When we started Arner Adventures in 2017, we weren’t thinking about managed hosting, backups, plugins, site speed, or how much traffic our website might eventually handle.
We just wanted our own place on the internet.
Nearly a decade later, Arner Adventures has grown from a personal blog into our full-time business, reaching around 100,000 website users each month. Our website now holds years of travel guides, lifestyle content, podcast episodes, affiliate recommendations, brand partnerships, and a whole lot of our lives.
Through all of that growth, one thing hasn’t changed: we still use WordPress.com.
We’ve never been developers, and we don’t particularly want to become hosting experts. We want a website that gives us control over our content, can grow with our business, and handles a lot of the technical stuff behind the scenes.
That’s why we’ve stayed.
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We Didn’t Start With a Master Plan, Just a Need for Ownership
In 2017, Arner Adventures was much simpler than it is today. We had a few posts, a basic layout, and very little strategy.
But even then, having our own space mattered to us.
Social media can be incredibly useful, but we never wanted it to be the only place our content lived. Algorithms change. Platforms change. Reach can disappear overnight.
Our website gave us a home base.
We could write something once and continue updating it years later. People could find our content through search instead of only seeing whatever happened to appear in their social feed that day.
That became much more important as Arner Adventures went from a creative outlet to our business.
Why We Still Use WordPress.com After Nearly a Decade
There are plenty of website platforms out there, and we’ve had years to reconsider ours.
We haven’t stayed with WordPress.com simply because changing platforms sounds like a nightmare.
We’ve stayed because it continues to do what we need it to do.
Our website has changed dramatically since 2017. We’ve added advertising, affiliate marketing, our podcast, email marketing, brand partnerships, analytics, SEO tools, plugins, and a WooCommerce store.
Instead of rebuilding somewhere else every time our business changed, we’ve been able to keep building on the same foundation.
It Has Grown With Our Blog
When we started, we didn’t need much.
That’s probably true for most new bloggers.
The thing is, you don’t necessarily know what your website will need five or ten years from now.
We’ve changed themes, reorganized content, added new income streams, installed plugins, improved our SEO, worked on site speed, and made more website changes than we could possibly remember.
We haven’t had to move Arner Adventures to another platform to do those things.
If you want to see more of what the platform can actually do today, we put together a full guide to WordPress.com Business Plan features and how we use them.
Why We Use the WordPress.com Business Plan Today
This is where our needs today are very different from our needs in 2017.
Arner Adventures is no longer simply somewhere we publish blog posts. Our website is part of how we make our living.
We currently use the WordPress.com Business Plan, which combines managed WordPress hosting with features designed for professional websites.
Some of the Business features that matter to us include 50 GB of storage, backups and restores, staging, advanced SEO tools, security and performance features, and access to more technical tools such as SFTP, SSH, WP-CLI, database access, and GitHub deployments.
Do we wake up in the morning excited about WP-CLI and GitHub deployments?
No. 😂
But that’s actually part of what we like about Business.
We don’t have to be developers to run our website day-to-day, but those more advanced tools are available when we—or someone helping us—need them.
See the WordPress.com Business Plan
You Don’t Need Business Just to Install Plugins Anymore
This is worth talking about because there’s a lot of outdated WordPress.com information online.
As of 2026, plugins are available on all paid WordPress.com plans, not just Business.
That means you shouldn’t choose Business solely because an old article told you it’s the only WordPress.com plan that allows plugins.
The reason we use Business is everything else that comes with it and the needs of our website at this stage of our business.
If you’re just getting started with plugins, we also have a guide to the best WordPress plugins for beginners.
Managed Hosting Is a Big Part of the Appeal for Us
We run Arner Adventures.
We don’t want to also run a web-hosting company. 😂
There are already enough moving parts involved in running a content business: writing, SEO, affiliate marketing, advertising, photography, video, social media, newsletters, partnerships, accounting, podcasting, and everything else that somehow ends up on the weekly to-do list.
WordPress.com manages much of the hosting infrastructure behind our website.
That doesn’t mean nothing ever goes wrong.
We’ve dealt with plugin conflicts. We’ve worked on site-speed issues. We’ve had the occasional moment when something breaks and we wonder what the hell just happened.
That’s part of running a website.
For us, the difference is that we’d rather troubleshoot the occasional problem while having managed hosting, backups, security, and support behind the site.
Backups Matter a Lot More to Us Now
Backups weren’t exactly keeping us awake at night when Arner Adventures had a handful of posts.
They’re a much bigger deal now.
We’ve spent nearly a decade building this website. Losing a significant chunk of it wouldn’t just be annoying. It could affect our income.
The Business Plan includes automatic backups and the ability to restore your website if something goes wrong.
It’s one of those features you hope you rarely need.
But when your website is part of your business, knowing it’s there matters.
We Like Having Room to Customize
One reason WordPress has continued to work for us is that we haven’t been boxed into the website we built in 2017.
Thank goodness, because that thing has changed A LOT.
We can change themes, layouts, site structure, plugins, navigation, and functionality as our business changes.
That flexibility has allowed us to make changes gradually instead of eventually reaching a point where the only solution is rebuilding our entire website somewhere else.
We’ve also built our WooCommerce store into our content-first business rather than needing a completely separate platform for it.
