When it comes to blogging, we have plenty of options to start a blog:
- WordPress
- BlogSpot
- Tumblr
- …and many others…
One of the most talked about topics here at ShoutMeLoud is:
Which blogging platform is better?
WordPress or Blogger?
This debate can get pretty confusing at times. Many users like BlogSpot because there are less technical hassles, and many users love WordPress because of its increased power and features. When someone asks me which platform they should start with, here is my usual answer:
Start with WordPress.com for a month, and once you get accustomed to blogging, start a new blog on the self-hosted WordPress platform.
Alternatively, you are free to use Blogger.com as your launchpad blogging platform, but don’t stick to it for too long.
I say this from experience because I started my blogging journey with BlogSpot and later migrated my blogger blog to WordPress.org.
Back then, there were a hell of a lot of learning experiences trying to figure out WordPress. But now, learning WordPress is quite easy with the help of detailed guides, tutorials, and videos.
Anyway, in this article, I have shared a detailed comparison of WordPress vs. BlogSpot and will explain which one is better for certain situations and why.
WordPress Vs. Blogger: Which Platform to choose?
Why and Why Not Blogger?
The Blogger platform (aka BlogSpot) is very useful when you just want to start a blog to share your thoughts. When you are not blogging for money, or you need a simple platform that doesn’t require any technical know-how, BlogSpot is really good.
While there are many limitations of BlogSpot in terms of functionalities and SEO benefit, if you just need a platform to start a blog with at almost 0 cost, BlogSpot is the right pick.
At the same time, if you are blogging for money, building authority, or for branding yourself, BlogSpot is not the ideal choice. This is because you have limited control over visibility in search engines, and after a while, you become very limited when you want to add new features.
I have read it many times:
- Blogger is a Google product which means it gives more SEO advantages.
This is simply not true.
It doesn’t matter if you are using WordPress, Blogger, Drupal, or any other platform, SEO is decided by how you configure your complete site for search engines.
In the Blogger platform, we have limited control over our site. Despite the fact that they have added some new SEO features, BlogSpot still lacks in SEO optimization.
In a nutshell, the Blogger platform is better than WordPress when you are creating a blog for no other reason than you want to write. If you are OK with the limited features offered by the Blogger platform, then this is a great choice. For making money or creating a long term impact, WordPress platform is better.
Note: WordPress comes in two different forms. You can read about it here.
Why and Why Not WordPress?
Note: ShoutMeLoud uses WordPress (Self-hosted WordPress) as its blogging platform, but this will not make my comparison biased.
WordPress gives you complete control over your blog, and you can technically do anything you want.
You host your own files, can design it however you like, and can use it for any purpose (personal or professional).
You also get complete control over the SEO including adding SEO plugins to make your blog more SEO friendly. Moreover, you can always introduce the latest SEO techniques like “star ratings” using a plugin such as Rich Snippets.
WordPress will let you do everything you want to do.
But at the same time, you need to manage your own blog. You need to install WordPress on your own server and maintain your blog’s health.
It may sound technical, but with amazing support from the WordPress community, you can learn everything in no time.
In fact, if you stumble onto the ShoutMeLoud WordPress guide, most of your queries regarding WordPress will be answered.
Getting started with WordPress may require some effort in terms of watching videos, learning how to add a plugin, getting used to the dashboard, etc.
But we also have to do that with Blogger, right?
If you are planning to create a blog with the mindset of making it popular and making money from it, you should go for the self-hosted WordPress blog.
If you are an occasional writer or a hobby-blogger, BlogSpot is the best pick for you.
Here is a handy chart from HowJoyful, explaining the feature differences between BlogSpot vs. WordPress.com vs. Self-hosted WordPress (WordPress.org):
Matt Cutts on Blogger or WordPress for SEO:
Matt Cutts is not only a Google engineer, and he is also the head of the Google Web Spam team.
He is one of those guys who educates normal users like you and me about what Google expects from a website and how the Google search engine works.
In the past, I have shared many webmaster videos from Matt, and he has always helped me learn something new. In a recent video, a user asked him:
- “Which is better in terms of SEO: WordPress or Blogger?”
Matt answered the query with this video:
Interestingly, Matt Cutts uses the WordPress platform for his personal blog, though he mentioned that Blogger is good for new users as it’s very simple to get started. He says that for casual blogging, it’s fantastic.
