Blogging has become a very effective medium of web marketing. Online marketing campaigns have been significantly enhanced by the emergence of various blog content publishing platforms such as Blogger, WordPress, Tumblr, Medium, which in their turn have allowed businesses to publish their web content promptly and easily.
How do we pick the best blogging platform given a wide range of available options?
In this blog post we will cover pros and cons of two major blogging platforms: WordPress and Blogger.
The decision on whether to use WordPress or Blogger is mostly based on your project requirements as well as your personal preferences.
In a nutshell:
Why Choose Blogger Over WordPress?
Blogger.com is a blog-publishing service that was created by Pyra Labs in 1999 and acquired by Google in 2003. For bloggers who are not looking to build a unique online brand and prefer a hassle-free platform that does not require strong technical skills, Blogger can be a good option, as it requires no dollar investment (besides your time) to start your blog. All Blogger blogs are hosted on Google servers using a subdomain .blogspot.com (even though it is possible to point your custom domain name to your blogspot.com blog) which makes it difficult for hackers to break into your blog.
Why Choose WordPress Over Blogger?
WordPress was initially built as a blogging platform but has gradually enhanced and became a decent web development platform with a vast range of functionality and features that can be implemented using a wide selection of plugins developed by a growing WordPress community.
It is important to understand, however, that in order to take a full advantage of WordPress, you need to install and run it on your own web server and domain name rather than hosting it on WordPress.com.
Let’s now outline the major pros and cons of WordPress vs Blogger.
WordPress
Did you know that WordPress is run by https://automattic.com which is a 100% distributed company (i.e. all its employees are working remotely)? Isn’t that cool?
Web developers have different opinions about WordPress which is written in PHP programming language. For example, CSSChopper, a company that offers customized WordPress development services, points out that the major advantage of working with WordPress is that it is backed by a team of professional developers and contributors who keep on upgrading this platform for the best use. We agree with the latter statement and would like to list a bit more features that give WordPress a competitive advantage over other blogging platforms.
WordPress Pros:
- Open source software (available for free, well documented and can be customized)
- Regular software updates available (ongoing improvements in UX/UI, performance and security)
- Ability to create a custom theme/design for your blog
- Ability to build a fully functioning website that does not look like a generic blog. See examples on https://wordpress.org/showcase/
- Ability to host your blog on your own web server using the domain name of your choice
- A large selection of premium themes available
- A large selection of add-ons (plugins) available
- WordPress websites are easy to migrate to any shared host, such as Bluehost for example (see a good overview of the differences between Bluehost and WordPress)
- Ability to monetize the blog by not only having ads but also using eCommerce
- A very large WordPress community (In 2013, WordPress was the 15th most trafficked website in the world. As of today, it is the 42nd according to http://www.alexa.com/siteinfo/wordpress.com and powers 26% of the Internet)
- Great flexibility in terms of SEO (custom URLs, redirects, canonicals, title/meta descriptions, responsive plugins, etc.)
WordPress.com Cons:
- Unlike Blogger.com, the domain mapping is not free on WordPress.com (you’ll need to pay about $15/year for a custom domain name if you host your blog on WordPress.com)
- If you host on WordPress.com, you have a limited storage space of 3 Gb, which means if you have a blog with photographs and self-hosted videos, you would end up needing more space
- Susceptible to hacking attacks (especially if you host your blog on your own server and do not update the WordPress software and plugins as well as use a WordPress theme that is easily available for download online)
- In general, WordPress sites load slower than blogspot.com sites
Blogger
With a limited availability of features, Blogger has a limited flexibility in functionality and website look. Below is the best Blogger theme I've been able to find after spending 30 minutes on Google search:
Blogger Pros:
- Written in Python programming language, which allows for a high performance (and since there is no option to customize your blogspot site, there is no need to worry about finding a skilled Python developer)
- Available for free (no need to display ads)
- Can be setup in 10 minutes with a click of a button
- Managing a blog is similar to managing a social media account, so a very easy learning curve if you are new to blogging
- Being a part of the Google infrastructure, your blog can get quickly indexed by Google
- Secured by Google which gives it a good protection against hackers
- A user can have up to 100 blogs per account
- Some customization options to change the appearance of a blog template
Blogger Cons:
- Cannot be installed on your own server
- No option to customize the link structure of blog posts
- Buying new themes and templates is usually a must as the default themes are of a poor quality/usability
- Need to have a Google account to use
- Your account may be suspended if you do not comply with the rules (same can happen if you host your site on WordPress.com)
- No FTP access
I hope you’ve found this post informative and are now ready to make a good decision on how to proceed with setting up your blog. If you need help with creating a custom designed WordPress site, please get in touch with us.
We’d love to hear your thoughts on what blogging platform works best for you. Please share your comments below.