Are you confused between Blogger vs WordPress?
Hands down, both WordPress and Blogger are the most popular blogging platforms used by millions of people.
That’s the reason Blogger vs WordPress is a never-ending comparison.
People all over the world are curious to know the major differences between Blogger and WordPress.
So which platform is better for blogging?
In this honest comparison, you’ll find out various things including;
- Pros and cons of both the platforms
- Why a self-hosted WordPress platform is better
- Key differences between WordPress vs Blogspot
- How to start a blog using WordPress and Blogger and so much more
Are you ready to find out the differences between Blogger and WordPress? Let’s get started.
Blogger vs WordPress 2022: Which Is Better for Blogging And Why?
Pros & Cons: Blogger Vs WordPress
We’ll first talk about Blogger vs WordPress pros and cons so you will get a better understanding of which platform to pick.
Pros of Blogger platform:
- Starting a blog on Blogger is extremely easy and free
- Offers free SSL and hosting so you don’t have to pay anything to run a blog
- The user interface is really good and easy to use for beginners
- You can monetize it by integrating it with Google Adsense
Cons of Blogger platform:
- You don’t own the blog, Google owns it. If you mistakenly violate Google’s terms & conditions, Google may delete your account.
- Most free Blogspot blogs don’t rank well on Google and it’s extremely difficult to build backlinks to a free Blogspot blog.
- It’s difficult to monetize a blog on the Blogger platform (besides Google AdSense)
- Fewer customizations and SEO options
- Domain redirection is not at all easy for most people
Pros of self-hosted WordPress platform:
- A self-hosted platform like WordPress gives 100% control over your site. You OWN your website, not Google or others. If you don’t like a web host, you can simply migrate to another host without losing your content.
- You can create any type of website you want starting from a simple personal website to a portfolio site, eCommerce store, and more.
- With WordPress, you will get help in a great way. They have an excellent support system in place. The documentation is great, the forums are helpful and there are chat rooms too in place to give all the help you need from experienced developers.
- You can literally find thousands of free and paid themes for your WordPress website.
- Unlimited monetization options with WordPress.org. The sky’s the limit as you can monetize with affiliate marketing, display ads such as AdSense, sell your own products, and much more.
- WordPress is user-friendly and comes equipped with lots of customization options including themes, plugins, etc.
- If you’re looking for an SEO-friendly blogging platform, WordPress is the best choice. It also offers a wide range of themes and plugins like Rank Math to help you optimize your website content for search engines like Google.
Cons of self-hosted WordPress platform:
- You need to pay for web hosting and domain.
- The maintenance and security of your self-hosted blog are totally your responsibility.
So who’s the winner?
As you can see above, there are a ton of benefits of using a self-hosted platform like WordPress when compared to Blogger. If you can spend a few bucks on web hosting, WordPress.org is the ultimate choice.
How to Start A Blog using the Blogger Platform?
Do you want to learn how to start a blog on the Blogger for free? Here’s a quick tutorial for you.
Click here to visit the Blogger platform. Once you’re on their website, click on the Create Your Blog button.
You’ll be then asked to sign in to your Gmail account. It’s totally free to create a free account on Blogger using your Google account.
Once you’ve signed into your account, you’ll see an option called “New Blog”. Once you click on it, you’ll be asked to choose a name for your blog.
Then, you’ll be asked to choose a URL for your blog (it can be considered your website’s domain).
Here’s what it looks like;
If the address is available, you can click on the Save button and you’re done creating a free blogger on the Blogger platform.
Here’s what the interface of Blogger.com looks like;
As you can see above, you can start creating new posts, change your theme, and look at your blog’s traffic stats from one place.
How to Create A Blog Using Self-Hosted WordPress Platform?
If you’ve decided to use a self-hosted blogging platform like WordPress, then you have to buy web hosting to run your websites. Here’s where most beginners make blunder mistakes by choosing free hosting or bad web hosting.
