WordPress vs. BlogSpot: Major Differences & Which One is Best for You?

Are you just starting out as a blogger? Are you in a tug of war of WordPress vs BlogSpot? Do you want to start a blog but not sure where to begin? If you’ve answered yes to the above-mentioned questions, here’s a guide that will be the guide last guide you will need to check in this regards.

Before beginning this guide, I anticipated that the obvious winner will be wordpress But when I recalled the experiences I had while using Blogspot, I realized that both the CMSs has a cutthroat competition. Before I begin, let me clear some air about the difference between Blogger & Blogspot

Blogger or BlogSpot?

Many beginners consider Blogger & Blogspot as one & the same, which is both right and wrong. Both point to the same platform but both are different entities altogether.

Blogger is a blogging platform & Blogspot is a free domain service provider used by blogger platform. Both these services are owned by Google and are used for each other.

If you start a blog with a free domain, you can notice blogspot.com at the end of the domain name you choose.

Ex: https://www.example.com.blogspot.com Just like the free wordpress website has(www.example.com.wordpress.com)

Therefore, the blogger is a platform and Blogspot is a domain registrar which is free. However, since Blogspot is the domain provider, people often call it a blogspot blog, just like wordpress blog.

With that said, let me drive you to the sweet spot of this guide right away.

Pros & Cons of Using Blogger

As I mentioned earlier, I started my blogging career from Blogger. I stayed on Blogger for well over 2 years, got good command over my communications skills, gained confidence that I can face the world with my knowledge. I knew wordpress since the beginning but was skeptical about it for two reasons.

Back in the day, wordpress was costly, at least for a teenager it was costly. Since I had used blogger for well over two years, I knew the limitations of the platform. Therefore it became easier for me to opt to move out to wordpress.

To save your time & make it easier for you to decide, here are some pros & cons of the blogger as a platform.

Very simple to get started: Blogger is a perfect system to begin your career in blogging. It has simple UI and easy to manage the system that will make your learning curve very smooth. It doesn’t have a lot of features, which is perfect for beginners as you can focus on your blogging and slowly learn on the go.

Easy to use & manage the blog: The blogger is a simple platform focusing only on blogging and leaving all the coding part to the system. The platform has pre-defined themes/templates that you simply select like you select topping for pizza online. All the setting in the dashboard is pretty straightforward. So simple that even your grandma can start blogging with basic knowledge of computing.

Cloud-based software owned by Google: Since there is no software to install like wordpress, you don’t have to worry about any updates, security threats of installation chores. Furthermore, you can access blogger from anywhere.

No need to buy expensive hosting spaces: Google is a big data company with endless space so all your website data will be hosted on Google servers. No matter how big your website gets, you won’t need to pay a single dime for hosting your website.

Easiest integration of Adsense: Once you have your Adsense account approved, all you have to do is link your Adsense account to blogger and you are good to go.

Ownership: Google owns this service & runs for free. This means it can shut down this service anytime but sure with notice, just like Google shut down Google+ on Apr 2nd, 2019. But don’t worry, that’s never gonna happen. Almost all official Google product blogs are hosted on Blogger. So, there’s no chance that it is going to shut down.

On the other side, wordpress runs on servers owned & maintained by hosting providers. You are free to decide what to do with your blog including where to host it & when to shut it down.

Read Also: How to Start A Blog(Detailed Step by Step Guide)

Poor Control: Blogger is a great tool to begin with but the control it gives its users is too less. Very little control & settings to manage your blog. Unlike WordPress, you cannot extend the functionality of your blogspot blog by any means. Furthermore, there are no third-party plugins that can help you customize your blogspot blog.

Appearance: When it comes to the appearance part, blogger lags a lot. It has predefined templates that you can apply and make changes to predefined layouts like changing colors, the position of certain widgets and thing like that. Furthermore, the quality of those templates is way too poor to consider. Sure, there are third party templates available but either they are paid or similar to the predefined templates.

