WordPress.com allow you to setup your own WordPress blog for free. You can even choose to use your own domain name for the blog. Does this make wordpress.com a good option or should you choose to pay for your own hosting instead.

We firmly believe that you should never use wordpress.com or any free host for any of your main websites. You can choose to use them for feeder websites that are meant to funnel traffic to your main websites but never on the main websites themselves. There are a number of reasons for this. Before we look at why you should never us free hosting we should look a little on the benefits and drawbacks of free hosting.

Benefits of free hosting

The main benefit of free hosting is in the name. It is free. It does not cost you anything, there is no monthly fees to pay and you do not risk that your website get shut down if you miss a payment.

Another benefit with free hosting is that you never have to worry about installing scripts or getting things to work. The hosting provider have already made sure of that. They have developed a system that is very easy to use and that works without you ever having to worry. You never have to worry whether a plugin is going to break your websites etc because the host has already gone though everything and made sure that all plugins etc that are available for you to use are compatible with every thing else. It is simply put very easy to use a free host. They have made sure that any idiot should be able to do it.

Drawbacks on free hosting

Many of the drawbacks of free hosting springs from the same origin as the benefits. One such drawback is that you are not allowed to install you own plugins. You can only chose to use the ones they tested and approved. This severally limits what you can do. The same is true for themes. You can only use the ones they have approved and that is available in their system. This means that you have a lot fewer options when it comes to deciding how you want your site to look. All of this means that you can not use premium themes or plugins. You options are in other words severally limited compared to if you host WordPress yourself.

Another important drawback is that it often can be hard to move your site from free hosting providers. Some do not allow you access to the data at all while other makes it hard for you to move your site.

Conclusion

None of the benefits that a free host offer is large enough to host anything but a personally blog there. If you want to setup a personal blog then wordpress.com can be a good option. Hosting is is cheap and it is worth paying for when you consider how much freedom you get to build the site you want to build.

WordPress is very easy to use and stable so you do not need to lock yourself to a closed system where you only can use a limited amount of themes and plugins. It is easy to use your own system where you have complete freedom. If you have a problem you can usually find the solution to your error right away by googling it. WordPress is so popular so almost all potential problems have been encountered and solved by someone else before you got the same problem.

Getting your own hosting cost less than USD 10 a month, gives you complete freedom to build the website you want and makes it a lot easier to scale your website as it grows.