What is WordPress?
It's free — but which WordPress?
Two different things carry the same name, and confusing them is what costs beginners the most money and time. The difference decides both your cost and your freedom from day one.
WordPress is an open-source content management system. The real question is .org or .com?
WordPress.org is the software itself: free and open source under the GPLv2. You install it on your own hosting, so you own the files and the database and can install any theme and any plugin. You pay only for hosting and a domain — tens of dollars a year.
WordPress.com is a managed service sold by a company, where you never touch a server. It has a free plan, but with published limits: 1 GB of storage, a subdomain rather than your own domain, WordPress.com ads shown to your visitors, and no plugins — plugin installation starts at the Personal plan at €9 a month.
And here is the arithmetic that settles it for most people: the Personal plan on .com costs about €108 a year to get plugins — which are included free and unlimited on .org with hosting that costs around $36 a year. Roughly a third of the cost and complete freedom, in exchange for handling updates yourself.
The GPLv2 licence and the "over 43% of all sites across the web" figure are from the About page on WordPress.org, and the technical requirements from its requirements page. The free-plan limits and the Personal price are from the WordPress.com pricing page (served to us in euros; it varies by country). The hosting figure is from our own comparison. Reviewed 12 August 2026.
What does WordPress actually do?
Three things, and no more:
- It stores your content — pages, posts and images, in a database.
- It displays it — in the shape your theme defines. Change the theme and the appearance changes while the content stays.
- It gives you an admin panel — to add content and manage users, with no code.
Everything beyond that comes from plugins: a store, a booking system, memberships, contact forms. That is why people say WordPress "can do anything" — the capability is in the plugins, not in WordPress. It is also why plugins, rather than WordPress, are usually what slows a site down or gets it compromised.
The table that settles the choice
| WordPress.org | WordPress.com | |
|---|---|---|
| The software | Free and open source | A subscription service |
| What you pay for | Hosting and a domain | A monthly plan, or a limited free tier |
| Plugins | All of them, from day one | Personal plan and above |
| Your own domain | Yes | Not on the free plan |
| Ads shown to your visitors | No | Yes on the free plan |
| Updates and security | Your responsibility | Theirs |
Read that last row twice: it is the real price of .org. The freedom is free; the maintenance is not — you pay for it with your time.
So which should you choose?
Choose .com if you want to write and never need to know what PHP is, your site is a personal blog or an experiment, and you do not mind the ads at first. That is a sound choice with nothing wrong with it.
Choose .org if the site is for a business, or you want a particular plugin, or you want your own domain from day one, or it matters to you that nobody can restrict you later. That covers most people reading this page.
And one practical advantage of .org that people underrate: portability. Your site is files and a database that you own, so you can move it to any other host if the service deteriorates. That is what protects your price over the long run.
What do you need to run WordPress on your own hosting?
Its published requirements are explicit — use them as a checklist before you buy hosting:
- PHP 8.3 or greater — what WordPress states today. It still runs on 7.4, but that has reached official end of life and exposes your site to vulnerabilities.
- MariaDB 10.11+ or MySQL 8.0+ for the database.
- HTTPS — "required for every install" in the page's own words, and a free certificate is enough.
So ask your host one question before paying: do you give me PHP 8.3? If the answer is no, or "soon", look elsewhere. The Hostinger Premium plan we recommend meets these requirements and includes a free first-year domain and a certificate — with the four-year arithmetic in our hosting comparison.
A note on the licence that matters in practice
WordPress is licensed under the GPLv2, and that is not only a legal detail: it is why thousands of themes and plugins exist, and why nobody can stop you moving or modifying your site. It is also what makes "nulled themes" a security question rather than a licensing one — we covered that in our themes guide.
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WordPress questions.
What is WordPress?
An open-source content management system that lets you build and update a website without writing code. You write your pages and posts in an admin panel and it turns them into a site. It runs more than 43% of the web according to its own official site — which is why there are so many themes, plugins and so much help available for it.
Is WordPress free?
The software itself is free and open source under the GPLv2. But the question is incomplete, because two things are called WordPress: WordPress.org is the free software you install on your own hosting, so you pay only for hosting and a domain. WordPress.com is a managed service with a limited free plan — 1 GB of storage, a subdomain rather than your own domain, WordPress.com ads shown to your visitors, and no plugins.
What is the difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com?
On .org you own the files and the database, install any theme and any plugin, and handle updates and backups yourself. On .com you never touch a server, in exchange for limits on the free plan — and plugin installation starts at the Personal plan at €9 a month according to its pricing page. The trade is freedom against convenience, not quality against quality.
What does WordPress actually do?
Three things: it stores your content in a database, displays it to visitors in the shape your theme defines, and gives you an admin panel to add pages and posts and manage users. Everything beyond that — a store, bookings, memberships — comes from plugins rather than from WordPress itself.
How do I get started with WordPress?
If you choose .org: register a domain, then hosting that supports PHP 8.3 and MySQL 8.0, install WordPress in one click from the hosting panel, then pick a theme with RTL support. If you choose .com: create an account and start writing immediately, and upgrade to a paid plan when you need a plugin or your own domain. The full order is in our website creation guide.
Chose .org? Then start in the right order.
Purpose, then domain, then hosting, then theme, then content — why each step comes before the next, and what you do not need to pay for.