Introducing WordPress Starter: Make Your Mark

May 25, 2022

Michael Pick

Every site starts with an idea. WordPress Starter is a new, beautifully pared-back plan designed to put that idea center stage. For just $5/month.

Like the WordPress Pro plan (more on that below), WordPress Starter brings you the fastest WordPress managed hosting on the planet. Unlimited site traffic. And a revolutionary price.

Make Your Mark

From building your audience with a blog. To sharing your business, design, expertise, or experiences with the world. If you’re looking to make your work visible, and make it visual, the Starter plan has you covered.

Let’s take a look at the details.

Put Your Stamp on It – with a Custom Domain

WordPress Starter unlocks custom domains – the ability to make your site’s address on the web your own.

So instead of your web address looking like this:

My-site.wordpress.com

You can put your stamp on it, and make it look like this:

My-site.com

It’s the artist’s signature that separates a Picasso from a print. 

If you want to own a piece of the web, a custom domain name makes a powerful statement. And your first year of domain registration is on us.

Make It Visual. Make It Visible.

Photos and images can really set your site apart. Making it visual goes a long way to making it visible.

Starter gives you a big boost in storage – a roomy 6GB for all your photos and images. So you’ll never need to think twice about adding visual flavor to every post. And every page.


From Visible to Profitable – with Simple Payments

As your site and audience grows, WordPress Starter has everything you need to start taking payments from your site visitors.

Simple payments – included with Starter – bring you three ways to do exactly that:


Track Your Success – with Google Analytics

Finally, Starter opens up an integration with Google Analytics. If you’re ready to dive a little deeper than the default WordPress.com stats, connecting your site to GA opens the door to a world of information. 

Who’s visiting your site, who’s coming back for more, and which content is really resonating with them is the tip of the iceberg.

WordPress Starter vs. WordPress Pro

So what’s the difference between WordPress Starter and the recently announced WordPress Pro plan?

WordPress Starter

WordPress Starter unlocks custom domains and the space to make your site beautifully visual and visible. It does that with a big boost in storage for your images – from 1GB on the free plan to 6GB on Starter. It also includes simple payments to get you started selling content, donations, and subscriptions. And with its Google Analytics integration, you’ll always be able to dig deep on what’s resonating with your audience, so you can double down on your success. 

And with Starter, you’ll never have to worry about site traffic. Because traffic is unlimited.

Starter is a solid place to land if you want a great looking, blazing fast blog or website with simple payments baked in, but don’t want or need to dig deeper into design customization, interactivity, or integrations.

Starter costs just $5/month. 

WordPress Pro

WordPress Pro unlocks access to over 50,000 plugins and themes – an infinite, open library of ways to customize the features, interactivity, integration and design of your home on the web. Whatever your ambitions.

Pair that with:

  • Everything included with Starter
  • 50GB of storage for images, audio, and videos
  • A full range of ecommerce and payment tools with even lower commissions of 2% (plus processing fees), including the full power of WooCommerce out of the box
  • Advanced SEO, design, and social media tools
  • Beautiful premium themes
  • Google Analytics integration
  • Automated one-click backups
  • SFTP and database access
  • A free custom domain for your first year
  • Unlimited user admins
  • The ability to earn ad revenue from your site
  • Premium expert support by email and live chat 
  • And a lot more than we could comfortably fit into this paragraph. 

Which gives you the raw power to build and grow any site, store, and audience you can think of. Whether you’re starting out, or you’re a seasoned WordPress publisher.

Pro is $15/month, billed annually.

Spoiler: There’s Another Reason We Called It Starter

We called the new plan WordPress Starter because it gives you an affordable way to get a beautiful site started and shipped. But that’s not the only reason.

Coming soon, we’ll be introducing a range of add-ons that pair with Starter to give you an extra boost. It’s an a la carte way to add just what you need to Starter. And nothing you don’t. 

Stay tuned for more updates on that. In the meantime, we’d love to hear what’s important to you in the comments.

Questions? We’ve Got Answers

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53 Comments

Comments are closed.

  1. Aaron May 25th at 12:30 pm

    I’m surprised there are still ads on the starter plan.

    Liked by 34 people

  2. Algustionesa Yoshi May 25th at 1:19 pm

    Please remove the ads

    Liked by 15 people

  3. Matt May 25th at 1:49 pm

    So basically it’s £60 a year to allow users to use their own domain name, which they have to pay seperately for anyway.

