I built Jottings because I wanted a way to share quick thoughts without the weight of a full-featured blogging platform. But that doesn't mean WordPress.com is bad—it's just different. Let me walk you through an honest comparison.

What WordPress.com Does Better

WordPress.com is a juggernaut. It powers roughly 40% of all websites. That scale comes with real advantages:

Plugins and Extensions: WordPress has thousands of plugins for SEO, analytics, forms, member access, and almost anything you can imagine. Jottings doesn't have this ecosystem—by design.

E-commerce Integration: Want to sell products? WordPress integrates with WooCommerce seamlessly. Jottings isn't designed for this at all.

Customization: Through plugins and themes, you can turn WordPress into almost anything. A landing page builder, a membership site, a directory, a portfolio. The flexibility is incredible.

Content Library: WordPress.com has built-in image galleries, video embeds, media management. After years of use, your media library becomes part of your site's infrastructure.

Community: WordPress has been around since 2003. There are millions of tutorials, templates, and developers who know it inside out.

These are real strengths. If you need a powerful, flexible platform that does many things well, WordPress.com is a solid choice.

What Jottings Does Differently

Now here's where my bias shows—because I'm selling simplicity, not features.

You don't need a dashboard to publish. With Jottings, you just write. Text, links, photos. A few seconds and you're done. WordPress.com's interface is elegant, but it's still an interface. I wanted something faster.

Static sites are built, not served. When you publish a jot, we generate a static HTML site. No database queries on every page load. No plugins slowing things down. Your site is just files—fast, secure, and it works even if we disappear tomorrow. WordPress.com is database-driven, which is more flexible but comes with overhead.

Pricing aligns with simplicity. Jottings is $60/year for Pro (or free forever). WordPress.com's free plan is quite limited. Their paid plans start at $4/month ($48/year) for Blogger plan, going up to $24+/month for more features. For what Jottings does, our pricing is lower. For what WordPress does, their pricing might actually be better value.

No plugin fatigue. WordPress users know the drill: install a plugin to fix something, it breaks compatibility with another plugin, spend an hour troubleshooting. Jottings doesn't have plugins because we do one thing—microblogging. We've built in the essentials: tags, pagination, feeds, custom domains, image optimization. That's it.

You own the data immediately. Your Jottings site generates static files that you can download and host anywhere. No vendor lock-in. WordPress.com's free tier restricts this, and paid tiers make it possible but clunky.

The Real Differences

Use Case: WordPress.com is for people building a website with a blog. Jottings is for people building a blog quickly. If you need multiple pages, services, a shop—WordPress wins. If you just want to share ideas, links, and photos—Jottings is faster.

Technical Ceiling: WordPress.com's free tier is limited. Their paid tiers add flexibility but also complexity. Jottings caps at simplicity—intentionally. Some people hit this ceiling and need more. That's okay. They should use WordPress.

Maintenance: WordPress sites need updates. Plugins need updates. Themes need updates. It's usually automatic on WordPress.com, but there's always a small chance something breaks. Jottings generates static HTML, so there's literally nothing to maintain. No database, no server software, no updates.

Speed: Both are fast in practice. But Jottings' static sites are always fast because we can cache them aggressively and serve them globally. WordPress.com uses CDN caching, but dynamic requests always hit a server.

When to Choose WordPress.com

• You want to build multiple types of content (pages, posts, galleries, etc.)
• You need e-commerce or membership features
• You're comfortable with plugin ecosystems
• You want the most powerful, flexible blogging platform available
• You want the largest ecosystem of themes and plugins

When to Choose Jottings

• You want the simplest possible blogging experience
• You're creating a personal microblog or digital garden
• You like the idea of static sites you can download and backup
• You want fast, no-nonsense publishing
• You want lower pricing and no subscription creep
• You're frustrated by WordPress complexity

The Honest Truth

WordPress.com is better if you need more. Jottings is better if you need less.

I didn't build Jottings because WordPress is bad. It's not. I built it because I wanted something different—something that got out of the way. Every feature in WordPress is someone else's problem when you don't use it. More settings, more configuration, more things that can break.

Jottings trades flexibility for simplicity. That's a fair trade for some people. Not for others.

If you're torn between the two, ask yourself one question: What's the slowest part of my current blogging workflow? If it's the publishing interface or the pricing, try Jottings. If it's "I wish I could add member-only content" or "I need WooCommerce," you want WordPress.

Both platforms will serve you well. Pick the one that matches your actual needs, not the features you might use someday.

Curious about Jottings? Try the free tier—no credit card needed. Your site is live immediately. If you hit the limitations, WordPress.com is still there.