I’m a cheapskate — I’ll admit — I hate paying for grabs and although I love my blog to death, I won’t ever spend so much money on it to the point where I feel uncomfortable forking out hundreds for something so intangible. Unfortunately, this post is going to be relevant to my fellow Malaysian bloggers only as self-hosted WordPress costs differently depending on which hosting company you go for and which country you’re living in.
It’s better to go for hosting company which main currency is your country’s currency, for example, as I’m living in Malaysia, it’s better for me to use a hosting company based in Malaysia since my blog will be hosted in Malaysia too.
Many of you confuse WordPress.com and WordPress.org and to be honest, I do not blame you. Self-hosted WordPress is WordPress.org and WordPress.com in my opinion is just expensive Blogger.com and the limitation is baffling. You cannot purchase cute themes from Etsy for your WordPress.com and you’re only limited to their own theme shop.
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Hosting
For self-hosted WordPress, you will need to purchase a hosting. It usually comes with free domain depending on your hosting companies. I recommend going with the cheapest plan first as you can upgrade your plan if you feel like it’s not sufficing for your blog. Now, if you need someone to migrate your blog for you, then you will have to spend more money hiring someone to do it. If you think you can do it yourself, there are tons of tutorials online on how to migrate your blog to WordPress like I did right here. It may look daunting at first but I swear it’s not hard at all. What you’ll need is a laptop, wifi, and a cup of coffee to get you through.
Themes
Hosting aside, let’s talk about themes! One of the perks of using self-hosted WordPress is the functionality that comes with the themes. I know that not everyone has the mean to buy themes as they are costly but there’s no point in going self-hosted if you’re using a basic free theme that doesn’t come with much functionality. It’s okay if you use the free ones if you have just migrated but in the long run, investing in a really good theme is unavoidable. Pipdig is definitely a cult favourite among bloggers and I’m probably the 835372th blog you visited that use a theme from them but I swear their theme is so worth it!
Cost breakdown
I purchased my hosting plan from Netkl.com for RM60 per year which is the cheapest plan they offer. You can go for myGold X if you would like more storage and bandwidth. That will run you RM100 per year. So far I don’t need a more expensive plan and I have a long way to go before I run out of storage.
For theme, I was lucky enough to purchase a theme from Kotryna Bass Design at half price during their Black Friday sale last year. Their WordPress themes cost USD49 and I got mine for USD24.50. I still have the theme if I feel like using it again but for now, I really love my current theme because it’s beautiful. You can also find cute themes at Etsy for RM80-120. There are a lot to choose from.[/right]
HOSTING = RM60 (ANNUALLY)
THEME = RM105 (USD24.5) (ONE-TIME PURCHASE)
TOTAL= RM165 (USD39)
I would say you need around RM200 to go self-hosted. Mine was a lot lesser than that because I got the theme at a bargain but if I were to pay full price, I would have to pay around RM270 for the total cost. Yikes! If you wanted to migrate first and buy a theme later, go ahead and do it. It’s entirely up to you. I did a post on plugins and free WordPress themes here if you would like to check it out.
