WordPress Review 2025: Is This Popular Platform the Best for Small Businesses?

WordPress is a low-cost and effective way to start a blog or host a portfolio, but it may have too many plugins and restrictions for beginner ecommerce sites.

WordPress started as a blogging platform and continues to do that very well. Whether you want a free account to write down your thoughts into the ether of the internet or are building a basic website to showcase your work, WordPress has a variety of plans and features.

Budding online entrepreneurs who want to launch their business quickly may find WordPress relies on too many plugins to be cost-effective. Plus, WordPress paywalls WooCommerce, which offers ecommerce and analytics plugins, so you can’t use the free plan to test whether the platform will work for your ecommerce website.

We created a test WordPress website and edited it through the platform to experience what it’s really like for someone starting from scratch. Read on for our firsthand WordPress website builder review.

WordPress review at a glance

Price	Free-$45/mo (billed annually)
Free plan	Yes
Free trial	No
Money-back guarantee	Yes — 14 days
Number of collaborators	Unlimited
Storage space	6GB – 150GB (for additional fee)
Custom domain	Free for one year with most plans
Site analytics	Yes, starting with the Personal plan
Ecommerce tools	Yes, Business and Commerce plans only
AI tools	Yes, via plugins
Learn more	Get WordPress

We last tested WordPress on January 6th, 2025.

Our experience

For the most part, we had a positive experience with WordPress, even though the platform is a bit complex. Just when we thought we’d utilized all the features, we went to a different section and found something new to test.

WordPress didn’t offer AI tools to help us build the site, like other hosting platforms, but it did suggest themes based on a few questions it asked us when we started.

It also gave us domain options when we first started. It was nice to see we could snag a fairly uncomplicated free subdomain name with the free plan. (Subdomains are branded, so your free website will have the wordpress.com branding at the end of the URL. You can get a free custom domain with premium subscriptions.)

Once we answered the questions, we got to peruse the template library. The templates are sorted into categories, and when you click on one, it tells you what type of site is best for that design.

Once we selected our template, we tried editing the actual page and found the editing tools easy to use. We could edit the page itself or the template, which helped make the page layout exactly how we wanted it.

Overall, WordPress was a little more time-consuming than some of the other web hosting and drag-and-drop website builders we’ve tested. A lot of the features we wanted, like analytics and payment methods, were behind paywalls and available only via WordPress plugins.

As far as business website creation goes, there are better website builders with proprietary ecommerce features like Shopify. But WordPress is still a solid choice if you want to blog or create a beautiful portfolio site.

WordPress prices and subscriptions

WordPress has reasonably priced tiers for personal and business use ranging from Free-$45/mo (billed annually). (WordPress also offers an Enterprise plan that starts at $25,000/mo, but you need to contact a sales rep for plan specifics.)

The free plan is a usable and low-cost option for creating blogs or starting a WordPress website. If you want more storage, you can upgrade to the Personal plan, which is still very affordable. Premium gets you a little bit more, but the Business and Commerce plans are necessary for entrepreneurs wishing to establish solid businesses.

Features	Free	Personal	Premium	Business	Commerce
Price	Free	$4/mo (billed annually)	$8/mo (billed annually)	$25/mo (billed annually)	$45/mo (billed annually)
Number of collaborators	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited	Unlimited
Storage space	1GB	6GB	13GB	50GB – 150GB	50GB – 150GB
Custom domain	No, custom subdomain only
Customized fonts and colors
Site analytics
Ecommerce tools
Install plugins
AI tools
24/7 support
Learn more	View plan	View plan	View plan	View plan	View plan

WordPress is reasonably priced and in line with the most popular website builders. The free plan offers a decent amount of features like blogging and the ability to upload images. It also includes an AI image creator that creates fairly realistic-looking images. If you’re looking to start a blog or a basic website that’s not heavily based on ecommerce, WordPress has some significant advantages based on its 20+ years of experience.

For bloggers and individuals who want a more text-based site and aren’t as concerned with ecommerce tools, we suggest the Personal plan. You get a year of a free custom domain name and low monthly hosting costs. If you’re an online business or are looking to start an ecommerce site, the Business plan is what we’d recommend.

WordPress features

The features WordPress offers are geared much more toward blogging than ecommerce. While plugins exist for ecommerce, affiliate marketing, accepting payments, and more, the proprietary features focus mostly on building a WordPress website. We created a test website for book reviews and recommendations, which fit into WordPress well. If you were looking to create a bustling online marketplace, however, you’d probably want to use a platform like Shopify or Squarespace for proprietary ecommerce features.

