questions about new plan
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If I opt for a free page and pay for the custom domain, does that work? I thought I read that I would need a paid plan in order to use a custom domain.
Also, what is the cost of adding an email address along with the custom domain? (In addition to the $19 for the custom .org domain).
WP.com: Yes
Correct account: YesThe blog I need help with is: (visible only to moderators and staff)
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Hey there, welcome to the community!
That’s correct: a domain purchased here can show a parked page, or we can redirect it to your free address.
If you want the domain to be the primary name on the site, you’ll want a paid hosting plan. You could choose to install your own DIY copy of WordPress at another host, or use our managed services. The article I linked has a little information, or there’s a lot more here, but in a nutshell our hosting includes management, security, direct WordPress support, SSL, spam filtering, and a bunch of features that don’t come with a free copy of WordPress at other hosts. We’re happy to answer any questions you have on that. And, if you’ve not bought your domain yet, note your domain fees are free for the first year with our annual paid plans; we’d definitely recommend that option!About email, depending on your needs and preferences, we offer everything from free forwarders to Google Workspace. So right now, that would be $0, $35/year, or $72/year… and there are other options as well. This article has more details, or if you want to share what you’re looking for in email we can advise.
I feel like that’s a big info dump, but you’ll probably also have more questions. We’re here to help, so ask away!
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Hi!
Thanks so much for your help. It’s true that my literacy in web hosting is pretty low, so will have several follow-up questions.
What do you mean by “parked page” vs “free address”?
And when you say a custom domain name is free for the first year, would that work for a .org address? Is there anything else I would need to do to secure that domain?
Regarding email, what do you mean by free forwarders? What I’m looking for at this point is one custom email. I would like it to not just auto-forward to my gmail, but rather to have a separate inbox where I can access it. I currently have my work materials (documents on Drive and events on Google calendar) on my personal gmail. Is it possible to seamlessly transfer these over to the Google account associated with the custom email address?
If I use and then cancel a Professional Email account with you all, would I then lose all of that email information and event and documents, unless I backed them up elsewhere?
To decide whether I want to go with WordPress.com or a self-hosted option, I’d love to get a sense of my monthly pricing for a single site and one professional email, per above.
Thanks,
Laura
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Thanks so much for your help. It’s true that my literacy in web hosting is pretty low, so will have several follow-up questions.
Thats OK, nobody expects that you went to college for this stuff! :)
What do you mean by “parked page” vs “free address”?
When you start your site, we assign an address (with “wordpress.com” in it) for free. You can also purchase a domain separately (maybe to claim it now for later use) and if you are not ready to connect it to a site, we show a generic page. We call this the “parked page” since it’s not a site yet, so the domain is parked there for now.
And when you say a custom domain name is free for the first year, would that work for a .org address? Is there anything else I would need to do to secure that domain?
Correct, a domain is normally an added cost (they have separate registration fees that vary based on if it’s a .com, .org, .store, .cafe, .cats, etc.) but if you purchase the yearly version of our plans, they include a domain for free for the first year.
To secure that free domain though you would need to purchase one of our plans, and purchase the yearly option since a domain is not included if you select monthly billing.
Regarding email, what do you mean by free forwarders? What I’m looking for at this point is one custom email. I would like it to not just auto-forward to my gmail, but rather to have a separate inbox where I can access it. I currently have my work materials (documents on Drive and events on Google calendar) on my personal gmail. Is it possible to seamlessly transfer these over to the Google account associated with the custom email address?
Thanks for explaining. In your situation a proper email address (with an inbox, the ability to send and receive, etc.) is exactly what is needed.
Let’s say you did not need to “send” from that address though. You just need a way to see the messages. For that we offer forwarding you can set up for free with your domain. A good example would be that you want to offer a bunch of addresses like:
(email visible only to moderators and staff)(email visible only to moderators and staff)(email visible only to moderators and staff)(email visible only to moderators and staff)
But maybe you just need one of those (
(email visible only to moderators and staff)) and for the others, it’s OK if they all send their messages to that inbox, so you can reply from one place.In that scenario, it makes sense to set up
(email visible only to moderators and staff)as fully functional email address, but set the others to redirect to it. This would be more cost-effective than purchasing 4 emails.If I use and then cancel a Professional Email account with you all, would I then lose all of that email information and event and documents, unless I backed them up elsewhere?
No you would not lose these. To clarify, we offer two levels of email. Our more affordable Professional email (powered by Titan email) and Google Workspace, which is basically gmail but with a custom address.
