[EDIT 11/10/2022]Wordpress have since reverted this decision. It was still a bad move and they could do it again in the future so upped from 1* to 3*.[/EDIT]Once a big WordPress.com advocate, now recommend you shop around.I built my name on WordPress.com and have enjoyed their fairly hands off management approach but a recent plan change has shocked me enough to go from a solid 4/5 stars to just 1.For those who don't know, their used to be many teirs for all kinds of people. I often used premium as it was all I needed at $90 per year billed every two years. ($180)Recently I opened a new site to run another personal project and was face with one plan. The new Pro Plan. This offers basically everything from all plans previously (plus some of the old free features sneakily) for a handy cost of $180... Not bad. And so I took it. Same cost with a no hassle one stop plan.While checking renewal dates on my older site I was faced with a popup for switching to the pro plan by contacting support. I was so impressed with my second site I thought, why not. I contacted support and the response was swift as always (I love WordPress.com support, they are friendly and quick). But in that response the support person said that there was $135 left on my account so they will do 1 year.Thinking that this cannot be right I checked the second site. And right enough, in the slightly off gray colour under the price for the new Pro Plan was the point "billed annually".So what I thought was the same price for the only plan now available was actually double my original cost and done in a shady way. All historic plans have been billed ever two years and so there is only one reason for WordPress.com to do this, and that is to practically scam users that do not notice, like me.There are competitors that offer exactly the same service for less than 1/3 the cost. The reason I've stuck with WordPress.com is their hands off approach but that won't keep me much longer if they don't think again about this shoddy price increase.[edit]I have been in touch with support and they were boastful that WordPress.com think the price increase is the right direction. It has become clear that WordPress.com have decided to go down the money grabbing route. So even though I have a legacy plan those who are new will get screwed over on the new plan. I think people deserve to know this clearly before deciding to use WordPress.com when competitors offer prices less than 1/4 of what you offer.
