Published on June 23rd, 2015 | by Diogo Costa

10 Reasons Why Your WordPress Blog Should be Self-Hosted

WordPress is one of the most popular names in the blogging market, being used by millions around the world. What some people might not know is that, in fact, WordPress has two “branches”, WordPress.com and WordPress.org. While both are free, their functionalities vary significantly, so users looking to start a blog can be confused.

WordPress.com is the service where WordPress offers users a simple way to host a blog. There are no concerns with hosting or domains, as both are offered by WordPress along with the content management system. WordPress.org, on the other end, is aimed at users wanting their blog to be self-hosted, which offers more freedom of choice. This article will explore why a self-hosted blog can be better, supporting this premiss with 10 reasons.

1. More control on hosting

WordPress.com does offer hosting at no cost, but the insertion of advertising and charging for more advanced services make it a no go for most people. Using WordPress.org requires self-hosting which, despite bringing additional costs, gives users more control on their hosting and its functionalities.

2. Ability to have a custom domain

Despite offering the (paid) possibility to get a custom domain, on WordPress.com most blogs have a domain like urloftheblog.wordpress.com. This is not great for people wanting to deploy SEO tactics, so buying a custom domain (often bundled with the hosting) is the better option.

3. Keeping publicity earnings

As mentioned before, WordPress.com places publicity on its blogs, and all the earnings that derive from that publicity go to WordPress. On the self-hosted version, however, everything related to publicity (even its mere existence) is controlled by users.

4. Advanced e-commerce features

In terms of e-commerce, WordPress.com does offer some functionalities, but they are quite limited. On WordPress.org, however, users have all the control over it, with the possibility of choosing from several different e-commerce services.

5. Possibility to make visual edits (fonts, colors, CSS)

With lots of themes to choose from, on both WordPress services is very easy to give a great visual aspect to a blog. However, the WordPress.com version does not allow further changes, in fonts, colors or CSS, as this is a paid service. On the self-hosted version, however, all those are virtually unlimited, according to the characteristics of each theme.

6. Use of plugins

Absolutely forbidden on WordPress.com, as they may compromise the entirety of the system, WordPress.org offers thousands of plugins for users to choose from, that can result in great improvements for any blog.

7. Greater control on social sharing buttons

Despite being available for free on WordPress.com, social sharing buttons are somewhat limited here. On WordPress.org, though, there are dozens of possibilities to choose from.

8. No need for registration

Everything that is needed to use WordPress.org can be downloaded for free, with no questions asked. In order to create a blog at WordPress.com, however, registration is mandatory.

9. In the end, .org is cheaper

Sure enough, subscribing for some hosting space and registering a domain costs money. However, that is the only things a user needs to pay to get his site up and running, assuming that he has the needed coding knowledge. On WordPress.com, most elaborate changes are not allowed in the free version, which results in high fees which, when summed up, will be definitely higher than the combined cost of hosting and domain registration.

10. Sense of ownership

A blog hosted on WordPress.com is never really owned by the user creating it. WordPress controls most aspects related to the blog and the account running it, something that definitely does not happen in the self-hosted .org option. Here, the user responsible for installing the WordPress.org software is really the owner of the site/blog.

Have any other reasons as to why WordPress.org is a better option? Let us know in the comments.

Tags: blog, hosting, WordPress