I posted this at the WordPress.com’s Support Forum as a side comment, but thought I make this a blog post as well.
The minimum recurring yearly cost of blogging with WordPress.com, as it stands today.
http://en.wordpress.com/products/
Domain $12.00
Design $30.00
Storage $20.00
Video $60.00
Ad-free $30.00
$152 + the one-time cost of premium theme.
Obviously not everyone may want to get everything in the list above, but people would typically expect (1) domain names, (2) storage/bandwidth and (3) design flexibility.
So how does it compare to external hosting? Is WordPress (.com or .org) the most expensive blogging platform out there in general?