WordPress vs Blogger – Which Platform is best for Beginners

Last Updated on October 28, 2018

Are you new to Blogging? If yes, then this post is for you.

The greatest dilemma for a newbie Blogger or anyone who is planning on starting a blog whether as an interest or generating some side income is, to choose between the blogging platforms. Whether to write their first post on WordPress or choose Blogger to begin their career with. We will answer you in this article on WordPress vs Blogger with a detailed comparison of the two.

Anyone who is new to blogging surely has no to little idea as to What these platforms are? How do they operate? Which one is easy to use? Which one provides more functionality? and Which will be a better investment for the future?

The list of doubts is never-ending for a wannabe blogger and so is the craving for material information.

Important Mention: Here in this comparison WordPress refers to the self-hosted WordPress.org and not WordPress.com. These are two different platforms that we shall discuss in future posts.

Before jumping to the comparison let’s quickly update your database as to What is Blogger and WordPress?

Blogger

Blogger is a web-based blogging platform that is owned by Google and is absolutely free to use. All you need is a Google Account to sign up on Blogger. You can easily start your blog with blogger without any prior knowledge of blogging or hosting. Google will take care of everything.

Learn How to create a blog with Google Blogger

Features Overview

• Free Blogging Platform: Blogger doesn’t charge a penny for creating and hosting your blog. All your blogs are hosted for free under a sub-domain “Blogspot.com”. URL of your free blog will look like this (yourBlogName.blogspot.com)
• Easy to use: For a naive blogger getting into the technical stuff to start a blog can be daunting. With Blogger, Google keeps you insured with this and provide all the technical assistance required to start a blog. So you just have to log in and blog. The User Interface of Blogger is easy to use as well.
• Free Hosting: Web Hosting is the storage of a website data on web servers using high powered computers and thereon providing backend technical services that help the websites to be published and seen on the internet. Hosting Companies do this job and charge fees from their clients. Blogger provides hosting for your blog ‘free of cost’.
• Fast Indexing: It is believed that Google indexes the content available on Blogger platform much faster (within 24hrs) as when compared to WordPress or any other blogging site. It is also debated that it’s easy to rank your content (if it is unique and useful) on SERP (Search Engine Results Page)  if it’s published on Blogger.
• Adsense: Adsense is a program run by Google that enables the content publishers to monetize their content by serving relevant advertisements on their websites. Since both Blogger and Adsense are Google products, it’s easy to get an Adsense account approved through Blogger (only genuine and useful content).

WordPress

WordPress.org is an open source blogging software that is created and developed by the WordPress community. You can download WordPress software for free and install directly on to your server. According to a recent report, 30.7% of all the websites present online, are designed and powered by WordPress.

Learn How to create a blog with WordPress

Features Overview

• Customization: There are endless customizations that can be performed on a WordPress site if you know what you are doing and has some prior technical knowledge.
• Site Control: Since you purchase your own domain and hosting service for your site, the end control lands with you. You are responsible for your site. Whether it is the security or load time of the site, you need to take care of everything.
• Theme Store: WordPress undoubtedly has the largest resource of Themes and Templates to choose from. Themes are up-to-date and SEO friendly that helps your site rank on search engines.
• Plugins Support: Plugins are the add-on features that can be installed in your WordPress site. Plugins help increase the functionality and ranking of a site.

Comparison between WordPress and Blogger

• Security

Blogger is Google’s subsidiary, which means Google takes care of it no matter what. When you sign up on Blogger you get all the high-end security advantages that Google gives to its users, so you don’t have to worry much about hackers getting into your site.

WordPress, on the other hand, supports self-hosted websites. This means you are the watchman and security guard of your site. If any intruder peeks in your site you yourself have to take guard against it. Before you get too scared about your site, let me tell you that you can add some great security and backup plugins that will pretty much take care of your site.

• Authority

Blogger provides you with minimal features and almost no customization option. You have to manage with all that Google provides you with. Whether it may be some handful of Themes to select from or extremely small group of widgets that Blogger offers to its users. The tools are limited and are designed for completing a couple of tasks.

WordPress extends its functionality through thousands of plugins and themes that are available to customize a website according to the user’s needs. Since WordPress is an open source software so you can modify and do the tweaks here and there to achieve your final product.

