Promti or WordPress: one finished page in 3D, or software for any site
WordPress comes in two forms, and this page keeps them apart. WordPress.com is a hosted service run by Automattic: you choose a plan, from free to Commerce, and it runs the site for you. Self-hosted WordPress is the free software from WordPress.org, which you install on hosting you pay for yourself; its own site puts it behind more than 43% of the web.
Promti sells something much narrower: one page, designed around a 3D scene for one kind of business. A wizard puts your words and pictures into it, you pay once, and you take away plain HTML, CSS and JS for any host.
The real difference: WordPress can become almost any site — pages, a blog, a shop — as long as someone builds it and looks after it. A Promti page arrives finished and asks for little looking after, but it won’t grow into much more than it is.
Side by side
| — | Promti | WordPress |
|---|---|---|
| How you pay | €500, the one time. No subscription and no renewal with Promti. | WordPress.com: Personal €4, Premium €8, Business €25 and Commerce €45 a month on a 12-month plan, or €9, €18, €40 and €70 month to month, VAT not included. Self-hosted: the software is free, and you pay a host. |
| The free option | Making the site in the wizard costs nothing; the download is what you pay for. | WordPress.com’s free plan shows its ads and uses a .wordpress.com address. Self-hosted WordPress is free to download, but it still needs paid hosting to go online. |
| What you get | The kit’s page, already designed, with your words, colours and links, and your pictures, screenshots or model in the kits that take them. | A content manager: pages, posts, media, users and themes, plus plugins on WordPress.com’s paid plans or any self-hosted site. WordPress.org lists over 73,000 free plugins and 15,000 free themes. |
| Hosting and domain | Any host that serves files; the guide sets it up on Cloudflare Pages’ free plan. The domain, about €10–15 a year, is the running cost. | WordPress.com hosts the site and adds a free domain for the first year on annual plans. Self-hosted needs a host with PHP 8.3, MySQL 8.0 or MariaDB 10.11 and HTTPS, as wordpress.org recommends. |
| Pages and blog | One page, plus the legal page and a 404 page. No posts. | Unlimited pages and posts on every WordPress.com plan; publishing articles is what WordPress is best known for. |
| Selling | Buttons rather than a shop: Product sells one item and App up to four plans, each through a Stripe payment link; Forest and Studio link to your bookings. | WooCommerce, free software, turns WordPress into a shop. On WordPress.com it comes with Commerce; standard payments on the other plans carry a WordPress.com fee of 2% to 10%, plus processing. |
| Motion and 3D | Built on a real-time 3D scene, written in three.js for the kit and carried by the scroll. | None of WordPress’s core blocks is for 3D: it comes through plugins, such as the 3D viewers in its directory, or a Custom HTML block. On WordPress.com, scripts in that block need a paid plan with a plugin installed. |
| Upkeep | Nothing runs on a server, so there’s no core, theme or plugin to update for the site to keep working. | WordPress.com handles it. Self-hosted, it’s yours: WordPress’s security handbook calls keeping WordPress, its plugins and its themes up to date the most important thing to do. |
| The files | Everything in one zip from the start: pages, code, your pictures, the typefaces. | WordPress.com exports posts, pages and comments as an XML file; a full backup, to move the whole site elsewhere, needs Business or Commerce. Self-hosted, every file is already on your server. |
| When you stop paying | Nothing stops, because nothing is billed after the purchase. | A WordPress.com site reverts to a free one: ads return, the address goes back to .wordpress.com, and a site that used plugins returns to how it was before them and goes private for review. Self-hosted, the site goes when the hosting does. |
| Languages | The site is in English or Spanish, whichever you choose in the wizard. | Not built in. WordPress.com suggests one site per language, each with its own plan, or a plugin such as Polylang; self-hosted, the same plugins. |
| Help | Guides for each thing to connect, and a 30-minute call with Eric. | WordPress.com’s paid plans get its support team, around the clock from Personal up; free plans, the forums and guides; there’s no phone line. Self-hosted, your host and WordPress.org’s documentation. |
Promti fits when…
- You want one page that makes its impression in 3D, not a site to run.
- You’d rather not choose plugins, install updates or keep backups for a single page.
- Paying once appeals more than a plan, or a hosting bill, that keeps renewing.
- Everything you offer fits one page — a single product, a single place, an app, a portfolio — with one thing to click.
- You want to read your own text on the finished page, on a phone and on a computer, before you pay.
WordPress fits when…
- You’ll publish often — articles, news, recipes, cases: that’s what WordPress was built for.
- You need many pages, or a shop with a catalogue, a cart and stock: WooCommerce and the plugin directory cover what a kit doesn’t.
- You want to own the software and the data, on hosting you choose, with full access to the code.
- The site has to be in two or more languages, with a plugin such as Polylang.
- Several people will write and edit, each with their own account and role.
What each costs
Promti: €500, once. With Cloudflare’s free plan, hosting is €0 and only the domain renews, at roughly €10–15 a year: €500 plus a domain in year one, €500 plus about €30–45 of domain over three years.
WordPress.com, in euros before VAT, as its Spanish page shows them: Personal is €4 a month on a 12-month plan, €48 a year and €144 over three years — or €99 for three years paid as a 36-month plan at €2.75 a month. Business, which adds automated backups and a full-site download, is €25 a month on a yearly plan: €300 a year, €900 over three. Annual plans include the domain’s first year; after that it renews at the standard price.
Self-hosted WordPress costs nothing itself; the bill is the hosting, plus any premium theme or plugin. Hostinger, one of the three hosts WordPress.org lists, charges €2.59 a month for its Premium plan on a 48-month term — €124.32 upfront, before VAT — renewing at €9.99 a month. On price alone, both forms of WordPress are cheaper than a kit over three years; what they don’t include is the finished 3D page, or the time it takes to build one.
Questions
- Is WordPress.com the same as WordPress.org?
- No. WordPress.org gives away the software, under the GPL, for you to install on your own hosting. WordPress.com is a company’s hosted service built on that software, with its own plans and limits — plugins, for example, need a paid plan. WordPress.com says a site can be moved to or from it, wherever it’s hosted.
- Can I build a 3D page like a kit’s in WordPress?
- In principle, yes: a plugin or a Custom HTML block can bring a 3D scene into a page. The scene itself — the model, the light, the scroll, a version for phones, keeping it fast — would still have to be made, which is the work how a 3D website is made goes through. A kit comes with that part done.
- Do I have to update a Promti site the way I update WordPress?
- No. A Promti site is a folder of static files: nothing runs on the server, so there’s no core, theme or plugin that needs updating for it to keep working. Self-hosted WordPress is different, and WordPress’s own security handbook puts updates first.
- Which is cheaper?
- WordPress, by a clear margin at the entry level: WordPress.com Personal is €99 for three years on a 36-month plan, before VAT, and self-hosting can cost less than that. A kit costs €500 because the page is designed and built already; with WordPress, the page is up to you.
- Can I take my content with me?
- From WordPress.com, yes: an XML export on any plan carries posts, pages and comments, and Business and Commerce can download a full backup to move the site to another host. With Promti there’s nothing to take out: the zip you download is the site.