WordPress.com Cancellation Help

No. Cancelling a WordPress.com plan does not delete your website or account; it only stops that plan from renewing. Your site continues to exist and usually reverts to a free site with a .wordpress.com address, ads, and reduced features once the plan ends. To permanently remove a site, you must use the separate Delete a website process from your Hosting Dashboard.

To confirm cancellation, sign in to WordPress.com, open your account dashboard, and go to Billing → Active Upgrades. Click the relevant plan or purchase and check its status: a cancelled subscription shows an expiry date and auto‑renew disabled instead of an upcoming renewal date. You can also review the Billing History section to see that no future renewals are scheduled for that product.

Functionally, both actions prevent your WordPress.com subscription from renewing and allow it to run until its expiry date. Using the Cancel subscription flow walks you through a dedicated cancellation screen, while toggling off “Enable auto‑renew” from the Manage subscription panel simply stops renewals without the survey. In each case the plan remains active until the end of the current term, then ends.

To cancel a domain, go to your site’s dashboard, open Upgrades → Domains, select the domain, and follow the steps to cancel or remove it. Cancelling the registration ends your ownership and, if done within about 96 hours of registration or renewal, may qualify for a refund under WordPress.com’s domain refund policy. Removing or detaching a domain only disconnects it from a specific site but keeps the registration active.

If you cancel a plan that came with a free‑domain credit, you can choose to cancel the domain or keep it. Cancelling both the plan and the domain within the domain’s 96‑hour refund window can produce a full refund of the plan purchase. If you keep the domain or cancel it after that domain window but within the plan’s 14‑day refund window, WordPress.com typically deducts the domain’s regular cost from your plan refund and you retain the domain for the rest of its registration period.

Not directly. When you subscribe via Recurring Payments on another WordPress.com site, you are paying that site’s owner, with WordPress.com only processing the payment. You can cancel those charges yourself from Billing → Monetize subscriptions in your account. However, WordPress.com’s main refund policy does not apply; any refund must be requested from the site owner under their own terms.

Cancelling a plan affects only that subscription and leaves your account, other sites, and any remaining purchases intact. Closing your WordPress.com account is a separate, irreversible action that requires you to cancel all active purchases first and then permanently deletes your account and its associated data after a short recovery window. WordPress.com recommends considering alternatives, such as cancelling purchases or deleting specific sites, before closing an account entirely.

Often, yes. If you cancel a plan but it has not yet expired, you can usually restore it by turning auto‑renew back on from the Purchase Settings page. Once a plan expires or is removed, you can repurchase an appropriate plan and, for plugin‑enabled sites, follow the restore‑content guidance to bring back plugins and advanced features. Deleted sites can usually be restored within 30 days from the Hosting Dashboard, after which recovery is no longer possible.