Hi I am Praneeth Kumar.
In this blog I will walk you through everything you need to know between hostinger vs wordpress.com.
After reading this ultimate comparison guide you will not have any other doubt related to both hosting providers, I guarantee you that.
So without further ado let’s get started.
Here is a 30000 foot view of the blog post.
Definition and differences;
In this section we will talk about the definition and differences between both the platforms in detail.
What is Hostinger?
Hostinger is an international web hosting service and domain registrar, provider.
Hostinger is located in Lithuania, this was established in 2004, this web hosting service gives services for over 29 million users across 180 different countries worldwide.
The main reason why most people use hostinger web hosting services is because of its cheap but powerful hosting with fast website speed and support and because the hosting is optimized for WordPress websites.
You can click here to get started with hostinger as it is best web hosting compared to wordpress.
What is wordpress.com?
WordPress.com is a free blog publishing platform like Wix.
This platform is managed by the company called AUTOMATTIC so wordpress.com is a proprietary CMS of AUTOMATTIC.
The company was founded in 2005 by the founder of wordpress.org CMS Matt Mullenweg in America and so far wordpress.org CMS is managing 40% of the websites on the internet including this one.
We can say wordpress.com is a business model for company AUTOMATTIC to make money by providing people to create a website on WordPress without worrying about the security and technical stuff of WordPress.org.
Now let’s look at the main differences between both the platforms wordpress.com and wordpress.org.
WordPress.com is different from WordPress.org:
I see many people confuse between both the platforms wordpress.com and WordPress.org, but let me tell you something that both of these platforms are totally different from each other.
Let’s take a look at the main differences between both the platforms in a table form.
| S.no. | WordPress.com | WordPress.org |
| 1. | It is a closed source CMS, there is a free plan that you can use with just creating an account in less than 5 minutes of time. | It is an open-source content management system and completely free to use under GPL license but you need a domain and hosting to be able to create a website. |
| 2. | Because it is a platform owned by a private company, you need to follow the terms and conditions of the company if not your account/Website will be suspended just like social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. | You have complete control over your website, customisation and you don’t need to follow anyone’s rules and regulations, you own your website. |
| 3. | You can make money with different methods but you need to upgrade to higher and premium expensive plans. | You can make money, however, the way you like, no one is going to stop or restrict you and there are no premium plans available for you to upgrade in WordPress.org. |
| 4. | You don’t have to install WordPress on your hosting account because, wordpress is already pre-installed by the platform, you just have to sign up and get started. | You will have to install and set up wordpress on your hosting account, thankfully there are many hosting providers which offer one-click WordPress installation and managed wordpress hosting services like Bluehost and hostinger. |
| 5. | You don’t have to worry about the security of your website, the company is going to take care of it. | You are completely responsible for the security and safety of your website, but don’t worry your hosting will help you in security and WordPress.org community. |
These are all the main differences between both the platforms which you should know.
Many people use WordPress.com over WordPress.org mainly for its additional support and security features for WordPress websites.
In this blog, we will consider wordpress.com over wordpress.org in order to compare with hostinger.
Now let’s look at the top features of both the platforms hostinger and wordpress.com.
Top Features of both the platforms;
In this section we will dig into the top features of both platforms WordPress.com and hostinger.
Let’s first start with hostinger and then move to wordpress.com.
Top hostinger features:
Before you learn the features, we will only consider the shared hosting features of hostinger.
- It offers a free custom domain name and SSL for a year.
- It offers a 30 days money back guarantee.
- It offers managed wordpress hosting.
- It also offers 24/7 customer support.
- It gives unlimited websites, storage and bandwidth.
- It gives unlimited email hosting service.
- You also get Google AdWords credit for paid advertising of your website on Google.
- You can start building a website on wordpress.org with a hostinger with as low as $1 a month.
These are all the top 8 premium plan features of hostinger shared hosting.
Top WordPress.com features:
Let’s take a look at the top 7 features of wordpress.com platform.
- It offers a free custom domain and SSL certificate.
- WordPress is already installed.
- Excellent website security and support.
- Fast website loading speed and uptime guarantee.
- Great 24/7 live chat customer support system.
- You can easily check your website performance with the inbuilt analytics feature.
- You can get access to lots of premium wordpress themes for free.
These are all the top 7 best features of wordpress.com.
You can read my breakdown and detailed analysis of different wordpress.com hosting plans here.
Pricing;
Let’s look at the pricing of both the platforms, we will first start with hostinger and then move to wordpress.com.
Hostinger price:
Although hostinger has different plans like shared hosting, WordPress managed hosting, cloud, VPS hosting.
We will only take into consideration the shared hosting prices of the hostinger because it is what hostinger is popular for.
- Single shared hosting-0.99$/month.
- Premium shared hosting- 2.19$/month.
- Business shared hosting-3.99$/month.
You can pay to hostinger on either monthly or yearly subscription plans but I would highly recommend you to get 2 year subscription plan to get the most out of the deal from hostinger.
Now let’s look at the pricing plans of wordpress.com in detail.
WordPress.com price:
WordPress.com mainly provides shared hosting plans, let’s take a look at all the premium plans of wordpress.com and also check their prices.
