The best way to think about the differences between WordPress.com vs WordPress.org is the analogy of renting a house vs. owning a house.
WordPress.com is similar to renting a house. You have limited power and control over what you can and cannot do.
WordPress.org is like owning a house. Where you have full control, no one can kick you out, and you can do anything that you want.
WordPress.org aka “the real WordPress”, is the popular website platform that you have heard all the great things about.
It is open source and 100% free for anyone to use. All you need is a domain name and web hosting. This is why it is also referred to as self-hosted WordPress.
With WordPress.org, you have full control of your website. You are free to do anything you want and customize it as much as you need.
WordPress.com is a hosting service created by the co-founder of WordPress, Matt Mullenweg. Because of the same founder, often users confuse WordPress.com with the popular WordPress.org software.
The WordPress.com hosting service has 5 plans:
- Free – Very limited.
- Personal – $48 per year
- Premium – $96 per year
- Business – $300 per year
- VIP – starting at $5000 per month
How are WordPress.com and WordPress.org Related?
They are
NOT related. The reason why people confuse the two together is because they both have the name WordPress, which is actually a registered trademark owned by the WordPress Foundation.
Another reason for the confusion is that Matt Mullenweg is the founder of Automattic which owns the blog hosting service, WordPress.com.
Lastly, a lot of the Automattic employees are regular contributors of WordPress.org. Despite these common grounds, the two projects are totally different entities.
It is important that we mention that WordPress foundation is registered by Matt Mullenweg. The current person in charge of dealing with WordCamps and other WordPress foundation duties is an Automattic employee.
WordPress 5.0 will be the first “major” release of 2018, including the new editor, codenamed “Gutenberg”.
Behind it are the Automattic employees.
