Last updated: September 6, 2026. Some links on this page are affiliate links — if you sign up through one, we may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. It never changes what we recommend. See our Affiliate Disclosure.
How we know: we tested Systeme.io hands-on in our own free-plan account. Everything here about WordPress.com comes from its published pricing page and documentation, checked on the date shown — we have not run a WordPress.com account ourselves, and we would rather say so than imply otherwise.
Our verdict
WordPress is cheaper than almost everyone tells you, and more expensive than the invoice says. The page you are reading runs on self-hosted WordPress and cost us the equivalent of about $34 in its first year. Next year the same setup costs about $120, because the introductory rates end — and it still cannot send an email sequence, run a checkout, or host a course without more parts. Systeme.io does all three at $0. If you want a publication, WordPress. If you want a funnel, you are on the wrong page of the wrong tool.
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Most “Systeme.io vs WordPress” articles are written by people who run neither. We are going to do something narrower and more useful: this site runs on WordPress, and we are going to show you the bill. Not an estimate, not a “typical setup” — the actual configuration serving this page, the actual renewal prices, and the actual list of what is installed. Then we will compare that against what Systeme.io costs to do a different job.
One clarification first, because it causes more confusion than any pricing table: “WordPress” is two different products. WordPress.org is free open-source software you install on hosting you rent. WordPress.com is a hosted service that sells plans. This article is mostly about the first one, because that is what we run, but the second one is covered further down — it is the one most people actually end up comparing against.
What this site actually costs
Verified against our own billing page and the site’s own admin on September 6, 2026. We pay in Japanese yen; the dollar figures are converted at 156.25 JPY to the dollar, the European Central Bank reference rate for September 4, 2026, and are there for scale rather than as a quote.
| Line item | First year | On renewal |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting (Hostinger Premium) | ¥5,268 (≈$34) | ¥15,588 (≈$100) |
| .com domain | ¥0 (included) | ¥3,129 (≈$20) |
| Theme (GeneratePress 3.6.1) | ¥0 (free version) | ¥0 |
| Business email | ¥0 (included tier) | ¥0 |
| Plugins | ¥0 | ¥0 |
| Total | ¥5,268 (≈$34) | ¥18,717 (≈$120) |
Year one is $34. Year two is $120. That 3.5x jump is not a Hostinger quirk — it is how nearly all shared hosting is priced, and it is the single most common thing missing from articles that tell you WordPress is nearly free. The introductory rate buys the first term; the renewal is the real price. If you are budgeting for WordPress, budget the second number.
For comparison, over those same two years: Systeme.io’s free plan costs $0 and its Startup plan costs $17/mo, or $204 a year.
And here is what is actually installed
WordPress 7.1 on PHP 8.3.33, GeneratePress 3.6.1 free version, and two active third-party plugins: the Hostinger control panel plugin and LiteSpeed Cache. That’s it. Everything else that makes this site behave differently from a default install — the design system, the affiliate click-tracking redirects, the social preview images, the related-guides block, the structured data, a sitemap fix, the sticky call-to-action bar, the auto-generated freshness table on our changelog, and a search-console verification file — is nine plugins we wrote ourselves, totalling a few hundred lines of PHP.
We are showing you that not to boast about it but because it is the whole argument. WordPress’s low price is real, and it is real precisely to the extent that you are willing to be the person who writes those nine files. If you are not, the honest cost of WordPress is the free hosting price plus the plugins you buy to avoid writing them — a forms plugin, an SEO plugin, a page builder, a caching plugin, an email integration — and that stack routinely runs $200–$500 a year before anyone has sold anything. At that point Systeme.io’s $204 is not the expensive option in the room.
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WordPress.com, if that’s the one you meant
If you are comparing against the hosted service rather than the software, the numbers change shape. WordPress.com’s plans, billed annually as listed on its pricing page on September 6, 2026:
| Plan | Price | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | WordPress.com subdomain, 1 GB storage, ads shown, no plugins |
| Personal | $4/mo | Custom domain for 1 year; no ecommerce |
| Premium | $8/mo | Full theme library; payment buttons only |
| Business | $25/mo | Payments, but no store extensions |
| Commerce | $45/mo | Full WooCommerce, 0% transaction fees |
Note where selling actually starts. The free plan cannot install plugins at all, which on WordPress means it cannot do most of what people install WordPress for. To run a genuine store you are at Commerce, $45/mo — more than two and a half times Systeme.io’s Startup plan, and about half its top tier. Self-hosting is dramatically cheaper than this; that price buys you not having to be your own sysadmin.
Where the money actually goes
What WordPress has that Systeme.io does not
- You own it. The database, the files, the content, the URLs. You can move hosts, export everything, or keep the site running for a decade with no vendor’s permission. Nothing on this list matters until the day it is the only thing that matters.
