to require more steps to complete an action than what is needed. The system is based on blocks that lets you drag and drop elements on the page, and then move around in the grid.
WordPress.com’s hundreds of themes built-in are responsive, meaning they’ll be compatible with mobile devices. With an E-commerce account, you can choose every WordPress CMS theme you find. There are thousands of them, you’re not limited in your choices.
WordPress.com’s editors for web pages aren’t a breeze to make use of. If you’re not familiar with this aspect that is part of WordPress’s WordPress website editor the onboarding wizard isn’t very useful. You’ll be forced to spend some time at learn.wordpress.com reviewing the tutorial videos that explain how to use the system.
When you are able to master it, you can make use of it to create your own web-based site. WordPress.com’s editor is very powerful and gives you many more options than other web builders that are out there.
Adding Multimedia to Your WordPress.com website
Upload your own images to WordPress.com using the browser wizard. Audio and videos are available for upload on all plans that are paid. Documents such as PDFs PowerPoint presentations and Word files can also be added into the media library to be displayed on your pages and other pages.
WordPress.com also provides an unpaid photo library that includes more than 40,000 photos that are copyright-free. It is possible to connect to your Google Photos account with WordPress.com and upload photos from Google Photos. In general, WordPress.com makes working with media simple.
Marketing Functions with WordPress.com Websites
WordPress.com offers only a handful of integrated marketing tools. It is possible to promote your brand via Facebook as well as Instagram (Business or eCommerce-related plans are not available) as well as connect your social media accounts and monitor user interaction using Google Analytics. This is a bare minimum.
In contrast, WordPress.com directs you to third-party tools to market your site and increasing user engagement. Support documentation recommends that you use MailerLite to market your website via email for instance.
SEO Functionality and Add-Ons to WordPress.com Websites
WordPress.com websites are optimised for the search engine automatically. URLs, maps of sites and page codes are automatically generated in a manner that will improve the rankings of your site’s on search engines. Pages are comprised of all the necessary elements to make your website search engine-friendly. There are many SEO plugins that work with WordPress such as the well-known Yoast SEO.
WordPress.com’s plugins system is among its advantages. It requires an Business or eCommerce plan to utilize the plugins, however there are more than 50,000 no-cost and premium plugins that work with WordPress that will enhance and improve the functionality of your site.
E-commerce
E-commerce on WordPress.com is done through WooCommerce, the WooCommerce plugin, which is available for Business or eCommerce plans. These plans are quite expensive, however, WooCommerce is among the most versatile and flexible E-commerce platforms that are available today.
You can sell unlimited variants of items (color size, color and shape, etc.).) and arrange products according to tags or categories and attributes. WooCommerce is compatible with both physical and digital products, and affiliate sales, and offers a variety of shipping options.
This is why it will take a bit longer to establish the WooCommerce store than, say the Wix store, however, it’s a viable alternative for businesses seeking to sell a variety of various kinds of merchandise.
How Much Does WordPress.com Cost?
It is possible to start with an ad-supported, free WordPress.com website, however you’ll be unable to personalize your site as in any way. The paid plan offers four options available that are more expensive than other plans. It is possible to pay annual or monthly and enjoy up to 43% off when you pay annually.
Help and Support
WordPress.com provides a wealth of information in the form of help content, online tutorials videos, as well as emails that will show you all the aspects and function WordPress system. Human support is contingent on your plan. Plans for personal use include unlimited email support. Premium plans include simple live chat. If you’re on an Enterprise plan you’ll have live chat 24/7 and eCommerce plans come with individual help sessions.
Bottom Line
WordPress.com is an excellent site to build your own WordPress site, like one focused on blogging. E-commerce is also well-handled in the event that you’re willing to pay for it with the help of the strong WooCommerce plugin. Rivalries such as Wix and Squarespace offer more user-friendly website-building tools and are generally easier to begin with, especially in the case of sites that are not specifically focused on blogs. However, the countless templates, the massive library of plugins with responsive designs, and excellent E-commerce tools provide WordPress.com as an ideal alternative.