With regards to SEO advantages between Blogger and WordPress, both are about the same with the default installation.
The WordPress default installation is not SEO friendly, but you can always make your WordPress blog SEO friendly with the help of many available plugins.
In short, WordPress gives you more power and you can customize it according to your needs.
Blogger Vs. WordPress: Why WordPress is better?
As I mentioned above, I started my journey to Blogging with BlogSpot, and later I moved to WordPress. So, I’m aware of the benefits and downside of BlogSpot, and here I’m not going to talk about any benefits, as WordPress offers all those features which BlogSpot offers.
1. Control over your blog:
This is one of the major reasons I support self-hosted blog. Blogspot is owned by Google, and there are chances that they can delete your Blogspot account without giving you any warning. Even if you use the custom domain feature (Using your domain name ), chances are high that if spammers use feature Flag as spam and report your blog as spam.
Google might remove your blog. This is something very common and by doing a quick search on Google, you will realize many bloggers faced this problem while using BlogSpot.
Winner: Self hosted blog
2. Search engine optimization:
It doesn’t matter where your blog is hosted, traffic is the first and last thing any blogger will look for. Search engine optimization in simple words means Optimizing your blog for search engines and getting traffic from search engine”. Comparing WordPress and BlogSpot, WordPress offers more options to optimize your blog for search engine where as in BlogSpot you are limited to certain settings.
Here are few posts which will help you to optimize your WordPress blog for search engine optimization
3. Plugins and support:
WordPress is blessed with features like the plugin and a strong community to get support.
When I was on BlogSpot, I spent lots of time editing my theme to show related posts and adding such features. WordPress makes your life easy using simple plugins for everything you need. By using plugins, you can achieve anything, and if not, you can take help of WordPress support forum to get the custom code and extend the capabilities of your blog.
Here is a list of 30 must have WordPress plugins.
4. Reputation:
This can be considered as the human tendency or perception, that most of the people see Blogs built on blogger platform as non-serious. One of the simple reason is its free, and a mass number of people are using it for Blackhat SEO, spamming and for affiliate landing pages.
When talking about self-hosted blog, people think that the person has paid for the service, and he is serious about his blog.
5. Theme and templates:
BlogSpot offers many templates but due to the commercial nature of WordPress, you will find unlimited free and Premium WordPress themes. Moreover, since you have FTP access, you can alter the complete look and feel of your WordPress theme.
6. AdSense:
AdSense is the lifeline for any blogger who is looking forward to making money from his blog. Initially, BlogSpot used to be the best way to get your AdSense account approved, but later on, it’s becoming tough to get your Adsense account with BlogSpot.
With WordPress and your domain email address, getting your blog approved is very easy. Another advantage of a self-hosted blog.
If you are an AdSense user, you should consider checking out following posts on AdSense:
The Verdict: Blogger vs. WordPress
WordPress platform is anytime a better choice over Blogspot platform.
It’s important to figure out why you want to start a blog and then go from there. Blogger has many limitations that WordPress doesn’t have. In terms of functionality, there’s no question that WordPress is far superior.
If this article convinced you to move your Blogger hosted blog to WordPress, you can read my article on how to migrate from BlogSpot to WordPress.
Do let me know: What’s your verdict on WordPress vs. Blogger? Which platform do you prefer and why?
Here are hand-picked articles for further reading:
- Why You Need To Use A Custom Domain Name For Your BlogSpot Blog
- How To Write SEO Friendly Content (Beginner To Advanced)
- How to Make Money Blogging
Alright. That’s one informative article and I really like the chart/table you put together. WordPress or Blogger? Well, this may be an unpopular opinion, but I think MOST people are going to migrate to WordPress eventually, so I think why not start there, to begin with? It may cost a little money to do that, but I say if you’re serious about your blog then save some money up to get it done.
In my humble opinion, if you can type in Microsoft Word, you can type out a blog in WordPress. After that, you can add plugins to improve the functionality of your blog. No coding really needed at all. So, yes WordPress is the winner in my book all day.
I think WordPress win the race because it is a CMS. While blogger is purely dedicated blog system.
Hi
Nice post. Haven’t tried out Blogger yet and haven’t really heard that much about it, so thanks for the insight.
After reading this post I think that Blogger is good for beginners and if you don’t have that much technical experience , but if you wan’t more functionality WordPress is the way to go.