Did you know that the hosting you choose affects your site loading time and performance? Your hosting decides your website’s fate in terms of search engine rankings and loading speed.
Which hosting you may prefer? Although there are a lot of hosting companies available, we HIGHLY recommend Bluehost. It is officially recommended by WordPress itself and is used by over 2 million websites worldwide.
With Bluehost, you get a ton of useful features such as free domain, $35 per year hosting, free SSL, etc. Here are a few features Bluehost hosting offers you.
- Unlimited storage
- Unlimited bandwidth
- Install unlimited sites
- Free domain
- 24×7 support
- One-click installer for WordPress.
- Unlimited email accounts, databases, etc.
Here’s a quick tutorial on using Bluehost to start a blog on WordPress.
Click on this exclusive link to visit the Bluehost website.
Click on the Get Started Now button to continue;
Then, you’ll need to pick a hosting plan that suits your budget and website needs.
If you’re just getting started, go with their Basic plan as it costs just around $35 per year and offers a free domain.
Have a look;
See that? For just $35.40, you get 1-year hosting access to Bluehost. Once the payment is done, you’ll get a welcome email from Bluehost with your login details.
Login to your cPanel and install WordPress using the 1-click installer. That’s it, you’ve successfully created a WordPress blog using Bluehost.
Key Differences Between Blogger vs WordPress
Here are a few key differences between Blogger and WordPress.
Plugins: You can use any number of plugins you want in WordPress.org whereas in Blogger you don’t have the functionality of plugins, which means you won’t find any plugins in the Blogger platform that’s the major defect.
Plugins provide greater functionality to a WordPress blog that provides much security, speediness, quality maintenance, and easiness to WP users. There are thousands of useful plugins out there in the WP plugin directory that are mostly available for free of cost, although there are premium plugins that add premium value to your blogs.
If you’re curious, WordPress currently offers over 59,000 FREE plugins.
Support: What if your WordPress blog suddenly stops running or what if someone hacks your site?? If you use Blogger, you just have to visit the support forums for assistance. But if you are using the WordPress platform, you will have personal support and assistance will be available from the hosting company in case you lost your entire data or if someone hacks your site, it is very easy to get it back.
Did you know that WordPress is offered in 120+ languages whereas Blogger is offered only in 50 languages? And both of these platforms have built-in visitor stats to check your site traffic.
When you are creating pages, you can only create up to 10 static pages on Blogger whereas, in WordPress, you can create an unlimited number of pages.
Regular expense: Blogger is FREE of cost. You don’t have to spend even a penny to run these blogs, you don’t need to even buy a domain name if you are okay with the blogspot.com extension. You don’t need to buy a separate hosting or you don’t need to worry about the security, Blogger itself has robust security which is why most new bloggers start with Blogspot blogs.
Suggested Reading: How to Create A Free Blog On Blogspot And Start Making Money
Blogger platform sites are free whereas WordPress blogs are PREMIUM. They are not for free, you have to buy a separate domain name that actually ends with a .com or .net extension and you also have to get premium hosting for your blogs to run uninterruptedly.
But WordPress blogs are not so cost-effective, you just have to spend $8/year on domain names and $10/month of web hosting – and you will have the COMPLETE access to your blogs and you will have total control over your blogs. Here’s an article about choosing the domain names from the most reliable companies.
Themes: What we like about the WordPress blogs is this: they have beautiful themes that are ranging from free to premium are available. “First impression is the last impression in blogging” – without having an appealing design, your efforts will go in vain because most online readers read the content on blogs that have beautiful typography and design.
WordPress offers over 9700 FREE themes.
Whereas Blogger doesn’t provide many variations in themes, you will probably end up using free and nulled themes which may cause bad SERP results for your blogs in the long run.
Independent site: We used the term “Independent” because all the WordPress.org blogs are fully controlled by their users. You will NEVER depend on the WordPress directory or databases to upload or download content. When you are using Blogger blogs, the Google team has all the rights to delete all of your contents without even letting you know!