    The previous ‘Personal’ plan was nearly half price (£36), and offered the same amount of storage with no adverts on the site. I don’t get it

    Liked by 29 people

  4. Thiago May 25th at 2:18 pm

    Great news!!!

    Liked by 12 people

  5. Thiago May 25th at 2:48 pm

    The most important addons to me are: no ads and more storage.

    Question: If my site os in the pro plan I Will have the chave to buy more storage?

    Liked by 9 people

  6. Thiago May 25th at 2:50 pm

    Chave = chance

    Liked by 10 people

  7. Tomas May 25th at 6:27 pm

    So, what’s the difference between the legacy $4/month plan and this one, apart from $1/month?

    Liked by 7 people

  8. Jason McFadden May 25th at 11:09 pm

    I’m glad to see WordPress stay true to their word, adding this new plan. It’s a good start but retaining ads on a $5/mo site is still a disappointment. I don’t want to pay money for my blog yet force ads on readers. I’m sure ad-removal will be an a la carte option; it should be. My legacy Personal plan has the features I want, including custom domain and ad-removal, for just $4/mo., so I’ll stick with that for now. Thanks for listening and striving for excellence WordPress.

    Liked by 13 people

  9. Bookstooge May 25th at 11:24 pm

    So more money and less from wordpress. Yep, I called that one. Keep it up WP, you’re probably hemorrhaging users quicker than myspace….

    Liked by 14 people

  10. miakisz May 26th at 2:15 am

    What! advertisements on this new Starter Plan! I will either keep paying for the now Legacy “Personal Plan” or switch to Dreamhost.

    Liked by 13 people

  11. Aywren Sojourner May 26th at 3:47 am

    I like the idea of the starter plan – it’s a step in the right direction. But I’m NOT a fan of having to pay even more each month JUST to remove ads. In my opinion, removing ads is just as important as being able to use a domain and should be a GIVEN with any plan I have to pay for.

    The previous Personal Plan did this AND removed ads for a LOWER cost than this new plan. I’m confused as to why this feature was taken away.

    I like the idea of picking features a la carte, but not if that means things that should already be in the starter plan are going to cost extra. Let no ads be an a la carte option for those who only want to remove ads, but absolutely include no ads in the starter plan.

    Liked by 16 people

  12. paeroka May 26th at 4:26 am

    So it’s more expensive than the previous legacy plan (Personal plan for 4€/month), but compared to the Personal plan, users will NOT get Jetpack essentials and no ad removal. For me, the main reason for getting the Personal plan was to have ads removed on the website, because I want to give my readers an ad-free experience. I assume this will become an à la carte-feature?

    Liked by 13 people

  13. Matt May 26th at 5:53 am

    @Thomas – The difference is that the old one was far cheaper and came with no ads.

    This new plan is just a poor knee jerk reaction to the bad feedback they received following the terrible reception of the ridiculous Pro plan.

    It’s greed and nothing more.

    Disappointed in WordPress yet again.

    Liked by 16 people

  14. David Thrift May 26th at 6:18 am

    Dumb! I’m seeing in comments that you are still running ads on this new “Starter” plan, which is the same thing as the Personal plan for $1 more per month. So we have to pay for your ads, and you can’t even allow plugins on this? I truly do not believe your company knows what it is doing.

    Liked by 14 people

  15. David Bennett May 26th at 7:16 am

    Premium plan is now described as a ‘legacy’ plan. What will happen when it comes time to renew?

    Liked by 5 people

  16. Thiago May 26th at 2:14 pm

    I think these comparisons with the old plans are not completely fair, as they were formulated in a different economic and social context. We have to see the positive here, with is exactly WP.com listening to our feedback. The new plan, see in itself, is very well formulated, and the idea of addons is great. Hopeffuly the ones in some of the old plans wil have the possibility to buy some of them.

    Liked by 5 people

  17. Wilhelm Arcturus May 26th at 5:09 pm

    That is really a tough sell without the “remove ads” option. That is the one thing I would strongly suggest be reconsidered.

    Premium themes seems like something to include. I might swap Google Analytics integration for premium themes, mostly because WP.com by default has decent stats and can be linked to the Google search console, which gives you most of what the average person would want out of GA. Meanwhile, themes are a differentiator from things like Blogger and Squarespace.

    Liked by 11 people

  18. Mailvaltar May 26th at 7:24 pm

    So far so good, but for 60 bucks a year “no ads” should also be included. I won’t pay this and still have ads on my blog.

