WordPress.com announced major price changes and replaced all of its plans with a single Pro plan. Most users were frustrated with the sudden change and shared negative comments about the new plans. Additionally, WordPress.com reduced the storage for its free plan from 3 GB to 500 MB. The new Pro plan, which costs $180 for a year, doesn’t allow users the pay it monthly, which was available with the old plans.
Overcomplicated and confusing
After the customers shared their opinion about the new plans, a WordPress.com spokesperson announced that they aimed to make the benefits of WordPress.com available to more people with the changes and described the old plans as “overcomplicated and confusing”. However, most of the users stated that the reduced limits and increased prices are unacceptable compared to other providers.
The users were also frustrated by the lack of sudden and unexpected price changes and the lack of monthly billing. WordPress.com spokesperson explained the reasons for the changes as:
- Straightforward Pricing: We want to avoid using dark patterns, or trickery to get people signed up, only to then switch pricing on them down the line (which, unfortunately, many other hosts do these days).
- Fewer Plans: Reduce the number of plans we have making it easier for customers to make a plan selection.
- Access to Custom Plugins & Themes: Make custom plugins and themes available on all paid plans. Previously, this was only made available on our old $25/mo Business plan.
After the negative feedback, the Free plan’s storage limit was increased to 1 GB, which is still lower than the previous plan. New plans also limit traffic to 10,000 visits for the free plan and 100,000 for the Pro plan. Also, the lack of plans between the Free and the Pro plan is restricting for users. In the new system, $4 per month and $8 per month plans are removed completely.