Here are a few more compelling reasons you should always choose self-hosted WordPress over Blogger blogging platforms.
- WordPress has greater accessibility. It means you can virtually create and manage your content from anywhere in the world.
- WordPress CMS inspires repeated visitors. It also allows you to easily add automated email notifications to let your readers know about your stuff.
- WordPress helps you establish authority. We all know that visitors won’t get inspired to buy from strangers. They always buy stuff from experts, the ones who consider an authority. Fortunately, with self-hosted WordPress, you can easily create perceived industry authority.
- WordPress is easy to use and learn. Even if you are not tech-savvy, by seeing tutorials (there are so many WordPress tutorials out there), you can learn how to manage your sites from scratch.
So how to get started with these blogging platforms?
If you want a free blog, go to Blogger.com and sign up for a free account. If you want a premium blog where you can have total control over your blogs, go to WordPress.org and do the rest!
Here are 3 basic questions that will decide which blogging platform is right for you.
#1. Do you want to make money from your site?
If yes, go for WordPress because you will have full control over your sites. We know you can make money from Blogger blogs too but Google has control over it, so if it decides to delete your site, your efforts will go in vain.
#2. Is ownership important to you?
If yes, WordPress is the ONLY option. Because you are the owner.
#3. How much flexibility do you want from your blogs?
If a lot, go for WordPress as you can tweak it, however, your want.
You can’t do much with Blogger blogs. They have limited flexibility.
In a nutshell about Blogger vs WordPress: Don’t use free blogs if you are serious about making money blogging. If you are someone who is blogging for fun, you can use a free blogging platform like Blogger. If not, only use WordPress to start your blogging journey successfully. The choice is yours – whether you are serious or not.
And not to mention, you have full control over your WordPress sites whereas, in the Blogger platform, Google controls your site. That means if you violate any of its rules, they will delete it without even notifying you!
Recommended: Best WordPress Alternatives Worth Trying in 2022
Why Is WordPress Better Than Blogger?
WordPress is undoubtedly the no. 1 content management system in the world.
Most successful bloggers use WordPress as their blogging platform not just because of its robustness, but because it has the great ability to handle the security of a blog. Most bloggers, especially the new bloggers are confused between selecting Blogger blogging platform and WordPress.org (a self-hosted WordPress blogging platform).
The main difference between Blogger.com blog vs self-hosted WordPress is the price factor. Blogger is a free resource to launch your blogs, where you just focus on the content and leave the rest to the Google team whereas WordPress.org is a self-hosted platform where you have to buy hosting for your blogs.
The difference is the overall controlling power. You will have more control and power to access your sites if you use WordPress, you won’t have any control over your sites if they are hosted on the Blogger platform.
If you are thinking about building a profitable business online, you MUST use the best content management system to keep yourself secure. It’s so important to analyze the future of WordPress or blogging if you want to succeed in the crowded niche. We will now discuss why WordPress is the best CMS and the future of WordPress.
WordPress is super secure
WordPress sites are extremely safe and there are a ton of tools and plugins you can use to keep away hackers from intruding on your sites. This is the reason why self-hosted WordPress always wins over Blogger.com vs WordPress.org comparison.
But WordPress is well known for its regular updates, it is what makes WordPress the most secure content management system in the world.
WordPress is the largest CMS
WordPress is used by 64.2% of all the websites.
Not only because WordPress provides awesome features like great plugins, best SEO, and a super supporting system but also because even the non-tech-savvy people can find it easy to use.
With more and more users using WordPress as their blogging platform, it’s very easy for WordPress CMS to beat its competition in the near future. Most people are now realizing that before making money blogging – it’s essential to invest money online. It’s why most bloggers are now migrating from blogger to WordPress platform, it’s indicating the importance of WordPress!
Social media plays the key role
The reality of the most successful blogs online is this: they use social media as their biggest asset, most successful bloggers spend quality time reaching out to their targeted audience using social media sites like Facebook, Twitter, etc. Why social media becomes the futures of WordPress and successful blogging?
