Advice

Time To Upgrade Your Plan?

by Pooja G

Are You Thinking Of Upgrading Your WordPress Plan?

A lot of people have asked me about whether they should upgrade their plan and whether it’s even necessary to upgrade to a paid plan. A lot of times deciding whether or not to upgrade your plan can get a bit complicated and it is difficult to decide when the perfect time is for an upgrade. However, if you are seriously considering upgrading to a paid plan there are some factors you should take into account first. Yes, the payment and plan are reversible but that does not always workout. When I went from the Premium Plan to the Business Plan I was kind of disappointed so I decided to switch back to the Premium Plan. Unfortunately, during the process of switching back I lost all the likes/comments on several of my posts and the posts became duplicated for some reason. The customer care people at WordPress were unable to help. Therefore, I decided to write a post on some things you should consider when you are thinking about upgrading your plan so that you can make an informed decision and don’t have to go through what I went through. These factors will help you decide whether or not you should upgrade your plan:

Why are you blogging?

You need to think about what you are planning to achieve from your blogging journey. If you are blogging as a hobby and are not currently looking to start blogging full-time/make an income blogging then there is not much of a need for you to upgrade your plan. I would highly recommend sticking with an unpaid wordpress.com site. If you are planning to make some sort of an income from your blogging than you may need a paid plan. If you want to monetize your blog using Ads you will need to upgrade your plan to a paid plan as those offer revenue from Ads. Furthermore, sponsors are more likely to want to work with someone who owns their domain/site rather than a site that has wordpress.com/wordpress.org on it.  

Income

When considering an upgrade you should take into consideration how much you are currently earning through your site because you should be earning at least equivalent before you decide to invest. You should be ambitious and invest in yourself if you have the capital to do so however if you don’t have that kind of money I would recommend waiting till your blog is making at least the amount you spend on the plan before upgrading because you are not going to make more than a couple of dollars of the Ads unless you have a huge following. It’s just a better idea to have some sort of income before you invest in your blog. 

Better/more options

If you are looking for options like plugins, better themes and more than you may not have any choice but to upgrade. For example, plugins are only offered on the Business Plan and the eCommerce Plan. If you absolutely need to use plugins than you will have no choice but to upgrade. However, I will warn you some of the features offered are not really worth it and some of the plans are not explained well by WP. If you want to know about my personal experience with upgrades and how WP kind of messed it up click here. 

Customization

If you want to customize your site to make it look a certain way you should consider upgrading your plan because the paid plans do offer a lot more customizing options. They offer more themes, the ability to customize how your site looks and more. However, you can also customize by switching to a self-hosted site. I don’t know too much about self-hosting because I haven’t done that but a fellow blogger has some great posts on how she switched to a self-hosted site, what hosting provider she used and how she customized her site. All three posts are extremely insightful and I would recommend checking them out if you are interested in self-hosting.  

Your following/traffic

Your following and traffic should be one of the main things you consider before deciding to upgrade your plan. If your blog is consistently growing in both following and traffic and you predict that it will continue to do so I would recommend thinking about an upgrade. However, if you feel like your blog is not growing that much you may want to wait until your blog has at least 5-10K followers and 1k views a day. It is difficult to make money off your blog if you don’t have a large following/audience and an upgrade will not be able to fix this problem. Sponsors want to work with people who have at least a few thousand followers and Ads only make a decent amount of revenue when you have a certain amount of daily views. On the other hand you can make a decent amount of money even on the free plan if you have a large following/traffic. To find out how to grow your following click here. To find out how to grow your audience click here. Once your blog is growing at a good rate you can decide to upgrade to a paid plan. 

Related post: 

What Plan Is The Best For My Blog

Your Thoughts

What plan are you currently on? Do you have a paid plan or are you currently using the free plan? If you have a paid plan are you fully satisfied with it? If you have a free plan are you thinking of upgrading in the future or are you satisfied with the free plan? Let me know in the comments below because I am always interested in what you guys have to say!

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128 thoughts on “Time To Upgrade Your Plan?”

