Sudden WordPress pricing change sparks confusion and outrage
WordPress.com’s new simplified pricing structure has users underwhelmed
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WordPress.comhas introduced major price changes without warning, replacing all of its paid plans with a single ‘Pro’ plan.
The Automattic-ownedwebsite builderhas also reduced the storage on its free plan significantly, from 3GB to 500MB.
In a WordPressforum thread, some users of the platform expressed their frustration with the new Pro plan, which costs $180 a year with no option to spread costs out monthly, a facility previously available with the old plans.
Website builder price change
In response to complaints made on theWordPressforum, a spokesperson for the company said the goal with these pricing changes is to make the benefits of WordPress.com available to more people, describing the old plans as “overcomplicated” and “confusing”.
“This presently does not affect free sites prior to the new plan updates. We’ve slashed the price of our older Business plan from $25/mo to just $15/mo (paid annually),” they added.
However, despite the fact that WordPress says the changes to storage space would only affect new websites created on or after March 31, some WordPress users complained that their old sites have had the media storage space slashed to 500 MB.
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The previous Business plan referenced by the spokesperson used to come with up to 200GB of storage, while the new Pro plan caps storage space at 50GB.
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After a weekend of users complaining of the changes, WordPress set upa threadto collect feedback and provide clarity on new pricing changes. In the FAQ section, it acknowledged that the gap between a free plan and a $15 a month plan was large, and the company is therefore working on more “flexible à la carte options”.
TechRadar Proreached out to WordPress.com for a comment on the changes and the rationale behind removing the option to pay monthly for services, but the company has not yet returned a response.
ViaWPTavern
Abigail is a B2B Editor that specializes inweb hostingandwebsite buildernews, features and reviews at TechRadar Pro. She has been a B2B journalist for more than five years covering a wide range of topics in the technology sector from colocation and cloud to data centers and telecommunications. As a B2B web hosting and website builder editor, Abigail also writes how-to guides and deals for the sector, keeping up to date with the latest trends in the hosting industry. Abigail is also extremely keen on commissioning contributed content from experts in the web hosting and website builder field.
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