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History of WordPress
From Humble Beginnings
According to WordPress.org, WordPress was created for the purpose of building “an elegant, well-architectured personal publishing system built on PHP and MySQL and licensed under the GPL.” The creation of WordPress, although a very modern platform, dates back to 2001, the early days of the internet. Currently on version 6.x.x, WordPress has been a labor of love by the many developers who have come through and helped make WordPress into the versatile CMS it is known as today.
WordPress.org
WordPress.org is the non-profit organization piece of WordPress. One of the main differences between itself and its .com variant is that WordPress.org is self hosting; meaning you must have your own domain before using it. With that said, WordPress is free and open-source so all you need is a domain and it’s a quick and easy install from there. For the most part the main difference between the two is the pricing as most of the options for customization are similar. So, about the pricing…
WordPress.com
WordPress.com is the for profit entity of WordPress. WordPress.com is a hosted CMS, the opposite of self-hosted as mentioned above. WP.com has four pricing options; $4/month for the Personal plan, $8/month for Premium, $25/month for Business, and $45/month for eCommerce (all are yearly subscription prices billed annually).
Summed up
WordPress.org and WordPress.com are both excellent options for a CMS, .com being especially good for beginner developers and/or creators looking for a quick and easy start to a website. Obviously there are more nuanced differences between the two entities with the above being just some of the more major differences, but the a WordPress.com blog post provides a solid summary of the primary difference: The appropriate comparison is WordPress.com vs. a Self-Hosted WordPress site.