  1. I upgraded to the Premium plan thinking I’d be able to make money off ads. It’s really confusing though. Individual days will show that I made a few cents, but then it still says 0 under overall earnings. I think I might switch back to the free plan just because I don’t understand how the ads work at all (and also I don’t think I’m gonna end up making enough for it to be worth it).
    Can you add a forum to your site with the business plan? That’s like the one feature I really want to add.

    Liked by 5 people

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    1. Yeah I don’t make much off ads either- nobody does to be honest unless you get millions of views a day. I’m not sure if it has a forum feature but you can probably add a plugin which will get you a forum. Not too sure about that though.

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      1. Hi!
        This has me confused. What are the other ways that you generate income through your blog?
        Other than the support the blog part at the bottom?
        I’ve shifted to the premium plan recently, coz well, I needed a push to work on my writing… But then, I honestly don’t want to use advertisements.
        Being a nascent blog is there anything that can generate income?

        Liked by 2 people

    2. If you are looking for more flexibility you can move to a self-hosted solution, DreamHost ( https://mbsy.co/329dPl ) offers packages starting at only $2.59/mo, and this will give you the same flexibility as a WordPress business plan. Additionally you will be able to set up a forum which is not the case with the WP Business plan. If you need help feel free to contact me.

      Liked by 3 people

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  2. I am currently on the free plan. Because :
    I’m just A part time blogger.
    Blogging is just my hobby .
    I don’t have many followers and I’d have to wait till I get to a four digit number ..
    And yeah, I’m currently satisfied with my theme.
    But if at all, the number of followers increase , I’d pay for a theme and upgrade
    By the way,
    Thank you so much for posting this and giving an insight !

    Liked by 6 people

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  3. I am on the free plan. I plan to upgrade but mostly to attract more email followers. They see the ads and don’t want to follow my blog. If I upgrade, it will get ride of the ads unless I want the ad.

    Liked by 4 people

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    1. WP manually migrates all your followers to your self hosted site. You just have to contact with them if your new site is ready and jetpack plugin installed in it.
      However you’ll lost your likes and comments. But your post can also be migrated with WP importer.

      Liked by 4 people

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      4. If you upgrade to one of the paid plans e.g the Premium Plan you don’t need to install anything. You just have to pay the amount and WP will change your plan for you and migrate everything.

        Liked by 1 person

      6. Yes they say that if you switch your plan they will migrate everything for you. When I switched to Premium everything was migrated including my followers, posts, comments etc.

        Liked by 1 person

    2. It claims that your follows, likes and comments will be transferred but this is not always the case. If something goes wrong there is a chance that you can lose your followers/likes/comments/posts and WP will be able to do very little to resolve the situation. For when you should upgrade check out the above post as that’s what factors you should consider before deciding to upgrade. The paid plan is relatively safe unless you want to undo it.

      Liked by 2 people

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  7. Crazy! Earlier this week my cousin told me to look into purchasing my own domain and I started researching the benefits of having my own domain, I almost upgraded but I decided to hold off and now you posted this blog, I feel like it was just for me lol thank you.

    Liked by 4 people

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  8. Very good information I wish I would have known before I jumped the gun at bought it. I don’t regret it at all but I’m not nearly as popular as I thought I’d be. I guess I just had high hopes.

    Liked by 4 people

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  9. I recently got the Personal Plan, nothing too big, because I kept changing domains before and my site was a mess. I needed a fix for the crawling and indexing of my pages, which I absolutely have no idea how, manually. Also, Facebook and Instagram banned my .wordpress url, don’t know why but I think it has something to do site ownership issues. I’m happy with the Personal, my site has been re-crawled now and also I noticed an increase in engagement, maybe because having my own domain somewhat gave “weight” to my site, I’m not sure. I have no plans yet of upgrading, I’m still focused on improving my blog posts, maybe in due time. Thank you so much for this post! I love it because it’s not too technical and I can easily understand ❤️

    Liked by 3 people

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    1. Yeah I think the Personal Plan is great for people who are starting out and are trying to grow their blog. I’m glad you enjoyed the post- I try to keep it very simple because I know a lot of the people who read my advice posts are just starting out and may not understand something that is too technical!

