Is a WordPress Business Plan a Bad Idea?

On By Sean D. LaytonIn Uncategorized

Is a WordPress Business plan a bad idea? If you asked me today, I’d say yes. But I’m highly annoyed at the moment and in “burn it all to the ground!” mode.

So, heads up, I’ll be bitching a bit in this post.

Okay, so, this is what happened. It all started when I posted a free-verse poem yesterday. A poet and writer I follow, Basilike Pappa over at Silent Hour, liked it and asked why I didn’t have a reblog button so she could promote it. Good question! Must be a setting I needed to change. But I couldn’t find anything. I found a WordPress support page with solutions and a handy video with steps to follow to get reblogging working, so I went to follow it — except on my Settings page, the Reblog tick box was missing. Huh. Weird.

So I contacted Support through text chat figuring they could help me.

Well, they couldn’t.

Here’s why. WordPress.com plans come in six flavors: Free, Blogger, Personal, Premium, Business, and eCommerce. I originally got the Premium because it wasn’t too expensive and allowed more freedom with the look of my blog and extra functionality. But then I upgraded to Business — it gave me unlimited storage for media, I could use nifty plugins and more themes, etc. It’s not exactly cheap. However, I decided to go for it — I’m enjoying blogging so why not? Plus, I could tie it to freelancing (I originally had a separate freelance site that’s now in hibernation, so I was planning to piggyback it on the Land Manatee site).

Here’s the one way the WordPress Business plan sucks

After chatting to a WordPress support person, I discovered that for me, the Business Plan sucks in one crucial way. It seems WordPress uses Jetpack for security and various other services and the Jetpack developers didn’t make it possible to reblog on Business accounts or can’t figure it out, I’m not sure. I’m not a technologist — I just know it’s not an option on my posts. Once you go Business, they consider your site a custom site, which gives Jetpack a hernia, so people can’t reblog your material. Seriously? Here I am paying for improved functionality and marketability, yet I am missing one of the most basic and fundamental ways of building up an audience. Talk about a momentum killer. It’s mind-boggling. The agent agreed and put in a ticket — stay tuned, we’ll see how that works out.

Apparently, it’s a known problem and there’s an open development issue for it. By the way, even though I was highly annoyed, I wasn’t mean to the Support person because I’ve worked with the public. When you’re the face of the company, angry people feel entitled to heap abuse on you, even if you’re not responsible and can’t do anything. I don’t want to be that guy.

Then it suddenly came back to me: I was pretty sure I’d had a similar conversation a while back. So I checked through the chat history and yep — I’d contacted Support back in early 2018 about the missing Reblog button. It was annoying, but at the time, my blog was new so didn’t have a lot of traffic, so no one was reblogging my stuff. I even rediscovered a post I’d started writing about it that I didn’t finish. Over time, I forgot about the issue. Here is part of my original post:

Okay, so now that I have your attention, you’re asking yourself why is upgrading WordPress a bad idea? Doesn’t it give you extra functionality? Yes, it does — at a cost in basic features.

(blah blah blah boring stuff)

So, once you upgrade to Business, your primary account doesn’t really count as your primary account when it comes to Reblogging.

The good news? Tech support told me they’ve put in a request to Jetpack to have this worked on, so hopefully, it gets sorted out.

Yeah, well newsflash, it didn’t. I guess the Jetpack guys have been busy. I started this unfinished post on March 20, 2018 — and it’s now May 9, 2019. Fourteen months ago! Guess that’s one tough nut for the JetPack developers to crack — either that or they and WordPress don’t give a rat’s ass and Support is just giving me lip service.

So now I’m at the point where I’m getting consistent visitors and a fair amount of random traffic. It would be nice if someone who likes my stuff and wants to share it with their followers could actually do it.

One solution is I can downgrade to Premium. It would save me money, and I think it will let me have a Reblog button, but apparently, it’s a bit of a hassle and WordPress’s support staff has to do it. I’ll lose all my plug-ins and some features. Not sure what I’ll do.

You know what would be the easiest solution for me?

Fix your reblog button, WordPress!

*If Jetpack ever solves this, I’ll update my post.

P.S. I don’t have the beard now — too lazy to take another photo

P.P.S That’s me holding my breath in exasperation, not trying to look constipated or chubby.

35 thoughts on “Is a WordPress Business Plan a Bad Idea?”

