Inside this Article
1. Templates
Zyro’s Got More Templates Than Ever, But WordPress.com Still Has More Variety
As part of its recent overhaul, Zyro gave its template gallery a major update. There are now loads more templates (125+, by my count), and they’ve improved massively in the looks department, all trending towards that Apple-esque minimalism that’s all the rage at the moment. They come in a bunch of different categories, including eCommerce, Services, Photography, Restaurants, Portfolio, Events, and Blog. You can browse by these preset categories or zero in on a particular niche via the search bar.

2. Features and Ease of Use
Zyro Is Good for Beginners, But Lacks WordPress.com’s Power
As a relatively new builder, Zyro is constantly adding to its arsenal of features. For instance, it now offers e-commerce and blogging tools (more on both of these later), but even so, it can’t quite keep up with a giant like WordPress, which offers pretty much anything you could ever need. On the plus side, Zyro’s simplicity means that it definitely wins on the ease-of-use front. Its drag-and-drop editor couldn’t be simpler. No walkthroughs needed – you can just dive straight in. And in case you want even more of a helping hand, Zyro offers a unique array of AI tools, including an AI business name generator, slogan generator, blog title generator, and even an AI writer that can create pages of SEO-friendly content for you. When I tested the AI writer, it generated text that was slightly… bizarre. So while these tools might help you brainstorm when you’re feeling stuck, I’d only use the actual text as a real last resort. WordPress.com’s editor represents a much steeper learning curve than Zyro’s, especially if you’ve never built a website before. If you’re just trying to create something simple, honestly, you might be happier with Zyro. But if you’re willing to invest a bit of time, and you ultimately need a builder with more horsepower, then WordPress is definitely worth it. The WordPress.com block editor, theme customizer, and publishing tools aren’t hard, per se. It’s just that if you haven’t used these tools before, it will take some time to get your head around them. Intuition will get you a long way with Zyro, whereas WordPress.com is definitely more of a “read the manual” deal. But the upside is that with WordPress.com, there’s a real ROI in store. You can build any type of website just by working with the default themes and functionality. And from the Business plan up, you can use plugins to transform your website in pretty much any way you could think of. Compare that to the nine(ish) element options offered by Zyro, and you’ll see what I mean by horsepower.
3. Apps & Integrations
Zyro’s Limited Integrations Struggle to Compete with WordPress.com’s Limitless Plugins
WordPress.com has a plugin for – and I don’t think this is an exaggeration – everything, meaning you can extend the functionality of your website however you want. As long as you upgrade to the Business plan, that is. Want help with SEO? Extra website security? Automatic translations? Contact forms? Drag-and-drop design? Calendars? Anything you want your website to do, you’re almost guaranteed to find a WordPress plugin for it, out of the more than 50,000 on offer. WordPress also offers a number of third-party integrations, including Mailchimp, Google Analytics, and GSuite.
- Facebook Messenger
- Facebook Pixel
- Hotjar
- Google Tag Manager
- Google Analytics

4. Blogging
Can Zyro Compete With WordPress.com, the Blogging Giant?
Zyro has recently introduced blogging functionality, which is definitely a step in the right direction. However, it still can’t quite mount a challenge to WordPress.com, which is literally a blog content management system. Seriously, blogging is where it all began. Both builders make it easy to get started. On Zyro, you just need to navigate to the little button that looks like a pen and click Start a blog to add a blog page to your website. In terms of blogging features, Zyro has all the usual suspects, such as the ability to set publishing dates, define post categories, have multiple authors, and change customization options for posts. However, you can’t control how the blog itself looks within your website.

5. E-commerce
Another of Zyro’s shiny new features is its set of e-commerce tools. You can now create an online store on its eCommerce plan – for less than it would cost you on WordPress.com. But how do the features stack up? Getting started with e-commerce on Zyro is – you guessed it – pretty easy. Simply choose one of the online store templates, or click the shopping cart icon in the editor. From there, you just need to add your products, set up shipping, delivery, and payment options, and off you go!

6. SEO
Zyro Does It For You; With WordPress.com It’s DIY
You might have noticed that Zyro’s integrations are mostly focused on marketing and SEO functionality. And yes, Zyro gives you some tools like Google Analytics and Tag Manager, Facebook Pixel and – uh – the AI Writer. But overall, Zyro’s SEO strategy is more along the lines of “we do the hard work so you don’t have to”. Rather than offering lots of complex tools, Zyro works good SEO into the builder itself – by making web pages fast loading, secure, and automatically optimized for mobile. This might be music to your ears, if the letters S – E – O make you recoil in horror, but if you want to take a bit more of a hands-on approach, it might not quite cut the mustard.

