That’s the question I asked over Black Friday weekend 2014. But searching online for comparisons brought little meaningful results. So I answer here, for others posing the same question, based on my experience.
We all make mistakes, but whoever really admits them? I do today. Simply stated: On December 1, I migrated my two sites—Five Minutes with Joe and Bunny Bows Press—from shared self-hosted WP to WordPress.com. I now regret the decision, returning to hosted WordPress 14 days later.
Last night, I moved this site from hosted WordPress (at Media Temple) to WordPress.com. This is the first post at the new locale, which is both strange and familiar. I considered one of two Cyber Monday deals: From MT, moving my two sites from the service’s standard Grid Server to three-blog hosted WordPress—half off for $145/year and substantial savings over my existing setup. WordPress.com offered free, one-year themes package with $99 Premium upgrade, which I would have paid for regardless.
Tipping the decision: Difficulty migrating within Media Temple versus promised ease exporting/importing to WordPress.com; the value of the premium themes, which I will play around with; two-factor authentication; and potentially-improved community connections, among other considerations. I presume there will be some SEO hit, which matters little to me, as readers rather than pageviews are the objective. I don’t use many plugins, and so their limited-availabilty also isn’t a concern. I would want more control over URLs, perhaps, and that’s something sacrificed.