- Free plan-$0 a month.
- Personal plan-$5 a month.
- Premium plan-$8 a month.
- Business plan-$25 a month.
- E commerce plan-$45 a month.
All of these pricing is for yearly subscription, you can also buy web hosting service for monthly basis, but the pricing is pretty much expensive for monthly plan over yearly.
Before we jump into learning the pros and cons of both the platforms I want to share a quick tip for people regarding wordpress.com here.
Don’t use wordpress.com free plan:
Although you have learnt that wordpress.com offers a free plan in its hosting, I would not at all recommend you to start a blog on free plan of wordpress.com because of the following reasons,
- You don’t have access to Google Analytics.
- WordPress.com shows ads and branding on your free website that looks really bad.
- You can neither install a theme nor a plugin on free wordpress blog.
- You have a free subdomain something like your domain.wordpress.com for free plan of wordpress and it decreases credibility of your website online.
- You don’t have support from wordpress.com team, only community support is available.
In order to enjoy the real benefits of wordpress.org, you should switch to the business plan of wordpress.com which we have discussed earlier in the pricing of wordpress.com.
Now let’s have a look at the pros and cons of both hosting services.
Pros and cons of both platforms;
In this section we will talk about the benefits and drawbacks of using both the platforms, we will first start with hostinger then move on to WordPress.com.
Pros and cons of hostinger:
Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of using hostinger for your wordpress blog.
Pros:
- Very cheap prices which is highly affordable for beginners.
- Easy to use and beginner-friendly interface and dashboard and panel which is clutter-free.
- You can create up to 100 domain-based email address to your website with 10 GB storage for each email address for free, which is very important for professional websites.
- Lots of freebies like a custom domain for a year, unlimited websites and databases, website builder, SSL, google ads credit, unlimited storage, and bandwidth, etc.
- Web Hosting is highly optimized for fast loading speed with options like SSD storage drives, HTTP 2, PHP 7 and custom cache manager of the websites.
- It Offers 30 days money-back guarantee so you can test/use the platform without worry.
- It offers free daily backup, DDOS Protection, SSH access, two-factor authentication, and free CDN which is a great deal for your website security.
- Managed WordPress hosting like single-click WordPress installation and auto WordPress themes and plugins updates option which is a great deal for beginners who don’t know how to install and use WordPress properly.
- Great and fast live chat 24/7 multilingual customer support team and has lots of extensive knowledge base articles to help for newbies in times of trouble.
Cons:
- There is no dedicated hosting plan in hostinger pricing plans.
- The customer support team is quite limited to only live chat, email, there is no phone call support available and support is not immediate, you might have to wait for your turn.
- Uptime of the hostinger servers are found to be irregular like does not give 99% guarantee throughout the year.
These are all the benefits and drawbacks which I have found in hostinger hosting plan.
Pros and cons of wordpress.com:
Let’s take a look at the benefits and drawbacks of using wordpress.com hosting for your wordpress blog.
Pros:
- You don’t need to install and update wordpress on your hosting account, wordpress is pre-installed.
- You don’t need to worry much about the WordPress website safety/security, you can leave it for WP.com experts for free just like wix.
- It has a free plan to test the waters.
- You can get live chat customer support from wordpress experts and lots of video tutorials and online resources for help.
- It has a great loading speed and uptime of the WordPress websites.
- It is simple to signup and easy to use platform with clutter free dashboard.
Cons:
- It is very expensive hosting especially compared to hostinger.
- It offers free plan which absolutely sucks for professional blogging.
- You don’t own your website completely because wordpress.com is a service managed by company AUTOMATTIC, they can delete and remove your website if you don’t follow the rules and regulations properly, this is the exact problem we have with wix, medium and other platforms other than WordPress.org, you don’t completely own your website on these platforms except open source CMS like WordPress.org.
- You cannot display advertisements on your website (even if you have a business plan) other than wordpress ads like Ezoic and Mediavine if you want to monetize your website in the future.
- You can use wordpress.org features like installing themes and plugins in the business plan only.
- There are no E-Commerce features in any plans of wordpress.com as long as you don’t switch to an E-Commerce plan.
These are all the benefits and drawbacks of using wordpress.com for your WordPress blog, now let’s see and decide which hosting platform is best and why.
Which is the best and why;
As far as my opinion through this entire analysis is concerned hostinger is better than wordpress.com because
- You own the website that you start on.
- It is cheap to start on hostinger.
- It offers lots of additional features like email hosting, staging, etc.
I would highly recommend you start a wordpress.org blog on hostinger over wordpress.com.
You can get started on hostinger with my special link to activate your 90% discount offer.
Don’t worry too much about the technical stuff of WordPress, you can read my guide on all the things related to wordpress technical stuff and their possible solutions here.
With that said, let’s conclude the blog post.
Ending remarks;
These are all the details and information you need to know about both the platforms and hosting providers for WordPress.
Do comment down which hosting provider you choose to start a blog on wordpress.org in 2021.
Share the blog post with your family, friends and colleagues if you have found it helpful.
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I will catch you next time till then keep learning and keep growing.