    Liked by 12 people

  19. MagiWasTaken May 27th at 11:46 am

    First of all, I like a lot of the changes. Having Google Analytics in there is great, for instance, and something that I’m kinda missing from my current personal plan. At the same time, though, I wish there were the Jetpack Essentials and the Ad-Free experience in there, too.

    I mainly grabbed the personal plan (4€/month – billed annually) for the domain and so that my readers don’t get ads on the blog. It’s not too expensive and I like a lot of the features that come with it but those two are the main reasons as to why I went with the personal plan. Having the option of adding features “á la carte” to your starter plan sounds great but I wish that paying for a plan would at least mean that there are no ads on your blog.

    The issue I have with ads are that they not only kind of destroy your layout and formating, placing ads directly after or before screenshots in reviews, for instance, but it’s also that a lot of the ads make your site look somewhat unprofessional on top of possibly even showing something harmful. “Doctors hate this trick!!!”, “Lose Weight with these simple steps” and other ads of the sort paired with weird-looking graphics is just not okay in my opinion, especially with the stigma/stereotype around people in the video game community.

    So, while I love the idea of the starter plan, I dislike that there are still ads on a paid plan. I think that when you pay for it and actively support WordPress that way, you shouldn’t have ads on your site.

    Liked by 15 people

  20. jidanie445 May 27th at 3:07 pm

    Wow I love this

    Liked by 5 people

  21. donvaluedonvalue May 28th at 7:32 am

    I live world press

    Liked by 7 people

  22. wrookieschu May 29th at 2:23 am

    Have the word prompts finished??

    Liked by 6 people

  23. Blakeredwolfnelson May 29th at 6:27 am

    Nice.

    Liked by 5 people

  24. Blakeredwolfnelson May 29th at 6:33 am

    Is my blog hidden?

    Liked by 5 people

  25. Dani May 30th at 4:46 pm

    I am currently on the free plan. So I’m understanding that with this new Starter plan, I still won’t have access to anything but free themes (which I am totally struggling with) and no help from WordPress if I need it (which I am also needing). So it’s totally not worth it to pay for the Starter plan.

    Liked by 16 people

  26. pixelshrink Jun 1st at 9:52 am

    Really good news that you’ve reintroduced a cheaper plan. But no ads is key, please consider making no ads a part of this plan, or else it’s not really worth it and I won’t be able to use it for the simpler sites that the Personal plan was so handy for. Also, charging £5 in the UK for a US$5 plan is quite a price difference.

    Liked by 15 people

  27. fariaislam200117 Jun 3rd at 10:09 pm

    It is a nice post.

    Liked by 8 people

  28. Chiedozie Edwin Jun 4th at 5:32 pm

    I will like to know more about this media

    Liked by 7 people

  29. Thiago Jun 5th at 5:01 am

    Another addon: Jetpack VideoPress!

    Liked by 7 people

  30. Ace Jun 9th at 6:45 pm

    Please add custom css to the wordpress starter plan.

    Liked by 6 people

  31. CHLOÉ LAMBERT Jun 14th at 3:44 pm

    I agree with pixelshrink. No ads please!

    Liked by 8 people

  32. drato Jun 14th at 10:35 pm

    Stop sending messages

    Sent from my iPhone

    Liked by 5 people

  33. Dedicated Tech Jun 16th at 9:01 pm

    what about Pro, I heard the price will increase is that correct?

    Liked by 4 people

  34. alicendebele8 Jun 18th at 8:58 pm

    I’m glad to be here and I need time to understand more about WP

    Liked by 6 people

  35. sansoftime1121 Jun 21st at 5:03 pm

    Is There A Blog post for Starter & Pro Respectively That Gets into the Different Web Sites Designs An The Ad On’sThat Will Be For Starter
    And A place, A Blog post or a page to Check Out Some of Those 50K+
    Add ONS For Pro And See Just How To Set Them Up Correctly for Max Effect,
    & Effeciancy? If Not Maybe There Should Be A Testing For Set-ups ,So U DONT Put It Up On Ur Site And it Not Right ,,Maybe I’m Wrong,Or Maybe I Don’t Have Experience With WP Or Setting Up Really Cool Ad on’s ,So That They Stay Really Cool When I Walk Away From My Laptop🤔.. And Power up and They are Like They Are Supposed To Be..that would Be Nice..👍

    Liked by 4 people

  36. NicelyUnited Jun 22nd at 9:07 am

    I believe you are doing great work.

    Liked by 4 people

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