How to Migrate Self-Hosted WordPress to WordPress.com

WordPress.com's Business plan allows users to upload custom WordPress themes and plugins and offers de facto unlimited disk space and traffic. But WordPress.com has some restrictions: they do not offer FTP or cPanel access. You need to contact Support if you encounter a problem which requires ftp/sftp access.

You can use the Export/Import features of WordPress to migrate a self-hosted WordPress site to WordPress.com. However, in this case, you need to re-configure the theme options and plugins.

You can use All-in-One WP Migration to migrate a self-hosted WordPress site to a WordPress.com site using a Business plan.

All-in-One WP Migration plugin
You can use the All-in-One WP Migration plugin to migrate a self-hosted WordPress site to WordPress.com

If you try to install a premium WordPress theme on WordPress.com, you sometimes might encounter an error. For example, one of my clients tried to install Cuisine, a restaurant WP theme, on WordPress.com (with Business plan), but demo content could not be imported properly. Moreover, Visual Composer (WPBakery Page Builder for WordPress) also could not be loaded.

Visual Composer Error

I setup a test WordPress site on SiteGround. I installed the theme on the test site and imported the demo content. And then I tried to migrate it to WordPress.com using All-in-One WP Migration, which was successful.

You can use the All-in-One WP Migration plugin to move a self-hosted WordPress site to WordPress.com's Business plan without a hassle.

※ Many premium themes include Visual Composer as a bundle but VC could slow down a WordPress site if it's not optimized properly. Recently, Jupiter, one of popular WordPress themes, changed their page builder from Visual Composer to Elementor in their new version or Jupiter X.