It’s nearly two weeks since I decided to move my WordPress.com to a self hosted site for my blog. I wanted to do that so that I could be a bit more creative with how my site looked and add features that improved it’s functionality. Overall the move has gone really well but for anyone looking to move there are a few issues to consider, based on your blogging needs.
My initial decision to move was simply based on price. I wasn’t unhappy with WordPress.com, I just thought their plan, that gave me the tools for the creativity I wanted, was too expensive. To get what I wanted I needed to add plugins to my account and, unless you have the WordPress.com Business Plan, those options are quite restricted. The Business Plan is currently £265 a year.
I decided to look at hosting elsewhere and researched other companies such as Hostinger, Ionos, Wix etc. All offer WP hosting packages, similar to the WordPress.com Business Plan, based on 50gb of storage and free mailboxes etc. Most plans are similarly priced at £11.99 a month (£144 a year) with much reduced, enticing, initial offers for as little as £1 month for the first year.
I decided to move to self hosting and decided on a Business Plan with Fasthosts, a UK hosting company. They were offering the same deal as the other companies at £11.99 per year, discounted to £0.99p per month for the first year. Another reason for choosing Fasthosts is that I use them to host my email accounts for which I pay £40 a year. This email account could be incorporated into the WP hosting package bringing my accounts together and saving me an extra £40 per year
Having opened the account with Fasthosts the migration of my WordPress.com site went really well and was pretty painless. However that’s not the whole story.
What I hadn’t realised was that leaving WordPress.com meant losing some Jetpack features. Jetpack is developed by Automatic who are closely linked to WordPress.com. Hosting with them, on all their accounts, gives you certain features not available to self hosted sites.
Although I still had access to Jetpack, leaving WordPress.com meant my post tags would no longer be searchable or appear in Jetpack Reader. That was a big issue for me as I enjoy being part of the WordPress.com community. Posts without tags are pretty useless and would severly restrict my participation in that community.
I also lost access to Akismet, the Jetpack anti spam feature. I immediately noticed a big increase in spam posts, mostly for Bitcoin sites, appearing in random comments on my new hosted site. However losing Akismet wasn’t such a big deal as I could easily replace it with an alternative anti spam plugin.
Other basic features of Jetpack remained, my posts were appearing in the reader, just not in any tag lists. There’s no way around this tagging issue other than taking out a Jetpack subscription. Doing so removes the block on tags.
I wanted tagging so I was left with no option but to take out a Jetpack subscription, which I did. I opted for their Security Package which gave me Askimet again and Vaultpress Backup. That cost me £105.
Based on my experience of moving my hosting I’d have no qualms about transfering to another hosting company. My initial move away from WordPress.com has cost me just the £105 for Jetpack. The hosting with Fasthosts will be free for the first year if I include the savings on my email account.
Next year the cost of staying with Fasthosts (and buying a Jetpack package), if prices remain unchanged, would be £269. A similar plan with WordPress.com would be £265. I would be making the £40 saving on my Fasthosts email account. However when I told WordPress.com I was moving my hosting they offered me a 25% discount on the Business Plan.
I guess the big question is, in hindsight would I have moved away from WordPress.com to self hosting? Although I resent the fact that WordPress.com would have forced my hand with the tagging issue I would probably have stayed with WordPress on the Business Plan.
Will I migrate back there, or to another hosting site, once my Fasthost offer ends next year? I’m not sure at present. It really wasn’t too much hassle migrating so I’d have no problem with moving to a new host if necessary. Given the similar pricing, and features in the respective business packages, there would be no reason for me to do so at the moment.
There is a plus side to the tagging Jetpack issue in that I did learn a lot about how to optimise my posts for listing by the Reader. A few examples would be including an ‘excerpt’ when writing a post. This is placed in an excerpt box where tags are added to the post and appears in the reader when the list is posted. It doesn’t appear in the body text of your blog. Short paragraphs are also preferred by Reader as it doesn’t like moving large blocks of data.
I discovered this advice when using Google AI to try and figure out why my tags were not being found. There’s more advice available by asking Google how to improve your Reader listings.
All images: ©Stephen Hyde 2007-2026 – All rights reserved.
As someone whose WP hosting has just renewed that was a fascinating read, thank you. For my current needs, my Personal account is adequate – although when I self hosted I did enjoy messing with themes. Thanks too for the note regarding excerpts, because to date I’ve never filled that box in and perhaps it’s time to start. After all, I’m blogging to get seen, right?
Thanks Bish. I have really enjoyed setting up my new theme and discovering new plugins. I’ve also got to know my WordPress editing panel a lot better. Now I do have access to plugins I’ve been backing up my site every day with UpDraft Plus. That’s helped me out on several occasions when a theme edit hasn’t quite worked out. I’m also using the ‘Set Featured Image’ in my post editor. The new theme requires me to set an image. I’ve since discovered you can either set it in the post tagging block or from a drop down menu on an image in your post text.
I used to self-host, but when the subscription expired a few years ago I went back to the free version. (My domain, which I kept, is linked to my Blogger account, which is free.) I loved the versatility of self-hosting and it was great putting everything todether. Nowadays, though, the free WP satisfies my simple needs.
I’m enjoying messing around with plugins and the new theme 🙂
Great post, Steve. I am currently in the throes of completely re-designing my blog website, but within WordPress (business plan). I’ve been using ChatGPT to help with the how-tos of using WP’s templates as a starting point, but then customizing as my own. And it’s been QUITE the learning experience. Sounds like your move was equally educational! Cheers.
Thank you Kirsten. Yes it was a steep learning curve initially but good fun overall. Like you I’ve spent lots of time working out simple tasks. Even more confusing is sometimes it’s not a setting in the theme plugin you need to change. It’s a setting back in the WP Dashboard! Your sites looking good. You can immediately spot the more professional themes 🙂
I haven’t published my new site yet – it’s still in “staging site mode”. It’ll probably take me another entire day to figure out how to make it go “live”! 😂
Ooo I’m looking forward to seeing it 🙂
Good information Steve, I looked at self hosting on other platforms a year ago, but found they didn’t offer enough compared to staying with WP.
Thank you Maggie. In hindsight I would have stayed with WP 🙂