If you’re thinking about setting up a website for your business and are wondering if WordPress business plan is the way to go, you’ve come to the right place.

Business plan from WordPress.com promises to “supercharge” your site by letting you do more cool things like adding plugins and using custom themes.

But is it the best fit for your business? 

Yes, it lets you do more than WordPress.com’s other cheaper plans, but you should know more about it before you subscribe. 

Which is exactly what we’ll do in this article – break down exactly what a WordPress business plan brings to the table, how it compares to other plans, and if it’s the smart move for your online journey.

Business Plan is a WordPress.com Plan 

First off, it’s important to note that WordPress business plan is a WordPress.com plan and has nothing to do with WordPress.org.

You can read more about the differences between these two WordPress versions in this article, “What is WordPress?”. 

WordPress.com has four pricing plans, and the business plan is one of them. 

Its less expensive plans are quite limited. For instance, they don’t allow you to add important features and your website might show WordPress ads. 

Business plan is WordPress’s way of adding some flexiliby to the product.  

So what can you do with the business plan? 

What You Get with the WordPress Business Plan

We’ve already said that the business plan is meant to give you more power than WordPress.com’s basic plans. These features should allow you to move from simple blogging to building and running a powerful business site. They include: 

Your Domain Name

A domain name is the first thing that people look at when they want to do business with you. You won’t inspire trust in customers and potential buyers if your domain reads as random characters.wordpress.com or , but your business shows a different name.  

Business plan solves this problem by letting you choose a domain (like wwww.mypetstore.com). And you only need to start paying for it for the second year because domain names are free for the first year with this plan.  

You can remove WordPress.com branding

This is another trust killer among customers. 

Having someone else’s branding on your website, even if the branding is for a software company like WordPress, doesn’t look good for your brand. 

Business plan removes all “Powered by WordPress.com” footers and ads from your website. This makes your site a cleaner, more polished, and more consistent with your brand.

Install plugins

Plugins are like little apps or add-ons that give your website extra features. They make you do things like add pop-ups when people are about to leave your page, or add polished-looking tables for comparing products or even product carousels to showcase more of your products in one view. 

With the business plan, you can finally install third-party plugins to do these and many more things, such as:

• Install WooCommerce to run an online store
• Install AI plugins for building great websites instantly
• Create online courses or membership sites.
• Add contact forms or booking systems for appointments.

WordPress has over 50,000 plugins, and it even allows you to upload third-party plugins or even create your own. 

Use third-party themes

WordPress has a large collection of themes but it’s possible you might not find one you like. If you prefer to build and use your own theme or have a third party theme you’d rather use, you can upload it on the Business Plan. 

This gives you a lot more control over how your site will look.

Advanced SEO tools

WordPress.Com optimizes all sites for search engines from the start. But with the business plan, you get extra SEO options that allow you to control how your website shows up in search results.

You can also install powerful SEO plugins for fine-tuning individual pages, posts, and your site overall.

Custom code

Even with thousands of plugins available on WordPress, it’s still possible to never find a plugin that makes your website do all the things you want it to do. 

If you’re tech-savvy or like to tinker with code, the business plan lets you add custom code like JavaScript or iframes.

With custom code, you can link your site with other services in a way that existing plugins don’t, or add unique features not available through plugins. 

These advanced code modifications aren’t supported on the Free, Personal, or Premium plans.

Daily backups

With theme customizations, code updates, and third-party plugins, there’s always a chance that something could go wrong. The business plan keeps your site safe with daily backups so that you can easily restore your site to an earlier version if anything goes wrong. 

Uninterrupted performance

You can expect your website to run smoothly even during busy times. WordPress is able to maintain fast speeds as it uses multiple data centers to prevent traffic surges. 

What this means is that instead of having your site sitting on just one server and everyone flocking to that server, WordPress stores copies of your site on servers all over the world. If someone wants to access your site, they are shown the copy closest to their location. In case a server has a problem or is too busy, another one steps in. 

