Are you hoping to start a blog for free and you’re wondering which blog platform to Use? There are tons of free blog platforms out there such as Blogger, WordPress, Wix, Weebly, Ghost, Medium and so on. However, in this article, we will only examine two of the most popular blog platforms, which you’ve probably heard of Blogger and WordPress. To learn more about other blog platforms, you can check out our article on 8 Best Free Blogging Platforms To Create Your Blog. However, if you’re only interested in comparing Blogger with WordPress, then keep reading.
Before we go deep into the pros and cons, it is important to note that this article compares WordPress.com with Blogger. Hence, we assume that you already know the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org, however, if you don’t, you can click here to find out.
Blogger and WordPress are two of the most popular free blogging platforms both offering a variety of free tools for content creators who are hoping to get started with blogging. In this article, we will look at some of the similarities and differences, the various tools and options available for your blog and the prospect of transferring your blog to a website, when you’re finally ready for a professional website. To begin, we are going to start with a brief overview of both platforms, then we will look at their pros and cons. Lastly, we will conclude by looking at which one is best suited for you.
WordPress.com
WordPress.com uses the open-source WordPress script to provide free blogging services for users. Freely hosted blogs are assigned a wordpress.com subdomain. However, a user can decide to upgrade to a paid plan which gives the user access to a custom domain name. When using a free plan on WordPress.com, your site address will be something like this: www.myblog.wordpress.com
Now as you know by now, WordPress.com has a free plan as well as a paid plan. What this means is that users interested in the free plan only get access to limited features, which includes:
- A 3GB storage space
- Access to tons of non-premium themes, which you can further customise some
- Publicize tool for a direct social media connection
- Statistics on visitors to your blog
- Backend access to your blog from mobile devices
For additional features such as increased storage space, you will have to upgrade to a paid plan.
Pros of WordPress.com
Whether you’re interested in a free or paid plan, WordPress.com certainly have some interesting features that are worth pointing out.
- Free To Use: To start your blogging on WordPress.com, you do not need to spend a dime on hosting or domain name. Although there are paid plans, which allows you to access more features, the free plan gives you more than enough features needed to get your blog running.
- User Friendly: You do not have to know anything about web design or be a developer to set up your blog on WordPress.com. To kickstart your blog, all you have to do is to create an account by visiting WordPress.com, provide the details of the blog you want to set up and you’re ready to start blogging.
- Easy Upgrade: When you’re ready for more such as access to features like WordAds, Google Analytics and Premium Themes, you can easily upgrade to any of the available paid plans.
Cons of WordPress
WordPress.com comes with lots of limitations, especially when you’re using the free plan. Some of these includes:
- Zero Monetization: Irrespective of the amount of traffic that you’re generating on your blog, you are unable to utilise ad services such as Google AdSense to generate income from your blog. Also, the free plan does not allow you to generate revenue through affiliate links and although you might be allowed to use the WordAds programme, however, you will have to share your revenue with WordPress unless you upgrade to a paid plan.
- WordPress Ads: When you’re using a free WordPress.com plan, WordPress will always be displayed ads on your blog, which you cannot remove unless you upgrade to a paid plan. While visitors to your blog will always see these ads, you however do not get paid for them.
- Limited Features and Customization: Using a free WordPress.com plan gives you access to only free themes with very limited customization and features. You will need to upgrade to a paid plan to unlock other futures, access premium themes and be able to customize your blog.
- No Custom Domain: Unlike blogger, the free WordPress.com plan does not allow for a custom domain name. So even if you have a custom domain from a third-party domain registrar such as GoDaddy, you will not be able to use that custom domain name without upgrading to a paid plan.
Blogger
Blogger is a free blog publishing service from google that originally started in 1999 by Pyra Labs but was acquired by Google in 2003 and has grown to be one of the most popular blogging platforms today. Blogs hosted on blogger are placed on the blogspot.com subdomain, which means if you choose to use blogger, your site address will be something like this: www.myblog.blogspot.com However, unlike worpress.com where you have to upgrade to a paid plan to use a custom domain, you can easily use a custom domain on blogger by purchasing a domain name from a third party domain registrar like GoDaddy and afterwards connect it to your blog.
Pros of Blogger
- Free To Use: Just like WordPress.com, Blogger is also free to use. There are no payment or fees required to set up your blog.
- Easy To Set Up: As a beginner with no knowledge or background in web development, you can easily set up your blog using blogger in a matter of minutes. To do so, all you have to do is to visit blogger.com and sign up with your Gmail account.
- Supports custom domain: Although all blogs hosted on blogger are assigned a blogspot.com subdomain, however, you can choose to purchase a custom domain from a third-party domain registrar like GoDaddy and then easily connect it to your blog.
- You can easily monetize your blog: Blogger allows you to easily set up Google AdSense on your blog, which can in turn be a way for you to monetize your hard work.
Cons of Blogger:
- Limited Functionality and Customization: Blogger offers pretty basic functionality in terms of setting up your blog and publishing contents on it. Although there are a wide variety of themes and customization features that you can use to modify the appearance of your blog, however, these are very basic and restrictive.
Transferring Your Blog to a WordPress.org website
If you’re hoping to one day transfer your blog to a fully developed WordPress.org website, you might want to consider which of these platforms best support such transfer without necessarily losing your SEO ranking. So, having examined some of the pros and cons of both platforms, we’re now going to look at the prospect of transferring your blog from WordPress.com or Blogger to a WordPress.org website.
Both platforms have features for exporting your contents in order to transfer them to a WordPress.org website and WordPress.org’s import feature supports both WordPress.com and Blogger. However, when you move your blog from WordPress.com to a WordPress.org website, you will have to choose between setting your WordPress.com blog to private which means you’ll lose your SEO ranking, readers and traffic. The other alternative would be to use Offsite Redirect, which is a paid plugin that allows you to redirect readers from your WordPress.com blog to your WordPress.org site. On the other hand, you can easily move your Blogger blog to a WordPress.org website without losing SEO ranking, readers or traffic. In other to be able to easily achieve this, make sure your blogger blog is using a custom domain name.
Conclusion
In conclusion, if you’re looking for a blogging platform that allows you to utilize a custom domain name and make money from blogging, then blogger is the right platform for you. On the other hand, if you wish to get familiar with WordPress as a content management system (CMS), (which is very useful if you intend to venture into using WordPress.org) then feel free to play around with WordPress.com. Would you like to have your blog set up for you by a professional? Click here for more on our blog setup and web design services.
Before you make your final decision, you should be aware that there is an even better option, which is to get a fully developed website. By so doing, you will avoid all the limitations that come with using a free blogging platform and you will have access to lots of exciting features and can easily monetize your website. The better part of the story is to get a website, you don’t have to spend much, we offer affordable web design services that will give you the best without tearing a hole in your pocket. To know more about our web design service, click here.
Do you have any questing about choosing between WordPress.com and Blogger? Let us know in the comment section.
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