I also think if we look at the SEO aspect, that WordPress is better than Blogger. Just my opinion.
Thanks!
for each blogger the only WordPress is better because in WordPress there are no limitations you can do whatever you want, even WordPress allows you to grow up very fastly, there are millions of tools available for WordPress not for blogger so I think even for a newbie WordPress is better.
I have just started my blog in blogger two days back by purchasing a custom domain name after reading another blog from harsh…I must say I m not too happy with blogger at the moment as I find it too limited…may b I will shift to wordpress when I get the hang of it
I have used both for blogging but I didn’t like Blogsopt. I always prefer WordPress for the blogging platform because it is very easy to use and one of the best platforms for bloggers.
I had tried Blogspot as well as WordPress.com in the past but I didn’t use it for long.
Now, I’m blogging on WordPress which undoubtedly number-one blogging platform where countless number of features can be added.
But for wordpress you need to spend money on hosting whereas in blogger you don’t need to pay for the same …right?
The article was so helpful, thankyou harsh, reading your articles really inspire us, last time i read your article and i found myself buying a domain and converting the blogspot domain to my custom domain.
May be this time i will find myself moving to WordPress.
Thanks a ton. 🙂
Now I have Migrate my website from blogger to wordpress from 1 Month and I get best results by choose wordpress. I get more traffic on wordpress than Blogspot platform. Thanx Sir for giving us best Advice.
I always choose blogspot because of the various facilities for me to modify and optimize it. Blogspot as a source of money, free, and very stable and fast in terms of server. Many things we can find there, in blogspot.
Is it good to host a WP blog on free hosting provider..?
@Ashish
Free hosting are good only for testing reasons.
For a serious blog, It’s not a good idea. Read here:
https://www.shoutmeloud.com/5-reasons-avoid-free-webhosting.html
https://www.shoutmeloud.com/avoid-free-wordpress-hosting.html
Hello. I need some help. i hve started a blog on blogger. then bought a domain and added third party url to it. did all the submissions on webmasters. after reading your article I want to migrate to wordpress. its all fresh but do i need to add sitemaps and url submission all over again to search engines?
@Madhvi
Yes, you need to resubmit your sitemap after moving to WordPress.
I also used blogger.com for hosting my website but later realised WordPress gives me more power to regulate my website.
I’m currently on WordPress.com and I want to know if I can buy a domain name and self host it without buying from WordPress and I want to know where I can get the best hosting and domain names to buy.Of course at a cheaper cost lol
I also want to get a few dollars from there how do I go about it
@Jo
You should go with WordPress. It offers free domain & is the complete value for money.
Here is the guide you need to get started: https://www.shoutmeloud.com/how-to-install-wordpress-and-steps-after-installing-wordpress.html
Hi I checked some themes from themeforest and got this https://themeforest.net/item/aviva-multipurpose-wordpress-theme/19299268 . they are claim that they have used one click demo import and drag & drop section sorter. can anyone please tell me that what they have used ?
Hey ! I am planning to make a free blog (zero investment of money), earn some money through it and then move to WordPress premium or business.
From where to start blogger or WordPress ?
@Satpal
You should start with BlogSpot as it offers more flexibility in comparison to WordPress.com.
Hey Harsh,
Choosing the correct blog platform is a very important step for every new blogger if they want to go in the long run, this is where they decided how far they will be going.
Choosing a correct platform makes things easier and more manageable, choosing the wrong one ruins everything and puts you on the ground at last.
I always prefer self hosted wordpress over blogger as it provides the complete control over my blogs.
Do I need any technical support for creating and managing a blog on wp? I created my Blogspot blog without the help of anyone? Is it as easy as Blogspot or I will have to hire some professional?
I really like this analysis and everyone’s opinion on this issue, but i observed that there is still something missing, AFI Say asked i question in his post “I do have a question, In the meanwhile can I earn some coffee money through free blogger? or is it only possible through self hosted paid ones?” no one gave an answer to that question” pls. can anyone answer that question?
Again, i like to ask also. can one join other affiliate companies when you are using blogger?
does google allow that?
@John @AFi
Yes, you can make passive income using free BlogSpot blog. You will be able to signup most of the affiliate program if you are using custom domain name. This tutorial will help you to get started: https://www.shoutmeloud.com/setup-blogspot-custom-domain.html