It’s true.
WordPress.com now offers the ability to add third-party themes and plugins. But only for customers on their Business Plan.
If you are already running on WordPress.com or considering the move, then upgrading to their Business Plan makes the platform more like a true WordPress Managed Hosting company. Except without any access to FTP.
There is another caveat aside from the plan you need to use. WordPress.com uses a custom backend design, currently code named Calypso. It’s a beautiful interface, which is extremely fast. But all the third-party themes and plugins you can install do not show in the interface.
That means you will need to load the normal WordPress backend (which is totally possible) in order to customize those themes and plugins.
We are happy to share that we’ve gone through and tested our themes over at WordPress.com . And they work!
That’s our good news for today.
Collins Agbonghama
22 Jan 2018On hearing the news wp.com now offer a plan that allows installing any plugin, I immediately decided I will move all my sites there to leverage their solid and fast hosting infrastructure. Sadly, the no FTP access was a bummer.
I am hoping they will fix this ‘cos I still have the ambition to move to them.
Scott Wyden Kivowitz
23 Jan 2018We don’t see Automattic adding FTP to WordPress.com (except for the higher VIP plans)