Pricing Feedback
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UPDATES:
Editing to add news from this blog post:- Caps on views have been removed
- New Free plan gets 1GB space
- Clarifying this applies to new plans and new purchases. Existing sites and subscriptions will not change.
Thank you for your feedback! We’ll add more updates as we have them.
– Forums Staff
Hi Friends and New Community Members,
Last week we launched some updates to our plans and pricing. We now have two plans: Free and Pro.
We’ve made this thread to collect feedback and provide clarity on new pricing changes. Staff will not be able to reply to every comment here, but we will read all of your feedback and get it sorted and surfaced. We’ll also update this post with any further clarification and FAQs as needed.
As always, please remember our community standards will help us make the most of this conversation. If you haven’t reviewed them recently, you can find them here.
// FACTS & FAQS —————
Where can I see what is included in each plan?
On our pricing page.Are existing sites affected by these changes?
No. These new plans only apply to new sites created after March 31, 2022. If you have a legacy plan, you are welcome to stay on it.If you have a free site created before this pricing update, you can choose to stay on that legacy free site or you can choose to switch to the new Pro Plan.
Why are prices changing?
Our mission is to both democratize publishing & commerce and to make WordPress.com the best place in the world to host a WordPress site. Our old plans were overcomplicated and confusing. Our goal with these changes was to offer:- Straightforward Pricing — We want to avoid using dark patterns, or trickery to get people signed up, only to then switch pricing on them down the line (which, unfortunately, many other hosts do these days).
- Fewer Plans — Reduce the number of plans we have making it easier for customers to make a plan selection.
- Access to Custom Plugins & Themes — Make custom plugins and themes available on all paid plans. Previously, this was only made available on our old $25/mo Business plan.
We recognize that these new plans probably won’t cover every edge case just yet, and based on your feedback we’re working on à la carte upgrades for more price-sensitive folks and international pricing for specific regions like India and Brazil.
What about the price gap?
We realize a jump between free and $15/month is stark. We’re working on getting some more flexible à la carte options available on both plans and will share more details as we have them.What happens when I go over my visits limit?
These are soft limits that trigger a conversation rather than a site suspension or shutdown.Why didn’t you announce changes?
We often make an announcement several days after a change is made so we have room to work out issues that may arise.Why aren’t you offering monthly billing?
We plan to test adding monthly pricing back in, but we don’t have a specific date for this just yet.// WE WANT YOUR FEEDBACK —————
If you have feedback regarding these pricing changes, we’d love to hear from you!
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I understand your change in the plans and how you feel that you need to change the plans. However I have not seen many complaints regarding these plans? Perhaps it is because I am only looking now but I am seeing many complaints regarding this new plan.
From my perspective it has oversimplified the process, which is not always good. When it comes to a business there always needs to be options. Frankly I doubt I will be moving forward with wordpress unless I am able to purchase the business plan on a monthly basis.
This would have been my second business plan with WordPress. The plan seems to benefit WordPress more than customers.
I see it is a blend of all the plans however there are some minor features missing. Unfortunately I cannot post them as I cannot go back and forth between tabs I unfortunately dont have that much free time along with trying to solve this problem.
I am stuck on getting the business plan. It is what I need as it was perfect for my business. I would rather pay more even if it’s only very few extras.
Also a big factor is monthly payment. Reducing it to annually only would drive me away as a customer instantly.
What was the thought behind this change? Concerns from customers? Or was it purely an internal decision?
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What bothered me was not the reduction in storage capacity itself, but what that means in a context where there have always been improvements (in the sense of more storage).
Now its everything or nothing?
There is a need for an intermediate plan or at least several upgrades options. Launching the new plans without the upgrades was a precipitation.
And note that I am not saying that an adjustment to the plans was not necessary; no doubt it was, especially to integrate the latter two into one. But what has been done seems to me too radical; very difficult to understand in light of the history of the formulation of plans as shared in the community that forms WP.com.
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Limiting visitors seems to run counter to something that has always been said here: that WP.com would not penalize a site’s success.
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If we have to go back to the past (yes, it feels like we went back to 2012) , I suggest options for upgrades in storage capacity and one for the removal of advertisements.
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Thanks @radtrad and @devandash. As @lessbloat mentioned, we likely won’t be able to respond to every comment here, but we are taking notes on requests and questions, and will share updates here periodically.
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I myself use the Personal package. It suits me best. I don’t want such hacky things like DB access, FTP, etc. What Personal package offers must be there with a reasonable price like it was.
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These new plans are super competitive with managed WP hosting competitors who charge $25-$30/m and offer way less visits/storage than what WP.com now gives us with these new plans. And a certain spooky blogging competitor charges $25 for similar allowances.
I think the pricing changes are excellent for my personal use cases, I’m a big fan of them, and has made me seriously consider switching to WP.com. I also wasn’t aware of full site import and SFTP/DB access being a thing for the last two years.
But I can also see how they might not be ideal for very small personal blogs. I’m curious to see what paid addons are provided for the new free tier to fill the gaps.
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Hello,
I think that, if your mission is to “democratize publishing & commerce”, you should learn how to communicate first. This is a kind of a FAQ without answers, IMHO.
