WordPress.com launches free student plan to train future web creators
Automattic has introduced WordPress.com Education, a free plan letting teachers and students build full-featured websites at no cost. The program was previously piloted with 5,000 students across 27 countries.
Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, has unveiled a new free product for the education sector called WordPress.com Education. Designed for teachers and their classes, the plan gives each student a full WordPress.com domain, a free domain name on the .blog or .art extension, and support for plugins.
Teachers can give students free access for the first year without requiring a credit card or trial sign-up. This makes it possible to use the tool in courses that teach website building, as well as in other classroom activities such as group projects involving web development.
The product was announced on Monday at the company's annual WordCamp US conference. Automattic emphasized that the student plan is not a stripped-down offering — it includes 6 GB of storage, backups, staging sites, and other tools, along with support for plugins, SFTP/SSH, phpMyAdmin, and Studio Sync.
Aiming at the next generation
While WordPress powers roughly 43% of all websites globally, young people building their first online presence tend to gravitate toward social media profiles rather than WordPress. With the new plan, Automattic hopes to bring the platform into classrooms, helping train the next generation of web professionals. Because the offering is free, it could also benefit schools with limited budgets.
After the first free year, students can choose to subscribe for $2 per month, or $24 per year. If they don't, their site isn't deleted — it simply reverts to a free WordPress.com site on a free domain, with all pages, posts, comments, and uploaded media preserved.
Automattic says the program was piloted with 5,000 students across 27 countries. In a survey, 88.9% of educators said the program improved their students' employability, while 81.5% reported it boosted students' entrepreneurial skills.