      Liked by 1 person

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  14. This is good, I learnt some things. Well I started blogging as a hobby last month but I wish to make money from it as it grows. Am on free plan. For now I don’t have much followers but I know as I continue blogging I will have more. So for me it’s one step at a time.

    Liked by 1 person

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  19. Love this post. Very helpful.
    I plan to migrate one day as I plan to take my blog very serious and turn it into a career one day. However I’d like to build my followers and grow my blog first before taking that step.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  21. so for generating revenue you need to have 5k followers and 1k views?
    i’m a new blogger want to know how it works.
    also posting blogs article peoms are the genre or are there anything beyond?

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. You don’t necessary need that exact amount of followers or views but I think you need at least a few thousand followers/views before you can start earning a decent amount of money. There are a lot of genres- people usually just blog about whatever they are interested in.

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  23. I have 2 blogs, one on the Premium plan and one on the Business plan. IMO, the Business plan isn’t worth it for a personal blog unless it generates a decent income. Once my Business plan blog expires, I will move my blog back to the Premium plan or self-host. Note, for those wanting to upgrade their plan, it may be best to wait because WP will be implementing new themes to accommodate the block editor.

    Liked by 1 person

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  25. I am currently on the business plan as I feel this will help motivate me to do the things necessary to take my site to the next level. I did so knowing I would not make any money from this for possibly years.
    It really just comes down to what the individual is willing and able to invest. For me, my next step is to crank out quality posts consistently every 2-3 days and work on SEO.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

  27. Insightful Blog Pooja. I have another wordpress powered site with a registered domain. Have not taken the Premium Plan yet. I always wonder how good are the SEO Tools that come with a Premium or Business Plan? Is it worth an upgrade to get a better SEO ranking for your wordpress site? Is working with SEO Tool on a paid plan of WordPress worth the investment? Please comment.

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. I personally did not enjoy the Business Plan and felt that it wasn’t worth it because what’s the point of better SEO if it gets rid of your follow button. I am however very satisfied with the Premium plan and felt that it was worth the amount.

      Liked by 1 person

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  28. Thanks for sharing your experience. I had be a business plan and the free one as well. It is harder for me to get following on the business plan but not sure why as I post the same things on both. 😩

    Liked by 1 person

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    1. I found it harder with the Business Plan too because they get rid of your follow button in that plan and following a blog becomes a whole complicated thing. I found it super annoying and went back to the Premium Plan.

      Liked by 1 person

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  29. How does one’s blog go to wordpress.com even when you have tag the site wordpress.i just see people post there and wonder how even discover and longread can you explain it to me am a beginner

    Liked by 1 person

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  34. I had this thought in my mind for some time now. I don’t plan to go premium any time soon (gave myself some conditions I need to fulfil before even considering any upgrade) as the free version suffice me for the time being. But, this is a really insightful post and cleared some of my concerns.
    Thanks for sharing!
    – Esha

    Liked by 1 person

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    1. I’m glad this helped and yes I would highly recommend waiting till you are fully ready to update because reversing the process does not always work out.

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  41. Great post! I am new to all this and hope you can help. I have the free wordpress.com account and am wondering if there’s a way to link that to a domain that I bought on a different hosting site. I keep running into how to add WP within the hosting site but can’t figure out how to get the wordpress.com account I already created be the site linked to the domain. I like how the free WP looks compared to the WP created through cpanel. Is that possible to even do?

    Liked by 1 person

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    1. Thanks! Unfortunately, I have never experienced anything like that so I can’t help you. I would recommend reaching out to the WordPress helpers and they will probably be able to help you with that.

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  43. I ummed and arred around with plans for a while, running Personal (chiefly for the domain name) then going for Business for the plugins and finding that too expensive on the annual payments. I went back to Personal and regretted it almost immediately. Likewise, several of my posts got duplicated and some old, deleted posts reappeared. In the end, I reached out to the Happiness Engineers and they helped me set up a monthly payment plan for Business, which isn’t nearly so bad for me. I definitely back weighing it all up before you commit though!

    Liked by 1 person

    Reply

    1. Yeah most people have that experience where it takes a while to settle on the right plan so that’s why I always encourage everyone to really think about it before committing since posts can sometimes get messed up or you could even lose your likes/follows etc.

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