Today, very appropriately falling on Towel Day (May 25th), saw the introduction of the next biggest thing on WordPress.com: the Starter Plan at US$ 60/year, joining the 2-month old Pro plan at US$ 180/year. (*See note below.)
Head on over to the support Guide to read about what’s included.
You might have noticed that the newly updated Pricing Page, unlike the Guide, no longer mentions any information at all about free websites. Whatever. Pass the beers, Ford; it’s almost time for Earth’s destruction to make way for a hyperspace bypass.
Sharp-eyed WordPress.com members will immediately notice features “missing” in the Starter plan, most glaringly No Ads. I guess that will be included in the upcoming, sometime-in-the-future, a la carte options they keep talking about.
Meanwhile, hit me up with some Vogon poetry. My brain is already leaking out my ears.
If you have no idea what the heck Towel Day is, start here. Or maybe here:
As always, the information in this post is correct as of publication date. Changes are inevitable.
*Note: From 31 March until 20 July 2022, WordPress.com offered the Pro and Starter plans. These plans were retired on 21 July 2022 in favor of the original Personal, Premium, Business and eCommerce plans. 🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺🍺!
WPcomMaven 
Despite the reminder, I left for shopping this morning without my towel.
. . . I’ll now have to wait until next year.
A round of Vogon poetry for you then! 😀
Any poetry would do.
Happy to share!
https://h2g2.com/edited_entry/A150076
Thanks for that . . . now my head hurts.
Apart from the obvious that all plans will be a factor of 42, I see my plan is now described as a legacy plan, which term often means soon to be discontinued.
I just found your comment in the spam folder. Gah!
TPTB keep saying that they have no plans (sic) to discontinue the legacy plans. I heard “at this time” ringing in my ears, but that aberration might be due to the aforementioned Vogon poetry. Or too many Pan-Galactic Gargle Blasters.
I asked the question – and the reply was “If you’re happy with your current plan, you can stay on it. We have no plans to enforce plan changes.”
Hm, interesting choice of words. I’ll leave it at that.
I seem to remember similar wording for the Affordable Care Act. Hint; it was not affordable and you didn’t get to keep your plan.
Users forget to renew their site plan. Usually it’s a case of not keeping their account email address up to date, because WordPress.com sends out renewal notifications to that address, or losing access to the account that bought the upgrade. If I can go by this recent forum reply from Staff, it looks like if you let your current plan lapse, you’ll need to purchase one of the new upgrade plans.
What I don’t get is why people don’t add a note to their personal calendar to avoid this situation to begin with. To me this is a no brainer.
(edited to remove dead Giphy link)
I have automatic renewal switched on, but I still have a reminder to check all is in order a week or so before the renewal.
That’s because one year there was a glitch with the credit card and it took a couple of calls to resolve the issue. But then, at that time, there was no new plan I’d have had to switch to.
You’re saying they wouldn’t be as accommodating now?
… I believe it …
It seems to depend on a couple of things. If the expired plan has been removed from the account (I don’t know the timeline following expiration), then it’s not possible to renew the old plan. But, if recently expired, it also seems to depend on who you talk to.
I had an interesting experience that doesn’t bode well for legacy anything at WP . . . while I can still use and edit the Classic Block in posts when on the PC, I had the occasion (need, because I wasn’t home) to edit a Classic Block on the WP app on my phone, and I got a message that it wasn’t supported.
And so it goes.
The Editor in the mobile app is the Editor in the mobile app. Did you try logging in in your phone’s mobile browser instead of the app?
I have one site here on a great-grandfathered plan. But that was then, this is now. (I also wonder how many folks are still on the short-lived “Blogger” plan.)
It seems to do OK with other blocks, and I used to be able to edit Classic Blocks, but I think that was probably at least a year ago. Or, maybe I’m remembering incorrectly.
I use the Classic Block when posting fiction because otherwise when I paste the story, it creates a different block for each paragraph. Perhaps there’s another block more suited. I should check.
The free plan is still there but has to be hunted for. If it goes, I will go again. Haha! That’s always the way! Here’s the link: https://wordpress.com/start/free/domains?ref=pricing-lp
Hope you’re okay, Jen. Haven’t heard from you in ages.
Hi Val, been the good kind of busy and very happy to hear from you, too! Welcome “back”.
Starting a site for free is easier than launching your free site and making it public. Since the end of March, there’s been lots of baffled free and Starter users posting in the forums asking how to make their site public, i.e. visible, and not hidden behind a “coming soon” screen. Even after getting a reply with instructions, some people just abandon or delete their site. So much for increasing retention. Ha!
Oh yes, that’s familiar. I had problems starting mine – and after all the years that I was here, that was quite frustrating, too!
My guess is that eventually wpcom will go the same way as Typepad – with only paid accounts.