WordPress.com vs. Self-Hosted WordPress
This is one of the biggest sources of confusion when people start researching WordPress.
WordPress.com and self-hosted WordPress aren’t the same setup.
With self-hosted WordPress, you use the WordPress software but arrange your hosting separately.
With WordPress.com, your hosting is part of the service.
There are pros and cons to both, and one isn’t automatically right for everybody.
We have an entire guide comparing WordPress.com vs. self-hosted WordPress if you’re trying to figure out which setup makes more sense for you.
For us, the convenience of managed hosting outweighs the appeal of managing more of the technical infrastructure ourselves.
Our Website Is the Hub of Our Business
One of the biggest reasons we continue investing in our website has very little to do with WordPress itself.
It’s about ownership.
Instagram is useful. Pinterest is useful. TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, and whatever platform comes along next can all have a place in a content business.
But none of them are our home base.
Arner Adventures is.
A Reel can have a great week and then disappear from people’s feeds. An article we’ve written can continue bringing someone to our website years later.
That’s a completely different relationship with content.
It’s also why updating old blog posts is part of our weekly routine instead of constantly publishing something new just for the sake of publishing.
Our website is where everything ultimately comes together.
What We Don’t Love About WordPress.com
We obviously like WordPress.com. We’ve been using it since 2017.
But we’re not going to tell you it’s perfect.
There Is a Learning Curve
WordPress gives you a lot of flexibility, and flexibility comes with options.
There are settings everywhere.
After nearly a decade, there are still occasions when we’re looking for something and thinking, Where the hell did they put that?
If you want a platform where you choose a template, change three things, and never think about your website again, WordPress may feel like more than you need.
Plugins Can Still Cause Problems
Having access to plugins doesn’t mean every plugin will play nicely with every other plugin.
We’ve experienced plugin issues ourselves.
That’s one reason backups and staging become much more valuable as your website grows.
Business May Be More Than a New Blogger Needs
We use Business because Arner Adventures is an established website and an important part of our business.
If you’re starting your first blog this afternoon, you may not need it.
Since WordPress.com now allows plugins on all paid plans, it’s easier to start with a lower-cost plan and move up as your needs change.
We’d rather tell you that than convince you to pay for features you don’t need.
Is WordPress.com Business Worth It?
For us, yes.
Our website reaches around 100,000 users per month and supports several parts of our business.
At this point, we’re not choosing hosting based solely on which company can give us the cheapest monthly price.
We’re thinking about reliability, backups, support, performance, flexibility, and whether our hosting can continue supporting the website we’re building.
That’s where Business makes sense for us.
WordPress.com is currently promoting Business starting at $17.50 per month on a three-year term, but pricing and promotions can change. If you’re comparing plans, check the current price and billing term rather than relying on an older article.
Check Current WordPress.com Business Plan Pricing
If you’re running a professional blog, content business, small-business website, or another site that has grown beyond the basics, we think Business is worth considering.
Who We Think WordPress.com Business Is Best For
We’d take a serious look at Business if your website:
- generates income
- receives meaningful traffic
- is an important part of your business
- needs automatic backups and easy restores
- needs staging
- needs more storage
- may require developer access
- needs room to continue growing
- would benefit from managed hosting rather than managing the server side yourself
If you have a new personal blog or a simple portfolio, look at the other WordPress.com plans, too. You may not need Business yet.
That’s one of the things we appreciate about WordPress.com: you don’t have to start where we are now.
You can start where you are now.
Why We Recommend WordPress.com to Others
Over the years, we’ve helped friends, creators, and small brands with their blogs and websites.
Many come to us already frustrated with the platform they chose when they first started.
They’re dealing with workarounds, unexpected limitations, or a collection of tools that don’t work particularly well together.
When WordPress.com fits what they need, it’s one of the platforms we recommend.
We also have a separate guide about switching from Squarespace to WordPress if you’re already on another platform and wondering whether it’s worth making a change.
Why We’ve Never Felt the Urge to Leave
We’ve had plenty of opportunities to rethink our platform over the years.
New website builders appear. Hosting companies make impressive promises. Somebody is always claiming there’s a newer, faster, easier way to do everything.
But whenever we look at what Arner Adventures actually needs, our answer has remained pretty boring:
We want our own website.
We want it to grow with us.
We want flexibility without taking responsibility for every piece of hosting infrastructure.
And we want to spend more time running Arner Adventures than running WordPress.
WordPress.com has allowed us to do that since 2017.
If we were starting over knowing what we know now, we’d still choose WordPress.com.
And for the website Arner Adventures has become, we’d still choose Business.
See the WordPress.com Business Plan
FAQs | Frequently Asked Questions
Yes. One thing we like about WordPress.com is that you can start with a relatively simple website and add more functionality as you learn and grow.
You don’t need the Business Plan simply because you’re a beginner. Look at the features of each plan and choose based on what your website actually needs.
No. We didn’t have a technical background when we started Arner Adventures in 2017.
There is a learning curve, particularly as you start customizing more of your website, but you don’t have to be a developer to use WordPress.com.
Yes. As of 2026, WordPress.com allows plugins on all of its paid plans.
That’s a fairly recent change, so be careful with older WordPress.com articles that say you have to purchase Business to install plugins.