This way, your pages load faster, your site never experiences downtime, and your visitors enjoy their experience when visiting your website. 

Enhanced security with Jetpack Scan

WordPress.com uses Jetpack Scan to constantly check for vulnerabilities and security threats in your plugins, themes, and uploaded files. This helps protect your site from malware and security breaches.

This is actually one of the advantages that WordPress.com with business plan has over self-hosted sites. You have to pay extra for similar security services with a hosted site but with WordPress.com business plan, you get it built in.

Collect payment

If you’re selling products, services, subscriptions, or accepting donations, the business plan makes it easy to accept credit and debit card payments.

The transaction fees are also lower compared to the Personal and Premium plans.

50 GB storage

You get a generous 50 gigabytes of storage space for all your images, audio files, and documents.

Videos uploaded through the direct hosting access don’t even count against this limit, which is great if you use a lot of video content.

24/7 expert support

As a Business Plan customer, you get round-the-clock support from WordPress.com’s “Happiness Engineers.”

What’s helpful is that they don’t just help with hosting issues; they’ll also help you with any WordPress website-building questions, like how to create a portfolio, add a product, or style a contact page.

Advanced developer features

If you’re tech-savvy or work with developers, the Business Plan provides tools that are usually only found in self-hosted setups MySQL database access, tools for server-side caching, Github deployments, WordPress REST API, among others. 

Who Should Get the WordPress.com Business Plan?

The answer depends on how comfortable you are with technology, your budget, and what your business needs to achieve online.

But before we deliver the verdict, let’s first look at its downsides: 

Downsides of WordPress.com Business Plan: Why it Might Not Be the Best Fit

Even with all these great features, WordPress’s business plan has a few limitations that might make you think twice:

• They restrict some plugins: You can install most plugins, but WordPress.com still has a small list of plugins they don’t allow, especially if a plugin conflicts with pre-installed WordPress features or performs a similar function.
  
  You might find this inconvenient if you want to work with a plugin that you consider important to your business.
  
• Platform rules apply: Your website is still hosted on the WordPress.com platform, meaning you still need to follow their rules and terms of service.
  
  If your content or activities break these rules, WordPress.com has the right to pause or even shut down your site. This could be bad for your online presence.
  
• The plan is costly if you want to run multiple websites: The $25 per month fee is for each website. So, if your business needs a main website, a separate blog, and an online shop, you might find this plan costly. 
  
• Less server control: Even with SFTP access, you won’t have the same server control that you get with a self-hosted WordPress site.
  
  This means you cannot control advanced server settings make specific performance tweaks. This might be a problem if your website experiences extremely high-traffic or has unique technical requirements.

Given the features / benefits discussed above and downsides, consider the WordPress business plan if:

• You’re a beginner and not tech-savvy (or just don’t mind if WordPress.com handles all the hosting, security, and updates)
  
• You need basic custom features, such as contact forms, improved SEO, and a simple online store, which you can get from plugins already available in WordPress.
  
• You have only one main business website
  
• You value comprehensive and accessible support

But you should explore other options if:

• You’re working with a tight budget but foresee needing more than one website (related to your current business).
  
• You want complete freedom and control of code, plugins, themes, and server environment. 
  
• You expect very high website traffic or need complex, custom features. A self-hosted plan would be better because it will offer you more room to grow without hitting platform limits.

Not Convinced Yet? How About Self-Hosted WordPress with Quality Managed Hosting by TrueHost?

So far, we’ve discussed WordPress.com’s business plan and who should get it and not get it. 

But even if you fall into the category of business owners who are a good fit for this plan, you may still be hesitant. 

If that’s the case, consider taking your business online with the free WordPress.org combined with a high-quality managed WordPress hosting from Truehost.

It’s a budget friendly alternative, comes with local hosting, and 24/7 local support. You also get a website builder to help you get online faster.