What’s The Difference Between WordPress.com and WordPress.org?

This question came up several times at RE BarCamp a few months ago, numerous times with individual agents I’ve spoken to, and again when I spoke at the Coldwell Banker Bain Tech forum, so I thought I’d address it here:

Short answer: WordPress.com is a less customizable version of WordPress.org that includes free web hosting.

Long answer: Josh Ferris wrote a very detailed answer to the question in his latest Monday Q&A on his Online Real Estate 101 Blog. I’d highly recommend reading the whole article.

I have to admit, this post has been sitting as a draft for about 3 months; I guess Josh beating me to answering it is what I get for being a slacker and not writing this months ago. On the plus side, Josh did all grunt work for me — so thank you for helping me with my workload.