Free plan

We started with the free plan to see how usable it is and found it's actually one of the best free website builders. 

The free subdomain name isn’t as difficult to use as other web builders like Wix because it lists the name-of-your-site.wordpress.com as the URL. If you want to create a blog from scratch with little to no startup funds, this is a good way to do it.

Unfortunately, the free plan does put ads on your site (though this is common with any free web builder plan). We don’t feel they’re too intrusive, but the revenue won’t go to you. If you want to monetize your website, get SEO assistance, install ecommerce plugins, and more, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.

Building a website

Building a site was easy. We answered a few questions, and while there weren’t AI-building tools available, the templates offered were suggested based on our answers. The templates have descriptions so you can choose the best one for your site. If you decide later that the template doesn’t work, you can easily change it. Editing web pages is easy, and the design of the editing tools is clean and well-organized.

Using and editing media

Uploading media isn’t difficult, but there aren’t a ton of editing options available. For SEO purposes, we were able to put meta descriptions on our images. When it came to editing, however, we could only crop, rotate, and flip our images. For any additional editing, you’ll need to find separate software.

Widget library

There are only plugins available for your WordPress site, and the plugins are where you’re going to find the majority of your resources. There are actually so many WordPress plugins that you may need to do an internet search to figure out which are the best for you. Business plugins for SEO, marketing, ecommerce, monetization, affiliate marketing, and more are available through the plugins marketplace.

Ecommerce tools

Some of WordPress’ features are available only after you verify your email address. This isn’t unusual, but the problem we encountered was that the email verification took over 24 hours to come through. WordPress notifications are notorious for being flagged as spam, which is annoying but unavoidable.

Once verified, we could see that the ecommerce features are all run by a WooCommerce plugin. WooCommerce is a plugin built for WordPress that has all the capabilities of any major ecommerce platform. You’ll be able to sell products, set up subscriptions, take payment for services, create a booking system, and so much more. However, only paid subscribers can access WooCommerce features.

SEO and blogging tools

As with most WordPress features, SEO tools are via a plugin and are accessible only starting with the Premium plan. Luckily, the blogging tools are proprietary and robust. Since WordPress started as a simple blogging platform, it makes sense that the content creation tools are top-tier.

Marketing tools

All of the marketing tools are third-party or accessible only through higher-paid tiers, but there is a library of choices available. The marketing tools aren’t as robust as those of competitors like Squarespace, but you can still choose several options to help promote your site from WordPress.

Bonus features

WordPress relies on plugins, available with the Business and Commerce plans, to give you additional features. We did find an AI image creator in the site’s actual building tools that made a nice-looking book for us. There isn’t much to the AI tool other than putting in a detailed description, but it’s helpful when looking for stock images without having to purchase or create them yourself.

Security and bandwidth

There isn’t any native DDoS protection on WordPress sites, but Business and Commerce subscribers can install plugins to protect your website. In fact, there are multiple paid and free plugins you can install for security, not just DDoS protections. You will, no matter what plan you get, have a free SSL certificate for privacy and security.

Create a free cookie policy for your ecommerce business

As a business owner, you need a cookie policy to disclose what you do with user data. You also need privacy policies, a refund policy, and others. With TermsFeed, you can quickly create legal provisions for GDPR, CCPA, CPRA, and more.

WordPress customer support

Support type	WP support
Email or live chat
Phone
Online guides or forums

We didn’t have great success with WordPress customer support. There is an AI assistant chatbox, but it couldn’t answer our question and tried rerouting us to the forums. There are also online guides, but we didn’t find those helpful either. If you require WordPress support, you’ll probably spend a lot of time looking for answers and may inevitably turn to Reddit for WordPress help.

Top alternatives

WordPress has a lot of positive features for blogging, but it might not be what you’re looking for in a hosting provider. If you want more proprietary ecommerce features or AI assistance, our other tested choices below may have what you need.

FAQs

Bottom line: Is WordPress good?

WordPress is good for blogging because it doesn’t require much technical knowledge to get started. However, WordPress isn’t our top choice for ecommerce because other website builders are much easier to set up and use.

Bloggers will enjoy the free and Personal plans that allow you to start at a relatively low cost. Even the Premium plan is less than most streaming services and gives anyone building a portfolio 13GB of space. The Business and Commerce plans may be geared toward ecommerce but have a lot of extra setup steps, such as choosing and installing plugins.

Overall, we feel like WordPress does blogging and portfolio management well, but it isn’t as easy to use as other website builders like Shopify or Squarespace for ecommerce. The best web-building platform depends on your individual goals, but we think bloggers will love WordPress while entrepreneurs might find success elsewhere.