Confused about buying a plan and an external domain!

  • Unknown's avatar
    cpanay1 · Member ·

    I want to buy an external name from e.g Google or Namecheap

    1 ) Do I have to buy a plan on wordpress 1st, then purchase an external domain 2nd?? Or does it not matter

    2) If I choose a wordpress plan, is it going to offer me a domain (in which case there will be 2) or do I select “use a domain I own” ??

    3) Will a personal plan suffice or does it have to be premium ?

    Under “Domain Connection Overview“: it states “This feature is available on sites with our WordPress.com Premium, Business, and eCommerce plans.”.

    Hoping to get this sorted today

    Thanks

    The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)

  • Unknown's avatar
    staartmees · Member ·

    The answer is very simple: when you buy a paid wordpress.com plan you get a custom domain free for the first year.

  • Unknown's avatar
    cpanay1 · Member ·

    I ask as it’s £7.99 on Namecheap and £10 on Google domains…
    WP has it yearly for £16…+ the silly plan!
    And as I said, the website says you need a premium/business plan to add domains…!

  • Unknown's avatar
    Accepted answer
    justjennifer · Member ·

    Hi there, I’ve had a look at the Domain Connection Overview you linked to and I do not see where it says “This feature is available on sites with our WordPress.com Premium, Business, and eCommerce plans.”. Can you please let us know where you are seeing that?

    This is a screenshot of what I see at https://wordpress.com/support/domains/connect-existing-domain/#domain-connection-overview Note the last line.

    So, yes, you can purchase your domain elsewhere and then map it to your existing WordPress.com website when you upgrade your site from free to any paid WordPress.com plan. You’ll then need to renew both your domain registration at your domain registrar and your WordPress.com upgrade plan going forward.

    The instructions for how to connect your Namecheap domain are in that same support guide.

    Hope that helps, but if you have other questions, please post back here.

  • Unknown's avatar
    cpanay1 · Member ·

    @justjennifer , kindly see here:

  • Unknown's avatar
    justjennifer · Member ·

    Thank you for sharing that screenshot! I’m flagging Staff to have a look here to clarify due to the confusion the addition of the ad for the higher plan causes.

    Regardless, if you look just above that in your screenshot, you’ll see that it says:

    The domain connection feature (also known as “mapping”) is free with any paid WordPress.com plan.

    And IMO “any” includes the Personal or Premium plan. If you want to wait for a definitive reply from Staff, you’ll need to wait for them to look in and reply here. Being the weekend, it may take a bit longer, but thank you for not opening new threads about this. :)

  • Unknown's avatar
    cpanay1 · Member ·

    @justjennifer thanks for your confirmation.
    Yes I saw that it mentioned just above that it’s possible with any paid plan, but it just confused me very much!

  • staff-mckluskey · Staff ·

    Hi there, and sorry for the confusion!

    The info in the ad is definitely not accurate, we’ll take a look what happened here.

  • Unknown's avatar
    cpanay1 · Member ·

    np

    I managed to buy a personal plan, then buy my domain from namespace and managed to get everything setup.
    It’s all working. Case is closed for my queries

  • Unknown's avatar
    cpanay1 · Member ·

    sorry, namecheap! (not namespace)

  • Unknown's avatar
    justjennifer · Member ·

    I managed to buy a personal plan, then buy my domain from namespace and managed to get everything setup.
    It’s all working. Case is closed for my queries

    Glad to hear!

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