WORDPRESS AND BLOGGER

What is the difference between a WordPress blog (which is a paid blog) and a free blogging service like WordPress.com or Blogger (which are free blogs)? In this article, we will compare WordPress (paid blog) vs Blogger (free blog) to help you decide which one is better for your needs. We will cover the pros and cons of each, so you can make the best decision when it comes to WordPress and Blogger as a platform for your site.

Important: Please note that this comparison is between self-hosted WordPress.org and Blogger, not WordPress.com and Blogger. self-hosted WordPress.org is a paid blog while WordPress.com is a free blog. 

1. Ownership

Blogger is a blogging service provided by the tech giant Google. It is free, reliable most of the time, and quite enough to publish your stuff on the web. However, it is not owned by you. Google runs this service and has the right to shut it down, or shutdown your access to it at any time.

With WordPress, you use a WordPress hosting provider to host your own site. You are free to decide how long you want to run it and when you want to shut it down. You own all your data, and you control what information you share with any third party. 

2. Control

Blogger is a fine tuned service with very limited tools allowing you to perform only specific tasks on your website. The things you can do on your blogspot blog are limited, and there is no way you can extend them to meet a need.

WordPress is an open source software, so you can easily extend it to add new features. There are thousands of WordPress plugins allowing you to modify and extend the default feature set such as adding a store to your website, creating portfolio, etc. 

3. Appearance

Blogger by default only provides a limited set of templates to use. You can modify the colors and layout of these templates using the built-in tools, but you cannot create your own layouts or make modifications. There are some non-official Blogger templates available, but those templates are usually very low quality.

There are thousands of free and premium WordPress themes which allow you to create professional looking websites. There is a WordPress theme for just about every kind of website. No matter what your site is about, you will find plenty of high quality themes which are easy to modify and customize.

4. Portability

Moving your site from Blogger to a different platform is a complicated task. There is a significant risk that you will loose your search engine rankings, subscribers, and followers during the move. Even though blogger allows you to export your content, your data will stay on Google’s servers for a very long time.

Using WordPress, you can move your site anywhere you want. You can move your WordPress site to a new host, change domain name, or even move your site to other content management systems. 

5. Security

Using Blogger you have the added advantage of Google’s robust secure platform. You don’t need to worry about managing your server’s resources, securing your blog, or creating backups.

WordPress is quite secure, but since it is a self hosted solution you are responsible for security and backups. There are plenty of WordPress plugins that make it easier for you. 

6. Support

There is limited support available for Blogger. They have a very basic documentation and a user’s forum. In terms of support, your choices are very limited.

WordPress has a very active community support system. There is online documentation, community forums, and IRC chatrooms where you can get help from experienced WordPress users and developers. Apart from community support, there are many companies offering premium support for WordPress. 

7. Future

Blogger has not seen any major update since a very long time. We have seen Google kill their popular services such as Google Reader, Adsense for feeds, and the possible demise of FeedBurner. Future of Blogger depends on Google, and they have the right to shut it down whenever they want.

WordPress is an Open Source software which means its future is not dependent on one company or individual. It is developed by a community of developers and users. Being world’s most popular content management system, thousands of businesses around the globe depend on it. The future of WordPress is bright and reassuring. 

We hope this article helped you understand some differences between paid blog and free blog

Question: As a beginner, which of the blog option will you prefer to start with, paid blog or free blog?

You can leave your answer as comment below.