This is one area where the WordPress.com hosting really shines.  Whether you are using their free hosting or the premium packages, you will find that your site almost never has any issues.  This is likely due, at least in part, to the fact that everything is configured to run with the WordPress platform. This minimizes any changes or other things that often cause down time.

In addition, it allows their technicians to become experts in this area, which helps them to avoid mistakes and help ensure that their equipment is always working well.

When you sign up with hosting for WordPress.com you will have access to many different features.  While many of them are very powerful, they are all focused specifically on their own platform.  So, if you are are looking to host something other than a WordPress powered site, they don't have much to offer you.

Some examples of the features include lots of free themes to help make your site, almost instant automatic installation of the WordPress platform and responsive servers that are configured specifically for WordPress sites.

They also have an almost endless amount of help available for those who want to develop a great website on their platform.  You can use all their widgets and other tools as well, which can be very helpful depending on the type of site you are creating.

This is one area where WordPress is really struggling.  While you won't often run into technical problems of any kind, it can be difficult to get help if you do.  They limit their live 'premium' support only to their paying premium customers, which leaves any of the .wordpress.com sites almost entirely unsupported with any official technical help.

On the other hand, however, they do have excellent forums available where other WordPress users can provide assistance.  They also have a lot of guides and tutorials on their site.  When it comes right down to it, however, you are basically going to be left with a 'self-help' style of support if you opt to host with WordPress.com

If you are an individual who is looking to put up an inexpensive site that still looks great, and you don't mind having the .wordpress.com extension, this is clearly the host for you.  There aren't really many other free hosting providers that can compete with the perks that WordPress.com can provide.

If, on the other hand, you are thinking about using WordPress.com for premium hosting, it isn't such an easy decision.  First of all, their premium hosting services, while nice, are typically more expensive than other hosting companies that provide similar services.

While you aren't technically limited to only putting WordPress powered sites on your hosting, it is what almost everyone will do.  Everything about this host is focused on people who use the WordPress content management system.

Since virtually all of the customers that use this hosting are running a WordPress site, they are able to optimize everything for this specific type of software.  The result is that in addition to being stable, you will get a surprisingly fast loading site from all of their hosting packages.

Whether using their free hosting services or one of their premium packages, you aren't likely to run into any issues related to load times.  The one exception to this is if you begin activating a large number of the WordPress add-ons, which can be very taxing to web servers if they aren't coded properly.  This, of courses, is not the fault of the host (whether you use WordPress.com or not) so it is not something most people need to worry about.