  1. I don’t think the business plan is a good idea; it’s worth it when you have hundreds and thousands of followers, which is, from my humble experience, impossible. I had the Free one for a long time, then upgraded to the Premium coz I needed to upload some videos. Other than that, I would have stayed with the free one. I think I’ll go back to it actually once I’m done with the posts that require videos.
    I don’t recall what I did about the reblog button, to tell the truth. Try the forums, or just ask around. They are many technical guys around.

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    1. Sean D. Layton

      Yeah, I tend to use photos and didn’t want to have storage space issues and like the plug-ins. But I’m seriously thinking about downgrading.

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      2. Sean D. Layton

        I did get it so I could mess around with the analytics plug in and SEO. That ties into my day job (kind of). And to downgrade Support has to work on my site. Very unappealing. But I might bite the bullet and do it.

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  2. I’m not sure why but I’m signed up to the Amazon affiliates program and WP will only allow / accept the links with the pictures advertising Amazon if I have the business plan. I currently have the premium one.

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      2. Sean D. Layton

        I still have Business. One reason was the increases SEO and analytics, which I actually wanted more practice with because it does play into my day job in marketing (I’m a copywriter at an agency). The other reason is that to downgrade to Premium, Support has to take care of it so it doesn’t jack your site up because each Business plan site is considered a custom site.

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      3. Oh got it! Ok! Yes, since I don’t have any technical computer knowledge, having Premium and the help of support has been great. I’ve only used them a handful of times, but they’re good!

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    1. Sean D. Layton

      It is very frustrating. Particularly since it’s dependent on them to solve it. Obviously, it’s not a priority so must not be that many people complaining – unless the nature of the two systems, WordPress and Jetpack, makes it impossible to adapt.

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    1. Sean D. Layton

      You’re welcome! I’ve thought about hiring one of my developer buddies to build me a custom site and self hosting it but my coding skills are minimal, so worry about if I need to make some sort of change.

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      1. I think the drawback in self hosting is you cannot export your exisiting follower to your self hosted site. But its worth considering since you’ll have full control over your site.

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  7. I’ve been toying with the idea of upgrading for a while. It seemed that if I wanted to let people know that I was serious about blogging, I should upgrade. I do want plugins. I do want to be able to do more. Unfortunately, when I did upgrade, I noticed that some of the basic functions were removed, and so I went right back to my free account. In order to install plugins I had to get a free domain? Why? I wanted to keep the one I had. I’ve heard enough horror stories of content/ comments lost, etc.

    I hope you figure it out.

    P.S. Milly sent me here.

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    1. Sean D. Layton

      Thanks, me too! I’ve thought about going to Premiums, which is still a couple of rungs up from free, but you still don’t get plugins — you have to go all the way to Business for that (which is where I’m at). I’ve thought about hiring one of my friends to design me a site that I can use with WordPress.org (open source WordPress) and then host it myself — but that still seems a bit daunting to me. I’m very much the ‘I’ll pay you to make it easier for me’ kind of person (within reason!).

      Milly is awesome. And thanks for stopping by!

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      1. Yes, she is.

        Daunting is the right word. I’m starting to think that .org would suit me better, too, but putting all the work into transferring things deters me from doing it. Again, I’ve heard horror stories. Plus, it’s more difficult for .com users to connect with your blog, and some people end up dropping you, which I don’t think it’s desirable. In the end, there will always be pros and cons, but at this point in time, I do not have the time and patience to prepare for all the negative possibilities, so I stay where I am.

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      2. Sean D. Layton

        You make good points. Mr. A pointed out in another comment that your followers don’t transfer, so that’s definitely a hassle and something to consider.

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  8. I am so glad you posted this. I am running out of storage too but I don’t need the business plan for a food blog! So if I start deleting pictures in storage I am pretty sure it will delete the pictures from my posts! I too don’t know what to do!

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    1. Sean D. Layton

      Yep, it will delete the images in your post. They do have various tiers of plans with more storage available. The plan below mine is premium. Is that what you have?

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    2. You can sign up for free image hosting outside, and just put the images hosted there on your posts.

      It may need you to learn more, but it’s worth the time. I used imgur.com

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  10. Pingback: Is a WordPress Business Plan a Bad Idea? — Tales from the Land Manatee – Affiliateclub

  11. Wondering if there’s any update on this? I am a technologist and I still feel it doesn’t make sense to take a way that “Reblog” button for people who paid more.

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