@PeteSharp, okay why cannot I add Plugins or use FTP?
WordPress .com users cannot install plugins unless they upgrade to the business plan which costs about $299 per year. If you are on a free, personal, or premium plan, then you cannot install third-party plugins .
Is hosting included?
All WordPress.com plans, including the free plan, come with fast, secure, and reliable hosting.
Two things here @KBConcepts
You have
You do not need to use their hosting. Those plans are related to their hosting. They just seem to present them in a way that you need too.
I will sell you some Wordpress hosting for $250 per year 
That’s hilarious ROFL
I see a Wordpress site as a compilation of plugins designed by different minds, with different coding skills & goals.
Was never excited.
WordPress .com - vs - WordPress .org
Those statements are so true for so many things across todays web-ecosphere. 
I have never used a paid version of wordpress - I host mine on my server.
I have only done some small stuff and I have used the free Elementor to create this too and loved the tools.
I am not too fluent with WP - but managed a few websites but I 100% prefer Blocs and continue to build in Blocs.
I am so tempted to copyright this as a sales pitch and release a guidebook book on Amazon.
You’re talking about WordPress COM.
That’s a managed hosted solution owned by automattic and there’s both a free and a paid plan.
But that’s not the “real” WordPress if you want so. It uses WordPress but is managed and also has quite some differences to the self hosted solution, which is the CMS (available 100% for free).
Self hosted here means you’ll need a server (and that’s not free). But the WordPress cms is free, and so are 50k plugins downloadable from their repo (and thousands of themes, too).
You can access and download the free, original WordPress at the ORG site (wordpress.org)
That’s exactly what I provided above in simplistic form so if a person wanted to read, research and understand. It’s a pity this fact is so widely misunderstood still after all these years. It probably remains pretty profitable for the .com because of it though. 
I think it’s been put in several ways now in this thread. But I think he’s left the building 
It’s rather deceptive the way they present it. I’m sure a lot of people are spending $$ because they draw the same conclusions.
No surprise, being the first thing you see in WordPress landing page about how to install it, “WordPress com is the easiest thing”.
See Download – WordPress.org
Another reason why to move. In other areas this would be misleading sales forcing lol.
Looks like my offer of $250 is a good deal 
For one instance? 
That’s superior service 
I’m in direct competition with Wordpress
I’ll do it for $249!
You enjoy the race to the bottom 