Migration: If you decide to move out of blogger it’s not gonna be easy. Even if you manage to change your boats, your SEO will be affected big time. Even if you migrate with the utmost caution, there will be a dip in your SEO, though a little bit, but sure there will be. You can recover from that easily but if you notice a dip, you know who’s responsible for that.

Security: With blogger being a cloud software hosted on Google server, you don’t have to worry about its security. Its robust nature will ensure that you don’t lose any of your data plus margin of hacks is very thin. Unlike wordpress, you don’t need any security plugin to keep your blog safe.

Support: In spite of the fact that Blogger is a Google product, there isn’t any active support from Google for Blogger. Sure, there is a forum for Google Blogger available but I’m not sure how active these forums are. Furthermore, you can even seek help from Blogger’s official Twitter profile.

With all these cons, I don’t see a future of blogger at all. There’s hasn’t been any major update since forever. That last major update I remember was back when I using blogger s my CMS in early 2015. At the time of writing this post, I went back to blogger and it’s still the same.

WordPress vs Blogger: Which one is best for you?

One of the most common reasons admitted by beginner bloggers to choose blogspot is that Google owns it and they may get SEO benefit because of this.

This is a big fat misconception.

If that was the case, why would Google run ads of its own products on its own network?

Google owns an algorithm that is biased to none, only the best webpages rank well and reap SEO benefits. Pages that help the end users to find solutions to their problems.

I won’t say blogspot is the best place to begin your career as a blogger as there are way better options like Quora, Medium, WordPress.com, Reddit, etc. Blogspot leads ahead of these options only in one aspect, i.e security. Other than that, I don’t find blogspot appealing for anything.

Furthermore, if you are planning to start a blog to make money online, start your own business and build authority, blogspot isn’t the right place for you. Consider self-hosted wordpress or a managed wordpress hosting like WordPress, Kinsta or WPEngine.

If you simply wanna write, blogger is still isn’t the place as there are way better places to write.

And the best part

You will receive a way better response than the response you will ever get on blogger.

WordPress also has a version similar to blogger, read more about it here.

Here’s a video from Matt Cutts, speaking on Blogspot vs WordPress

What about WordPress? How is it better than Blogspot?

WordPress is open-source software that runs little over 25% of all the websites that are live on the web today. The best part of wordpress is the customizations it provides. You can do almost anything with WordPress running on your server as a CMS.

Once you install & setup wordpress on your server you are at the driver’s seat. With wordpress, you have to manage everything, from designing to updates, security maintenance & what not.

I understand that sounds too much, but there are active contributors in the wordpress community who can solve anything about the issue you have. Just start a new thread in the wordpress forum and wait for a solution.

Since there are hundreds & thousands of contributors, your issue will be resolved very quickly. Moreover, you will learn a lot about managing your wordpress blog.

When it comes to SEO advantages of WordPress over blogger, I can say WordPress is a sure sort winner. There are customizations available to make your blog search engine friendly without the help of any plugin. With the help of SEO plugins for wordpress, you can take your On-Page SEO to the next level.

WordPress not only gives you the power of customization, ability to control every inch of your website but it also covers your business goals as per your needs.

Having said that, it doesn’t mean that you should hop into wordpress right away. If you’re just starting out, jumping in would be too risky. You may lose money and most importantly, your time.

Here’s a great visualization of key differences.

Final Thoughts

Blogger is a great platform to begin with, but considering the limited support & customizing functionalities, Blogger is not an option. But if you wanna learn to play with the code of your own website, test a few things, blogspot is the place to go.

On the other hand, wordpress is more on the professional side. You can create websites for your business or a blog to make money online. Before you choose the force to be with, it is important to understand why would you want to start a blog anyway.

Once that’s clear, you will take a better decision. Blogger is a great start but has a limitation, while wordpress is limitless.

If you find this guide helpful, support it by sharing with people who’re into blogging space. This way you will share knowledge and be grateful for that.

Also, you can join my mailing list and Btricks telegram channel to get instant updates right on your mobile.

Originally published at http://www.btricks.in on April 5, 2019.