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description: Your content, your images and your addresses move with you. What stays behind is the dashboard, the plugins and the updates.
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# From WordPress

[English](https://helloloam.dev/data/webpage/from-wordpress.md) • [Nederlands](https://helloloam.dev/nl/data/webpage/from-wordpress.md)

## The three questions

What people who run a website really want to know comes down to three questions: what does it cost, do I have to understand it, and do I know where I stand? Most systems answer two. WordPress gives you a low start and the freedom to do anything — and asks for the other two in return.

|  | WordPress | loam |
| --- | --- | --- |
| **What does it cost?** | Cheap to start; then a premium theme, Elementor Pro and premium plugins, each with its own yearly licence, and hours whenever an update gets stuck. | On loam you pay for the design once, up front — made by hand, so not the cheapest start. After that: one licence per site for updates, and the subscription of your own agent. No theme or plugin licences, no bill because an update got stuck. |
| **Do I have to understand it?** | Everything is possible, so there is a lot to understand: the dashboard, the updates, which plugin works with which — or someone to pay who does. | Nothing to understand: you say what you want, your agent knows how your site works, and you see the whole site as it would be before you say yes. |
| **Do I know where I stand?** | Licences run out at different moments, and a site can get stuck: WordPress moves on to a newer, safer PHP, but your site cannot follow because one plugin cannot. | You know where you stand: no plugin can hold an update back, the engine follows the PHP versions PHP itself supports, security fixes are free for five years per line — and without a licence your site simply keeps running. |

## Built around the agent, not added to it

This year WordPress got an agent: an official plugin that lets an assistant work on a self-hosted site, and on WordPress.com agents can now write posts and pages. That is a door added to a house built for a dashboard. Behind it, the dashboard, the database and the plugins stay as they were — and the agent itself comes in through a plugin, so through the very stack that has to be kept up.

loam was built the other way round. [The agent is the front door](/principles/mcp-with-a-trust-model), and there is [no dashboard behind it](/principles/no-dashboards). Everything your site is goes through that one door — the words, the design, the images and the guide that says how your site speaks — and every change through it is [a draft first](/principles/draft-and-live-lifecycle), checked against the whole site before it goes live.

And every loam site is its own connection. Your agent talks to your site itself — its own address, its own keys — not to a central service that holds the accounts of many sites. You decide who and which agent gets in, and nobody stands in between.

## Less to keep up, fewer holes

A WordPress site is a stack: the core, a theme, Elementor, a handful of plugins and a database. Each has its own updates and its own way in — and often its own yearly licence. A premium theme runs out, Elementor Pro runs out, a plugin's licence runs out: the site keeps working, but the updates stop, and a part of it slowly ages. Or the site gets stuck: WordPress moves on to a newer PHP, as it should, but your site cannot follow because one plugin cannot. A plugin lives as long as its maker keeps it up: a maker who stops, a price that goes up — and a part of your site that stops with it.

Most of all, a site that was built and then left alone — made and forgotten — ages in place: every month an older theme, older plugins, more ways in. On loam you are the maker. [No plugins, no theme licences, no login page, no database](/principles/security-bolted-in): what a plugin would do lives in your own design, under your own control. What remains to keep up is the engine itself, in one signed step — and a site left alone keeps working as it was, with far less that can age.

## Freedom in what you make

A page builder decides what you can build: its widgets, its sections, its markup. On loam the design is [plain templates and a stylesheet](/principles/creative-freedom), made by hand for your site alone. Nothing is a template you picked from a store, and nothing limits what a page can become — your agent works within your design, not within a builder's.

## What moves with you

- **Your content.** Pages, posts and images move over — your agent reads the old site and stages every page as a draft, so you see the whole new site before anything changes.
- **Your addresses.** Each old address is kept on its new page and forwards to it by itself, date and category paths included — search engines follow, and so do your old links.
- **Your words for them.** Titles and descriptions come along, and are a good moment to read again.

What stays behind: the dashboard, the plugins — what they did lands in your design, or turns out not to be needed — and the theme. The design is made again, by hand: [part of the route](/get-loam), and the moment your site gets a form of its own.

## Side by side

As of November 2026. WordPress with Elementor is a self-hosted site with the official MCP Adapter plugin; WordPress.com is the hosted service on a paid plan.

|  | loam | WordPress + Elementor | WordPress.com |
| --- | --- | --- | --- |
| **Your agent** | The front door, built in | A plugin, with its own updates, that has to keep up with every WordPress and PHP version | Built in, on paid plans |
| **What it can reach** | The whole site: words, design, images and the guide | The abilities a plugin exposes | Posts, pages, comments, categories and media |
| **Draft first** | Every change, the design too | Posts and pages | New posts and pages |
| **Before it goes live** | A check of the whole site as it would be | Up to you | You confirm each action |
| **Where the connection lives** | On your site itself, its own address and keys | On your site, through the plugin | At WordPress.com, through your account |
| **Who may do what** | A key per person and per agent, rights per folder | User roles, an app password | User roles |
| **Knows your house style** | Yes — the site's guide travels with it | No | No |
| **Dashboard** | None | wp-admin and the Elementor editor | The WordPress.com dashboard |
| **To keep up to date** | The engine, in one signed step | Core, theme, Elementor and every plugin | Done by the host |
| **Yearly licences** | One per site, for updates — without it the site keeps running | Often several: a premium theme, Elementor Pro, premium plugins | In the plan |
| **Underneath** | A folder of plain files | A MySQL database | A database you do not see |
| **Leaving** | Copy the folder | Export, then migrate the database | Export |

## What it costs

Moving is a project, not a click: the design is made again, and the content needs a careful read. WordPress stays the better choice when your site leans on its plugin world — a WooCommerce shop, memberships, courses — or when many editors want a visual editor to click in. For a site that has to tell, be found and stay yours, loam asks less of you every day after.