You say that your old plans were “overcomplicated and confusing”. I don’t think so. In my case, the Business Plan was (is) simply perfect.
Again, you write that you “want to avoid using dark patterns, or trickery to get people signed up, only to then switch pricing on them down the line”. But at the same time you introduce some other variables, like a cap on the number of visits.
When the user goes over that limit, it “trigger a conversation rather than a site suspension or shutdown”. Wow, that’s so kind from your side! What “a conversation” means, exactly? A price list with an add-on cost to to the subscription? In that case, we’ll have a proliferation of plans. What a transparency, my friends!
You say you need some “adjustments”. That is, you need to multiply the number of plans you offer. But, wait a minute, you already had this!
To put shortly, I’ve never seen such a communication blunder. I thought your organization was very professional, now I realize that, about the commercial offer, it isn’t so. My Business Plan expires in December, therefore I have time to decide what to do. But this is really an absurd way to manage and communicate.
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-Communication has been non-existant. The changes should have been outlined in email(s) before they happened.
-Cutting storage to just 500mb (when 3gb was already quite small) seems horrific practice to me? That’s barely anything. If someone needs more than that, the only option is 15/month, which is way too much just to get a few extra images on the site.
-even if you add ‘upgrades’ to separate aspects like media storage, it means you’re forcing people to pay for that 2.5gb that they would have got for free had they made their site slightly earlier. It seems unfair especially as ‘legacy sites’ would have this extra 2.5gb already.
-penalising free sites’ success by limiting views (and then forcing them to pay up if they get a viral post) is a bit dodgy, mate
-the jump between £0 and £15/month is way too high. Personally I would never pay that kinda money for my hobby blog. Even when I was with .org I only paid £30ish for the whole year for hosting???
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Well said, Hollynrc. This incredibly poor change has turned me from a 9-year user who was confident enough to schedule and plan out articles to 2025 into someone who is not sure they will be on the platform this time next month.
My issue is with the plan features more than the plan pricing.
The free plan has been downgraded below the point where it is of any reasonable use. 0.5GB is a terrible reduction, and the idea that you have to have ‘a conversation’ any time your views go over 10,000 in a month is hardly one that inspires confidence.
Upgrading from $0 to $15 with nothing in between is a big jump and frankly I see more benefit from shifting platforms than from shifting from the greatly reduced $0 plan to this new plan, which still has view limits, something I find inexplicable.
The communication around this has been non-existent and this too does not inspire confidence in the WordPress platform as something to continue with. I have been affected as a $0 plan user, but plenty of my fellow bloggers who pay monthly have been affected too, and they didn’t receive any notice either.
If you want to fix this then I suggest:
1. restore the 3GB free plan ceiling
2. remove the views ceiling from all plans, now and forever.
3. apologise for the way this has been implemented
4. commit to improved communication from now on -
Since 2006 I have had a wordpress.org website and for various reasons decided to move it to wordpress.com.
I have spent days moving it all over and customising it as far as I can.
For the want of a few days I find that a Premium or personal plan is no longer available, I spent a couple of weeks getting my site nearly right on a free site planning to move to paid Personal/Premium when it was ready and knew how much space I would need.
Today I find that this is now impossible with absolutely no warning of the upcoming change! Had I known this was going to happen I could have started the paid plans less than a week ago. £180 a year for a hobbyist is ridiculously expensive.
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I’ve been catching up with WordPress the past couple of months and have to say that I am really liking the direction the project is going. 5.9 is the beginning of something that’s really going to empower more people to create.
I’ve been planning a project myself that will use the new FSE tools and I was looking seriously at Kinsta to host it. Then I thought I’d look at WP.com and was very impressed with the overall offering. In many circles WP.com is dismissed too easily imo. The value it brings to the table can’t be so easily overlooked vs other WordPress managed hosts.
It looked like I had found the perfect solution. I honestly was thinking about all things WordPress as I went to bed. Navigating back to WP.com was one of the first things I did the next morning and what I found was the new pricing which left me somewhat confused.
It sounds like I’ll have official answers to those questions soon. It also sounds like I have nothing to worry about. I don’t imagine I’ll be reaching the views or storage limits soon, but knowing that there will be an option to pay for additional if you need it is comforting. The new Pro plan is really impressive overall!
A huge positive change that seems to have gone under the radar is the removal of fees associated with the payments block. Ghost also integrates with Stripe and doesn’t take an additional fee and that gives me a warm and fuzzy feeling.
Plans with VideoPress used to have unlimited video storage I believe. Is that not the case anymore? How does VideoPress factor in to the new Pro plan?
I can only comment from my own perspective, but WP.com is doing the right things. This change was a confusing one in some ways, but also a very welcome one. WP.com has been kind of a confusing option for some time now and I’m not really sure why. Almost every article you can find about WordPress hosting comes at it from the opinion that WP.com is only good for beginners and once you want to do anything more advanced then you need to graduate to the “real WordPress”. It seems like WP.com has changed over time but perceptions haven’t . I am very impressed with the overall WP.com offering and feel like there is no better time to start the blog, site, or online business you’ve been dreaming about! If this is a hobby for you then I’m sure there will be affordable upgrades coming soon. You might also consider the Pro plan. I understand it’s not feasible for everyone, but if you can afford it you’ll be helping to make sure that we continue to have powerful and open alternatives to the FB’s of the world.
