The dentist's website bill went up thirty-six dollars a year. Here's why.

In March the front desk at Dr. Ostermann's office forwarded me an email. Her WordPress.com renewal had jumped from $25 a month to $28. That is thirty-six extra dollars a year for the same website, same pages, same photos of the waiting room. She wanted to know what she got for the increase. She got nothing. The intro price was the coupon and the renewal was the real price.

So here's the thing nobody says at signup. WordPress.com and WordPress are not the same product. WordPress.com is a rental. They host it, they patch it, you pick a tier and pay forever. WordPress the software, the .org one, is free and lives on hosting you own, which is how I run nine client sites on one seven dollar server. Both are legitimate. You just have to know which one you are buying, because the signup page is designed so you don't.

What it costs right now

Prices are off their own pricing page, and there are four of them. I will give the monthly rate and the honest annual one, because they are different animals.

1. Personal, $9 by the month or $4 a month billed yearly. It renews at $5 a month. This is a basic brochure site, and it is plenty for most small shops.
2. Premium, $18 monthly or $8 annual. Renews at $9. Better design tools, more storage.
3. Business, $40 monthly or $25 annual. Renews at $28. That is Dr. Ostermann's tier.
4. Commerce, $70 monthly or $45 annual. Renews at $50. Full online store.

The domain is free the first year on paid plans, then the domain bill shows up on its own. Email hosting is extra. And if you take payments on anything below Commerce, they skim a fee off every sale, 8 percent on Personal, 4 on Premium, 2 on Business, zero on Commerce. On a shop doing a few thousand a year online, that skim is the biggest line item nobody budgets for.

What I pay for

I am a paying customer, small one. I keep a Personal plan at $4 a month for the neighborhood tool library page I maintain as a hobby. That is $48 a year and it renews at $60. I have had it three years. It has never gone down, never gotten a virus, never needed me at 11pm. That last part is the whole product. The 2026 reviews I trust all say the same thing. Fast, managed, hard to break. One of them calls it the best cheap managed WordPress hosting going, and I don't argue.

One genuinely good change this year. Plugins used to require the Business tier. Now every paid plan gets them. That used to be the main reason to pay $40 a month, and it isn't anymore.

Why Dr. Ostermann stays anyway

I told her to stay put, which sounds like bad advice from the guy who self-hosts everything. It's not. Nobody in that office is going to run updates or restore a backup at 7am before first patients. On my server, I am the person who does that. If I get hit by a bus, nine sites are orphans. On WordPress.com, there is a company instead of a me.

The Business tier also buys her the staging site and the developer tools I actually used when I built her booking page. Annoying at $28 a month. Worth it for her. Your mileage is the whole ballgame here.

The rented water heater

A gas company near my old house rented water heaters. Eighteen bucks a month, forever. It never broke on the homeowner's dime, and it never stopped billing either. WordPress.com is the rented water heater. Self-hosted WordPress is the one sitting in your basement that you own, that you drain once a year, and that costs you nothing in a good year and four hundred in a bad one.

I don't know which deal is right for you. I know which one bills less over ten years.

What to do Monday

Add up what your website truly costs per year. Plan, domain, email, the payment fee if you take cards. Write the total on a sticky note and stick it on your monitor. Every business owner I have done this with found at least one charge they could not explain. That charge is your Monday project. Cancel it or make somebody justify it.