Question to bloggers: Wordpress Premium worth it?

Thirith

I'm running a blog with a friend which currently is using the free Wordpress plan. However, we're thinking of adding a monthly podcast, and I'm also thinking that a unique URL wouldn't be too bad either. Would Wordpress Premium be a good choice? What are the pros and cons? I've found a couple of sites that write about this, but it's often not entirely clear whether they're biased towards a certain product or against another for commercial reasons.

Enc

This is a pretty easy decision to make:

• The con is that you pay money.
• The pros are listed in depth on the site: https://wordpress.com/pricing/

Do you need the functionality of the premium/business plans? If so, go for it. If not, stay free. I personally went premium a while back for the increased storage, no advertisements, and CSS editing tools because I wanted to customize my map site and host the hundreds of maps I make on the site itself rather than hotlinking to another resource. I don't monetize my site in the traditional advertising fashions, so I can't comment on how useful that is.

Thirith

The main two points I'm interested in right now are the increased storage space (for the podcasts we're planning) and finally changing to a nicer URL. The rest I can take or leave, but they're probably nice to have. At the same time, it seems there are quite a few people on the web who aren't entirely happy with Wordpress, and I'm finding it difficult to separate the valid criticism from unhelpful internet hyperbole and tribalism.

Enc

So, valid criticism: the css editor is not really intuitive and took forever for me to institute what should be simple stylesheet edits due to how it works. After a few hours of toying with it I managed to get it functional, but its not the best. Storage is fine, WP-Admin use is still better than the front-end editors for general site management.

Is it better or worse than other things? There are better content management systems with worse customization systems, and ones that are super customization but lack quick update and edit functionality. I like wordpress as a reasonable and generally affordable balance, but really any system can work if you stick with it.