Whether you know it or not, social media shares affect your search engine rankings. So if you are thinking to grow your traffic, especially from search engines, increase your social shares. This is easy if you have access to the right plugins to make it easy for your readers to share your stuff.
Look at the image below to see a list of few plugins offered by WordPress for social sharing;
Unfortunately, a Blogger blog doesn’t have that many social sharing options. On other hand, WordPress offers plenty of options to let your blog visitors share your blog content on social media sites without any hassle.
There are millions of blogs being created every month, which means there’s so much noise out there, that someone without any online reputation hardly survives in the blogging world.
It’s why you need to spend time on social media sites to create a thriving audience around your blogs in the long run.
Content marketing is the NEW king
Have you ever thought about why content is the REAL king? Great content (that is perfectly optimized for search engines and readers) is what makes your blog stand out from the crowd.
People use Google to solve their problems or to entertain themselves. So it’s important for you to create great content that solves your readers’ problems.
Creating and organizing content is not easy, especially with the limited features of the Blogger platform. But if you are on WordPress, you will find unlimited possibilities from creating an editorial calendar to maintaining your blog posting frequency.
Even if you are non-tech savvy, you will find it super easy to build and maintain a blog with WordPress. So WordPress wins when it comes to Blogger and WordPress comparison.
With the help of the greatest content management system like WordPress, it becomes a cakewalk for you to develop your content marketing strategy online.
WordPress becomes more search engine friendly
Undoubtedly, search engine optimization is the key to blogging success. Without bringing organic traffic to your blogs, it’s nearly impossible to build a profitable blog for your online business or boost your online brand.
Search engine traffic is the key to any profitable blog that makes money. If your blogging platform is not searching friendly then you will probably be going to encounter serious issues related to site functionality that cost you search traffic.
WordPress offers a wide range of SEO plugins as well.
We don’t mean anyway that Blogger is not a good platform for increasing your search rankings but it has limited ability whereas WordPress is made for driving more organic traffic.
So what are you waiting for? If you haven’t created a blog yet, start blogging by using the WordPress platform – I’m sure you are going to love it. Or if you are already into blogging, but not using WordPress, then we strongly recommend using it, you will notice the BEST results after switching to WordPress.
FAQs | Blogger versus WordPress
Here are a few questions related to Blogger and WordPress platforms.
Is BlogSpot and Blogger the same?
Blogger is a free publishing platform developed by Google while Blogspot is a free domain service provider (owned by Google).
Will Google shut down Blogger?
You never know. After the termination of Google Plus, most people are afraid to use the Blogger platform developed by Google. If you’re serious about blogging and brand building, it’s a smart idea to go for a self-hosted platform like WordPress.
Is WordPress free or paid?
WordPress.com is free and WordPress.org is where you need to purchase hosting and domain. The difference is you get access to plugins, themes, and better security with WordPress.org.
Is WordPress good for beginners?
Yes, WordPress is an excellent choice for beginners. It offers an easy-to-use interface and a ton of options to customize your site however you want.
Is Blogger or WordPress better?
Blogger is better for people who take blogging as a fun hobby whereas WordPress.org is better if you want to make money, build your brand, take control of your site, etc.
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Final Thoughts On Blogger Vs WordPress for SEO
If you’re looking for a powerful blogging platform that lets you easily monetize and drive more search traffic, go with WordPress.
If you’re looking to start a free blog or blogging for fun, Blogger is the BEST choice.
Blogger is a great blogging platform for starters. If you don’t have any online skills (be it writing, marketing, or networking) and you want to test the waters, then Blogger.com is the best platform to start with.
But if you’re serious about making money online and building your brand in the long run, you should definitely consider getting a self-hosted platform such as WordPress.org.
So what do you think about Blogger.com vs WordPress.org? Have any questions? Let us know in the comments.