Wordpress Host
When comparing the WordPress.com Business plan and Elementor’s Business hosting plan, both priced around £240 per year, we need to evaluate their features, flexibility, and suitability for our specific needs.
WordPress.com Business Plan (£240/year):
• Hosting and Storage: Provides managed WordPress hosting with 50 GB of storage. 
• Customisation: Allows installation of custom themes and plugins, granting flexibility in site design and functionality.
• Support and Analytics: Includes 24/7 expert support (which is VERY GOOD AND ACTIVELY ENGAGES TO DO THINGS) and integration with Google Analytics for detailed site performance tracking. 
• Additional Features: Offers a free domain for one year (WE DON'T NEED THIS) , removal of WordPress.com ads , and access to (SOME BUT NOT ALL) premium themes. Elementor Business Hosting Plan (£239.88/year):
• Hosting and Storage: Offers managed WordPress hosting (THIS IS GOOD AS IT MEANS WE DO NOT HAVE TO DO THIS WHICH IS MAIN REASON FOR USING WORDPRESS DIRECTLY) on Google Cloud infrastructure with 20 GB of storage (SO THIS IS 30GB LESS - MAY NOT BE AN ISSUE FOR OUR USE CASE) , 50 GB monthly bandwidth, and support for up to 50,000 monthly visits. 
• Page Builder Integration: Comes with Elementor Pro, a powerful drag-and-drop page builder, facilitating intuitive site design without coding. (SEEMS LIKE A GOOD PLUS POINT)
• Performance and Security: Features include a built-in Content Delivery Network (CDN) via Cloudflare, SSL certificates, daily backups, and robust security measures (ANOTHER GOOD PLUS POINT ESP CLOUDFLARE). 
• Support: Provides 24/7 premium support. (WOULD LIKE TO KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS? IS IT HUMANS? IS THERE ANY LIMIT? WILL THE ENGAGE DIRECTLY WITH OUR SITE?)Considerations:
• Flexibility: A straightforward setup with the ability to install various plugins and themes, WordPress.com’s Business plan offers that flexibility. 
• Design Control: If having advanced design capabilities with a visual builder (WHICH REALLY MEANS POINT AND CLICK) is a priority, Elementor’s plan provides seamless integration with its Pro page builder. 
• Performance Needs: Consider our site’s expected traffic and resource requirements. Elementor’s plan specifies limits on storage, bandwidth, and monthly visits, which may be pertinent depending on our site’s scale (i suspect not a problem)Conclusion:
Both plans offer robust features suitable for different scenarios.
WordPress.com’s Business plan is ideal for users seeking a traditional WordPress experience with extensive plugin support.
Elementor’s Business hosting plan caters to those who prioritise design flexibility (this MAY suite you) and an all-in-one solution with integrated page building tools.
Our specific needs (ocd to details?), technical comfort (none, it would seem?), and growth expectations (this last means how much space and how many visits. Unless you later included customer engagement the space looks adequate (not brilliant) and the visits are more than adequate)
One final question is about once our site is built, are we locked in to £300 a year of can we downgrade - which we can and do do in the Wordpress version. Maybe this does not matter if the business takes off.
Also not included is the price of paying someone to maintain the site, regardless of the host.
I have not yet checked but I expect Elementor will be available to use, for a fee, on the Wordpress hosting version. More work required for this aspect.
In this regard, using the Elementor plug in on Wordpress the pricing would be one of Essential or Solo
https://elementor.com/pricing-plugin/
So $60 or $85 per annum extra, so I seem to think the Elementor hosting that includes this is about £300 a year form year 2 and Wordpress at £240 a year PLUS this plugin is about the same at around £300 a year (very roughly).
SIDE NOTE
- You might want to consider integrating this technology I am using to write this review. The website is hosted by Wordpress directly.
- I wrote the original rather clumsy layout myself and them left it.
- Later for my hobby I created another Wordpress hosted Wordpress site for £3 pcm (i.e. £36 per YEAR) which is very limited in space only 6GB if I recall correctly, but perfectly ok for text like you see here.
- For images, of which my hobby site has hundreds, I never upload image files (That’s how they will catch many), I link to them from another site of mine (for photographers). This is not relevant to you except as an illustration of how the use case matters a great deal; they make all the difference.
- So, this text you see here is written in a tech called “markdown” or what we call “md” for short; A.i. knows all about it and will render work in md if asked.
- There is a tech “war” going on between the “format apps” like Word and Presentation apps where vast amounts of time and code are invested in how it all looks, when in fact what matters is how it all reads; the content.
- Here’s the killer point: this md updates automatically to my Wordpress site and any changes/edits I make update practically instantly, without me having to do anything in Wordpress - ok except click “save”, but no need to open it, close it or any other time waste.
- And I can do all this from my phone app.
- So here I go, I click “publish update ok” job done.
- Zero Web site expertise needed. In fact I just realised where above I say “click”save” ” even that is not required.
NOTE
It’s important to note that while Cloudflare offers additional security enhancements, WordPress.com implements its own security protocols, including firewalls, to safeguard websites hosted on its platform. Therefore, integrating Cloudflare is optional and depends on your specific security and performance requirements. And: Cloudflare is free (and easy if techy to implement)at our level.