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I think that the most concerning change has been the traffic caps – the lack of clear guidance as to whether “monthly visits” refers to views or unique visitors, alongside what happens after they’re reached, stands as a cause for discomfort. The connotations of “traffic cap” tends to frighten users, especially because other hosting providers often aren’t so generous with their traffic caps and much more willing to shut off access.
If you consistently go over the cap month after month, we will let you know and ask you to pay a tiny bit more to cover the cost, but we will NEVER shut off access to your site, nor will we ever auto-increase the amount you’re paying.
I recognise that WP.com has assured this won’t happen with the above comment, but that does leave the obvious question – what if a user refuses to pay more? I just feel like launching these major plan changes without a clear idea on traffic caps has been worrying to users.
Beyond the traffic cap, I’m really grateful for the reduced price needed to access plugins – paradoxically, despite the fact that the “add-on” system seemingly reverts to what WP.com offered a decade ago with upgrades such as Custom CSS, the new Pro Plan feels a lot more suited for today where people are increasingly keen to access different plugins.
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$4 for a hobby blog on which I was making no money, up to $15 for a hobby blog on which I will continue to be making no money, is a huge price hike that I just can’t justify. I understand that hobbyists like me no longer make up the core of WordPress users (remember when it was a fork of b2? lol) but wow, not even a heads up before just rolling it out?
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I’m on a free plan now and have been for some time. You say I “can choose to stay on that legacy free site”. That’s good, because with the new “free” plan options and the expensive paid plan – I’d be leaving WP at some time in the future.
For now I’m staying… which raises more questions:
– How long can I stay on my legacy free plan? After 12 months will I be switched to the “new” free plan or encouraged to upgrade.
– On my legacy plan I see that I still have 3GB storage… is that always going to be there?
– Visit Limits. Does my legacy plan keep it’s NO visit limit? Or is this going to change now, soon, or in 12 months?I would have thought you’d have answers to questions at the time you “soft release” a change (should that be have been “stealth” release?) rather than wait for the questions so that you “have room to work out issues that may arise”. I hope that your team is working them out, because there’s lots of us with concerns.
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Like others on this thread, I’d like to know for how long I can keep a legacy plan with the extra storage it offered.
The storage on the free plan is abysmally low. This new structure will essentially force everyone to eventually upgrade to a pro plan. For a hobby blog that earns zero dollars the pro plan is ridiculously expensive. Perhaps if you had kept the old storage limit and removed the number of visitors limit it wouldn’t be so bad?
I think there is a significant use case for an intermediate plan between free and pro. Collapsing the legacy personal and premium plans into one would keep things simple and truly “democratize publishing & commerce”.
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Hi @staff-totoro , the thread in which you replied me is closed so I’m answering here.
I started building my site some time ago, and I was planning on purchasing the personal plan for my blog. I didn’t buy it right away since I wasn’t sure what my domain would be.
On April the 3rd I was ready to start my personal blog but when I was about to launch I found the 15$ plan.
I just wanted to have no ads, the storage and the domain for a year.
Now with the 15$ billed annually plan I can’t launch the site I have been working on, since it is just way too much money for me.
I just wish I had the idea for the domain site 2 days earlier, so I could be able to have the personal plan :(
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I believe that it’s in poor practice to make a change without announcing it at all and to then tackle issues that arose afterwards. It feels a bit like an attempt at deception and I’d expect better communication on big changes like this one from WordPress.
As for the prices, I’m not sure if I’d be able to afford the 15 bucks monthly, billed annually with the new plan. I’m on the personal plan at the moment and was considering to upgrade eventually but I guess that’s not an option anymore then? Similarly, the old plans didn’t feature any limits on monthly visitors, so I’m not sure how that will play into this. You say that legacy plans won’t be affected at all – or at least it comes across like that in this post – but the previous statements that were made sounded more like a “for now”.
Also, I find the price gap to be quite horrendous. Would it be possible to maybe have more customization in the plans? Aka you can opt out of features that you would never use from this new plan and it would get a bit cheaper? Same with the limitations to views and storage, plugins, themes, etc. I believe that that would help a lot!
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Lots of problems here. First, if someone wants a small blog with a custom domain, they have to pay for the Pro plan. That’s a shame, because those people will now be pushed to crappy shared hosting. Worth pointing out that in 15 years of blogging with WordPress, it’s only when I moved to WordPress.com a few years ago that I had good, stress-free service.
Second, cutting off websites with traffic about 100K page views a month is harsh. Because the next step is moving to VIP, which starts at $2,000 a month. I work with a client who has about 250K page views a month, and was considering moving to WordPress.com. Now that’s out of the question. They’d probably be happy to pay more than the $25 a month business plan, but they’re not willing to go the VIP route.
So in having only two plans, you’re slicing up the market into very limited segments. There really should be a cheap plan with custom domains, and there should be something below the VIP level.
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