7. Pricing
When Zyro did its revamp, it also overhauled its pricing structure. But do you still get good value for money? Well, it depends what you’re looking for. Zyro is still one of the cheapest website builders on the market, starting at around $3 per month for the most basic plan and going up to nearly $15 per month for the most expensive (e-commerce) plan. The catch is that these prices are only available if you pay upfront for several years. The renewal price is a bit higher as well, so if you plan to build a website that will be around for a while, you’ll need to make sure you’re OK paying the higher fee in a year’s time. The major difference post-revamp is that Zyro no longer offers a free plan, or even a free trial. Instead, you now get a 30-day money-back guarantee. In all fairness, I’ve tried it out, and they’re absolutely true to their word – I got my money back, no questions asked.
WordPress.com, on the other hand, does offer a free plan, which gives you an SSL certificate, 3 GB of storage space, and access to free themes.
The cheapest WordPress.com plan is priced similarly to Zyro’s bottom-tier plan, and it gives you more data, unlimited bandwidth, a free domain, and the ability to accept PayPal payments.
However, as I mentioned, WordPress.com only really comes into its own once you add its 50,000 plugins into the mix. This gives you virtually unlimited options for extending your site’s functionality, a power that Zyro really can’t match. The catch is that you’ll pay a lot more for those plugins – because you can only install them on the Business plan and up.
So, if you’re not interested in wading through a huge DIY library of plugins and don’t care about building a fancy website with all the bells and whistles, Zyro might be a better, more attractively-priced option.
That’s particularly true when you look at the two builders’ highest-tier e-commerce plans. While you can build an enormously powerful store on WordPress.com’s top plan, it costs almost three times as much as Zyro’s – which matches all the basic WordPress.com e-commerce features and presents them in a neat, user-friendly solution.
Let’s see how this works by comparing the cheapest (and most expensive) Zyro and WordPress.com plans:
Plan | Zyro Basic | WordPress.com Personal | Zyro eCommerce Plus | WordPress.com eCommerce |
Monthly cost (billed yearly) | $2.61 | $45.00 | $8.01 | $8.00 |
Storage | 1 GB | 3 GB | Unlimited | 200 GB |
Bandwidth | 3 GB | Unlimited | Unlimited | Unlimited |
Free domain | Connect your own | Free for 1 year | Free for 1 year | Free for 1 year |
Website analytics | No | Basic | Yes | Yes |
Integrations / Plugins | No | No | Yes | Up to 50,000 plugins |
E-commerce features | No | PayPal payments | Yes, including multiple payment options, shipping and tax management, abandoned cart recovery, and Facebook, Instagram & Amazon integrations | Yes, including integrations with shipping carriers, accept payments in 60+ countries, and premium design options |
Customer support | Live chat | Email support | Live chat | Email and live chat support |
8. Support
Zyro’s Live Chat Goes Against WordPress.com’s Forum
Support is another area where WordPress.com and Zyro really diverge. Whereas Zyro offers 24/7 live chat support on any plan, WordPress.com has a “you get what you pay for” system. The free plan gives you access to the WordPress.com knowledge base, video tutorials, and support forum. The personal plan gives you email support, and only after that do you get live chat assistance. I’m just going to put it out there: I hate forums. I feel like they can be very hostile spaces where newbies are demonized for having the audacity to ask simple questions. The typical response seems to be, “We already discussed this xx years ago, just read this thread, dummy.” But in the name of research, I gave it a go. After I posted my question on the support forum, I had to wait a few hours for a reply. When it came, it was helpful – although it had a hint of the “read it yourself” vibe. When I tried via email support as well, the response was similar.

The Difference Is Clear: Do You Want Ease, or Power?
Comparing Zyro and WordPress.com is a bit like comparing apples and oranges. On the surface, they offer similar services, but cut a bit deeper and a whole gulf of differences open up. Ultimately, your choice is going to depend on what you want. If you want the Big Daddy™ of web building to make a huge, fancy site and you don’t care how much it costs – I’d recommend WordPress.com. It’s got virtually unlimited options for extending your website’s functionality, especially on the higher-tier plans. On the other hand, if you want to build a relatively simple website without investing a lot of time in learning how to build it – or you want an affordable, comprehensive e-commerce builder that will do a lot of the hard work for you – then Zyro is a pretty solid option. It can’t do everything WordPress.com can, but sometimes you just don’t need it to.Free plan available
No
Yes
Templates
100+
200 + 3rd-party themes
Features and Ease of Use
User-friendly drag-and-drop editor with fewer features
Block editor with steeper learning curve
Apps, Add-Ons and Integrations
Limited integrations
Up to 60,000 plugins
Blogging
Essential blogging features
Extensive blogging features, including commenting, tagging, and social integration
E-commerce
Robust e-commerce features available on two most expensive plans
E-commerce features on higher paid plans
SEO
Basic tools like analytics, Facebook Pixel & Hotjar
Robust SEO tools plus extra options via plugins
Pricing
Not a huge variation in price, 30-day money-back guarantee
More variety in pricing structure: top-end prices much higher, with features to match
Support
24/7 live chat support
Support forum and guides, plus email and live-chat support (for higher-tier paid plans only)