In either event, if you were to leave WordPress.com and switch to another provider, you can continue your billing with either email provider directly (instead of us) and they will keep on working. :)
To decide whether I want to go with WordPress.com or a self-hosted option, I’d love to get a sense of my monthly pricing for a single site and one professional email, per above.
This will depend on your needs (our plans add more and more features as you level up) but for now let’s assume you are interested in our Personal Plan, which will give you a custom address, turn off the ads we show in free sites, and give you access to private email support.
Picking the yearly option is the best savings, so it would look something like this
- Personal Plan $48/yr
- .com/.org/.net Domain renewal $19/yr but free for the first year
- Professional Email $35/yr ($72/yr if you use Google Workspace email)
- Avg ongoing cost: $8.50/month
Regarding self-hosting your own WordPress site I would like to add that you should be realistic about your tech abilities, because it is a totally DIY way of going about it since there is no in-house support provided for your host. Your provider will help with server-config and domain-config questions, but they will not help with WordPress site questions typically, since it’s just one of many platforms they offer.
We’re a bit different in that WordPress is all we do, so our platform is optimized and we take care of software updates, security, brute force login protection, backups, and also provide support for any site questions you may have. Typically if you self-host you would need to sort those out on your own. It’s not impossible but there is a reason that this version is the choice of web designers and developers.
So self-hosting will have a smaller cost up front in some cases (just your domain and hosting costs) but also some hidden costs that are difficult to quantify since they involve your time and your sanity. :)
Hope that helps. Please let us know if you have any more questions.
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Thanks so much for this information. I will plan to use the Google Workspace route, since I’ll want to use Google Drive and Google Calendar with the new custom email account.
Storage. I see that Google Workspace comes with 30GB of storage. For the 6GB that come with the Personal Plan, can I store files there or is that just referencing to the maximum amount of content that can be posted in draft/public form on the site?
I have a few follow-up questions related to the moment in the future when we decide to stop paying WordPress for custom domain and personal plan and email.
You said “In either event, if you were to leave WordPress.com and switch to another provider, you can continue your billing with either email provider directly (instead of us) and they will keep on working. :)” I am particularly interested in what would happen regarding the following:
- Is it possible to convert a custom domain site back to a free site ending in wordpress.com? If so, what are the steps to complete that conversion?
- Regarding the information stored in the Google Workspace (emails, calendar events, and Drive files), is it possible to downgrade/export from a Business Starter to a free google account so that all the information remains accessible at no monthly cost?
Also, regarding transfer my existing content to the new email account: I also saw mention in one of the posts of a “One-click import of existing emails and contacts” and then saw ” It is currently not possible to transfer your Google Workspace account to be managed by WordPress.com. You will still need to pay Google to keep your Google Workspace account active.” And felt confused. Would it be possible for me to transfer over emails from my personal gmail account to the new custom email account?
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Also, I see that another route would be to purchase the custom domain via Google Workspace and set up my email there. Then I could set up a WordPress account using the custom domain I had purchased. Is that indeed possible? What would be the benefits of instead purchasing the Google Workspace account via WordPress? I understand from what you sent me that it would not be possible to associate the Google Workspace account with my WordPress account if I already created one with the custom domain.
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Storage. I see that Google Workspace comes with 30GB of storage. For the 6GB that come with the Personal Plan, can I store files there or is that just referencing to the maximum amount of content that can be posted in draft/public form on the site?
You can technically add some files your Media library here on WordPress.com, though there are a specific range of file types which are allowed:
https://en.support.wordpress.com/accepted-filetypes/The storage on your site is primarily intended for your site content – meaning both the pages/posts’ text content but also any media you might choose to host on your site. It’s worth noting that if your WordPress.com site is set to public, then the contents of your media library can be indexed by search engines as standard; therefore I would generally not suggest using it as a storage space for private documents.
Is it possible to convert a custom domain site back to a free site ending in wordpress.com? If so, what are the steps to complete that conversion?
Yes, it is! All WordPress.com sites come with a free basic .wordpress.com address; but that’s hidden behind the scenes (so to speak) when you apply a custom domain to your site and set that custom domain as the primary address. Switching your site back to use the free basic address is as simple as reviewing the primary address setting:
https://wordpress.com/support/domains/set-a-primary-address/Regarding the information stored in the Google Workspace (emails, calendar events, and Drive files), is it possible to downgrade/export from a Business Starter to a free google account so that all the information remains accessible at no monthly cost?
