Blogger vs WordPress: The complete List of Pros and Cons

This post is also available in: Italian

The Blogger vs WordPress debate has been going on for years and it’s a dilemma almost every new blogger.

So, today with this post I start some articles on how to create a blog, where I will give some useful advice to those who want to create a website without paying anybody, as I did.

As you know, I work as a graphic and web designer, so I spend a lot of time in studying new tools that can help us improve or grow our blog. If you are a fashion, beauty lover or a creative person: A personal blog is the best solution to express yourself and your capabilities.

Nowadays we can find so many blogs, so why should people check ours?

• for an aesthetic quality that wins over others
• a strong SEO
• content that can help readers

Blogger vs WordPress

I will explain all these details in the next posts. But first, we have to decide which platform is the best one for our blog. Many people keep asking me the same questions : ” What is the difference between Blogger and WordPress ? Which one should I choose? ”
I will explain briefly the pros and cons and what is the best choice in my opinion.

Hosted vs Self Hosted Website

Before we get into the specifics of each platform,  it’s important to understand the difference between a hosted and self hosted website. In the first case, the platform provides you with a space on the server, but you aren’t the owner of your blog. In the second case, your website is located on a private server and you have to pay a monthly or annual fee to keep the domain.

WordPress offers both options, while Blogger only the first one.

Blogger

Google is the owner of Blogger, which is a free platform that was launched in 1999 and, thanks to new features added over the years, it has reached the record of 20 million blogs created with it. It’s easy and intuitive to use and you don’t need coding skills. Therefore, anyone can easily create a blog with Blogger.

Pros:

• It’s completely FREE
• It’s well linked to the advertising platform of Google Adsense
• Your posts will be automatically indexed by Google
• You can customize your template with different styles and colors
• Spam is filtered by Google
• You don’t need to do database backups

Cons:

• You don’t really own your blog
• Your blog address contains the “blogspot.com” domain
• You cannot use plugins
• It’s hard to optimize it for SEO
• It cannot be completely customized and you cannot add more features.

WordPress

The WordPress blogging platform is the best solution to create a blog.

WordPress was released on May 27, 2003 and it is a CMS ( Content Management System), which allows you to create a blog or a website and to manage it without having coding knowledge ( HTML, CSS…).

WordPress is an open-source platform, a resource that is constantly changing, thanks to a worldwide community that works every day to improve it and make it even more functional. Over 60 million people have chosen WordPress. So you can imagine how many people work on WordPress and how many themes and free tools you can find, that allow you to customize your blog.

Hosted Version – Pros & Cons
As we said, there are two versions: the hosted one, WordPress.com and the self-hosted WordPress.org. The first one is the free one, your website is located on WordPress server.

Pros:

• It’s free and very simple to set up
• Free & High Quality Hosting
• Setting, updates, spam, backups, security and much more are run by WordPress.com
• It’s SEO friendly: the platform is optimized for search engines
• You will get extra traffic becoming part of the .com community

Cons:

• There are more tons of free themes for your website, but you cannot upload a different one from those offered by the library
• You cannot modify the PHP code of your blog
• You don’t really own your blog
• You cannot use plugins
• To view the adds you have to pay an annual fee $30 / year
• Storage Space 3 GB

Self-hosted version  – Pros & Cons

This is the WordPress solution that offers more features than the other two platforms. It currently powers 24% of the web. You can access thousands of themes, plugins, widgets and much more to customize your website/blog. You will be able to create a professional website or blog in a few easy steps. If you choose this option, you can host your website on wordpress.org or you can find another server optimized for WordPress. My suggestion is Bluehost (for beginners) and Siteground (if you want to take your blog to next level).

Pros:

• You are the owner of your blog and you are in full control
• You can upload any theme or plugin
• It’s SEO friendly
• You can use advertising platforms
• The site name will not be followed by ” wordpress.com ” in the URL
• Code management

Cons:

• You have to buy a domain and a server
• You have to make regular backups of the database
• You have to protect your site from spam and hacker attacks

Conclusions

In this article I provided you with some information that will allow you to better understand this two platforms. Surely, the choice of a self-hosted site is the most recommended solution for those who want more features and flexibility, and want to customize their blog or website. Unfortunately, Blogger doesn’t give us much flexibility, if we are looking for a unique graphic style, or if we want to implement our blog with other solutions, Blogger is not for us.

The first questions to ask yourself is: What do I want to do with my blog ? Which are the goals I want to achieve?

WordPress offers many options to both beginners and blogging experts. In my next post I will guide you step-by-step to migrating your Blogger site to a WordPress.org platform and I’ll share some information about my favorite web host, Bluehost or Siteground.

I hope I gave you some useful information, if you have any doubt, please write in the comment section.

Blogger Vs WordPress. What do you prefer?

Related post: 7 Awesome Tips to Become a Super Fashion Blogger

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