- Content at any scale. Categories, taxonomies, archives, custom post types, and an editorial workflow. Systeme.io’s blog is functional; it is not a publication.
- Total control of the output. If you can write PHP, no feature is gated. That is how the nine plugins above exist and why they cost $0.
- An ecosystem for everything else — WooCommerce for products, LearnDash for courses, and roughly 60,000 plugins in between, most of them free to start.
What Systeme.io has that WordPress does not
- Everything already connected. Funnel, checkout, email list, course, and affiliate program in one account, with no integration to configure and nothing that can break because two plugins disagreed after an update.
- Email sending included, unlimited, on every tier. On WordPress, sending is somebody else’s subscription — and that subscription is usually priced per contact.
- Nobody to be at 3am. No updates, no PHP version upgrades, no backups you have to remember, no security patching. On WordPress all of that is your job, and it is the cost that never appears on the invoice above.
- A working checkout in an afternoon, at $0. Getting WordPress from empty to accepting payments is a project. Getting Systeme.io there is a form.
Three questions that actually decide it
- Are you publishing, or selling? If the plan is dozens or hundreds of pages that need to rank, WordPress, and it isn’t close — this site is the proof. If the plan is one offer and a list, WordPress is a large amount of machinery around a single button.
- Are you willing to be the maintainer? Be honest. WordPress’s cost advantage is real and it is paid for in evenings. If nobody in your business will do updates and backups, you have not chosen the cheap option, you have chosen a slow-motion problem.
- What happens after the sale? If the answer is a receipt, WordPress plus a payment plugin is fine. If the answer is a sequence, an upsell, a course login, and a follow-up in six weeks, you are describing four more subscriptions on WordPress and one account on Systeme.io.
And the answer nobody sells you, because there’s no commission in it: run both. That is what we do. This site is WordPress because it is a publication. The funnels and the list are not, because they are not.
Frequently asked questions
Is WordPress cheaper than Systeme.io?
On the invoice, usually yes. This site’s self-hosted WordPress costs about $120 a year on renewal, against $204 a year for Systeme.io’s Startup plan — and Systeme.io’s free plan costs nothing at all. But the WordPress figure only holds if you write or avoid the plugins yourself. A typical bought stack — page builder, forms, SEO, caching, email integration — runs $200–$500 a year and closes the gap entirely.
Why does WordPress hosting get more expensive after the first year?
Because the advertised price is an introductory rate for the first term only. Our hosting went from ¥5,268 to ¥15,588 on renewal, and the domain from free to ¥3,129 — roughly $34 to $120 a year in total. This applies to nearly all shared hosting, not one provider. Budget the renewal price, not the sticker.
What is the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org?
WordPress.org is free software you install on hosting you rent — total control, and total responsibility for updates, backups, and security. WordPress.com is a hosted service that runs it for you and sells plans from $0 to $45/mo. The free WordPress.com plan cannot install plugins, which removes most of the reason to use WordPress in the first place.
Can WordPress do sales funnels?
Yes, with parts. A page builder for the pages, WooCommerce or a payments plugin for the checkout, an email service for the sequences, and something to connect them. It works, and plenty of businesses run exactly that. What you are choosing is whether the integration is your problem or the vendor’s — and how many separate dashboards you check when a checkout stops working.
Can I use WordPress and Systeme.io together?
Yes, and it is what we do. The site, the blog, and everything meant to rank in search stay on WordPress; funnels, the email list, and course delivery sit on Systeme.io, linked from the site. Since Systeme.io’s free plan is permanent, the second half of that setup costs nothing until it has earned an upgrade.
I’ve been building and maintaining websites for about ten years. The first one is still online a decade later, and I still fix it when something breaks — which is how I learned that the interesting part of any platform is not the launch, it’s year three. I co-owned that site’s business, though I am not a co-owner today; the business itself has since closed. Separately, I have also run an online store on Shopify, until the fees pushed me onto a different payment system. Today I choose the host, the theme and write the plugins that run this site, and I pay for the tools I test out of my own pocket. More on the About page, and exactly what we did and did not test in how we test.
This site’s hosting, domain, theme, and plugin configuration verified against our own billing page and WordPress admin on September 6, 2026. WordPress.com and Systeme.io prices verified against their public pricing pages the same day. Vendors change pricing without notice — check before you buy, and tell us if you find something out of date.
Currency converted at 156.25 JPY/USD, the European Central Bank reference rate for September 4, 2026.
Try it yourself: Systeme.io’s free plan is permanent, not a trial — 3 funnels, 2,000 contacts, unlimited emails, a custom domain, and 0% transaction fees. Start on the free plan and find out in a weekend whether it covers what you need. (Affiliate link — see our disclosure.)