That isn’t information we have to hand ourselves unfortunately; it’s specific to Google’s own setup – while we do sell Google Workspace subscriptions, your primary account (and data) management would still be via Google themselves. I had a quick search and was able to find some information regarding exporting data from a Google Workspace account:
- https://support.google.com/a/answer/1041297?hl=en
- https://support.google.com/accounts/answer/3024190?hl=en
I hope that helps, if you do have any other questions let us know!
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Also, I see that another route would be to purchase the custom domain via Google Workspace and set up my email there. Then I could set up a WordPress account using the custom domain I had purchased. Is that indeed possible?
You can do this too! Then you’d be purchasing a plan and simply connecting the domain instead:
https://en.support.wordpress.com/domains/connect-existing-domain/What would be the benefits of instead purchasing the Google Workspace account via WordPress? I understand from what you sent me that it would not be possible to associate the Google Workspace account with my WordPress account if I already created one with the custom domain.
It really depends on your personal preferences as regards where you want to keep your billing!
In terms of using Google Workspace with your WordPress.com site, you could absolutely do so even if you purchase Google Workspace separately. It’s a matter of ensuring that your Google Workspace DNS records (summarised as: settings for your domain to make sure that it, and your email for it, work) are added here on WordPress.com.
What we can’t do is transfer your Google Workspace billing from Google to WordPress.com – but it sounds like that wouldn’t really be something you’d want to do as it is, if you’d be planning to purchase the domain and Google Workspace subscription directly!
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Hi! thanks for all this. I have one follow-up question regarding the email. I believe I’m not going to move forward with the Google Workspace option, since I don’t expect it to be easy to continue having access to the Google data in an easily accessible way past the point in time when we stop paying for the account.
Can you share more about the free custom email forwarding option? I’m considering just managing the emails in my current inbox.
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Hello there,
Glad to see the information has been useful!
Can you share more about the free custom email forwarding option? I’m considering just managing the emails in my current inbox.
Email forwarding is when an email address is created using DNS records, which forwards mail to an inbox of your choice.
So for example, if your email address is (email visible only to moderators and staff), and you have the domain example.com, you can set up (email visible only to moderators and staff) with emails being sent to (email visible only to moderators and staff) will arrive to (email visible only to moderators and staff).
Replies, to these emails would be sent from (email visible only to moderators and staff).
It can be set up as per these steps here: https://wordpress.com/support/add-email/email-forwarding/#set-up-email-forwarding
I hope this helps.
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Hi! thanks for all this. Can you share more about the free custom email forwarding option? I’m now considering just managing the emails in my current inbox.
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Sorry for that duplicate post!
Is the email forwarding option for a custom address a separate cost or would that be included if I just pursue the two costs, below?
- Personal Plan $48/yr
- .com/.org/.net Domain renewal $19/yr but free for the first year
Also, I wasn’t able to view the email addresses included in your message. If I’m forwarding from a custom address to my personal address, are you saying that my replies would be sent from my custom or personal email address? Would I be able to send outbound emails from the custom address?
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Hello there,
Is the email forwarding option for a custom address a separate cost or would that be included if I just pursue the two costs, below?
There is no additional cost for email forwarding with a custom domain.
Also, I wasn’t able to view the email addresses included in your message. If I’m forwarding from a custom address to my personal address, are you saying that my replies would be sent from my custom or personal email address?
Of course!
So for example, if your email address is jane.doe123 [at] yahoo.com, and you have the domain example.com, you can set up janed[at]example.com with emails being sent to jsmith [at] example.com will arrive to jane.doe123 [at] yahoo.com.
Would I be able to send outbound emails from the custom address?
No, so to be able to send emails from the custom address, you would need emailing hosting – this is because there would need to be a facility in place to store and process emails sending.
Email forwarding, is one way in that regard, but there’s nothing being hosted as such.
I hope this is useful also.
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Ah I understand. If I was to create a custom email, I would want to use it to send and receive. This leads me to consider the Titan email option. Do you know how they handle account cancelation? Is there a way to maintain access to past email messages even after stopping paying for the custom domain and their service? I suppose this would be possible if I was using an app like “Apple Mail” to have emails loaded onto my laptop.
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I found this article in Titan’s support area that helps us: https://support.titan.email/hc/en-us/articles/900005165723-What-happens-to-email-data-if-Titan-order-is-not-renewed-
In short, the Titan account would be suspended if not renewed, but you would still have access to your Email control panel to renew your order, and your email data would be available for 30 days.
If you decided at some point not to renew with Titan, you could do exactly what you suggested by setting up Apple Mail and backing up your email. Here’s an article for that very thing (see the Apple Mail tab to the right of Thunderbird): https://support.titan.email/hc/en-us/articles/900001732203-How-to-take-a-backup-of-my-emails-
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