• Customization

Blogger theme store has a limited number of themes to choose from. These themes come pre-loaded with some tools and plugins that are already fined tuned and is not customizable by the user. All you can do is change the color and font styles of the theme, but that is all you can do. There is no scope for customization.

WordPress, on the other hand, has a huge treasure of themes and plugins to choose from. You can even choose from a bundle of Premium Themes that makes your website look more professional. WordPress literally has a theme for every type of website and these themes are highly customizable according to your needs.

• Plugins

Blogger provides no plugin support on its websites. You are just dependent on the few features that come pre-loaded with the theme.

WordPress has thousands of free and paid plugins available to choose from. You can add any of these plugins to increase the functionality and looks of your website. Make sure you don’t overcrowd your site with less used plugins as it affects the load time and speed of the website.

• Transition

Blogger makes transition process a little difficult and complicated. Moving your site from Blogger can even hamper your SEO score and downgrade your page rankings. The export process is also not smooth and can sometimes result in loss of data.

WordPress makes sure that your site is ported with ease. With WordPress, you can move your site to a different domain or a different host. All this is hassle-free and can be done with a few clicks.

• Ownership

Blogger is Google’s property and hence Google holds every right over it. Google is just lending you some space on its server through Blogger and at any point of time can revoke your access to it. So this is the biggest disadvantage of a free blogging platform.

WordPress brings back ownership in your hands. Since you’re using a personal hosting service to host your site on the web, the important decisions land with you. You are in full charge of your site and can monitor third-party access too. Whether to keep your site up running or shut it down, its completely your call.

• SEO Advantage

Blogger does provide you with some added SEO advantage as Google tends to index Blogger sites more often and the indexing process is fast as well. If your content is unique and useful for the readers, you might rank easily on Google.

WordPress has a number of SEO tools and plugins that can be embedded in the website and helps optimize the site according to the search engines. These SEO plugins inform about the issues with the site and provide a solution for fixing the issue.

• Support

Blogger extends minimum and limited support through user forums and appeals forms. There is no much help or backend support that Blogger provides.

WordPress has a huge network of developers all over the world that work really hard for the effective working of WordPress. They release regular updates and useful plugins to make WordPress an ideal website builder. WordPress community is all time active so you can reach out to them through community forums and IRC chatrooms, and they will help you resolve your issue. WordPress has a robust Support System.

Conclusion – So is it WordPress or Blogger?

I will personally recommend “WordPress” for “Beginners”.

 And there are myriad reasons why I recommend WordPress over Blogger. The main ones are mentioned here;

• As a beginner, you might face trouble understanding WordPress and setting up your first website. But that is completely okay. No one is an expert in the beginning, there is a lot of practice and persistence that goes in. If you come into the Blogging world, there is already a ton of things waiting for you to be understood, so why not learn WordPress? And to be honest, if you wish to begin with WordPress you can easily learn the basics of it that are not too technical, from a pool of information that is available on the internet either in form of videos or blog post like this. Times have changed today, knowledge is being shared everywhere and if you wish to learn you can easily do that with a click of a mouse.
• Either you are starting a blog as a profession or maybe just for sharing your ideas or interest, it is better to choose a platform that is designed for the future. And who knows when your passion gets converted to a profession. There is no use for investing your time and efforts on a platform that is not been updated from a long time now which somewhat means Google is not so much interested in its own platform i.e. Blogger.
• If you wish to earn decent money from your blog either by placing advertisements or through affiliate banners, it is advisable to go for WordPress due to its customizability and compatibility of integrating HTML codes easily.
• If you wish to take Blogging as a career or want to look a professional Blogger to your audience you should go for WordPress as it gives a more professional look and dynamics to your website.
• Moreover, the future of Google’s Blogger does not look promising as there is no dedicated team taking care of the updates and upgrades on Blogger which is why it’s been ages when we saw the last update on Blogger. Whereas, WordPress is frequently backed up by a wide and strong WordPress community that is working day and night to make WordPress better for users. So, don’t place your bet on a sinking ship i.e. blogger.
• Yes, WordPress does require your money to get started on it, as it is a self -hosted platform and you need to purchase a domain and a hosting service for that. But the amount incurred in the process in nominal (maybe less than $50 a year) but will reap you great benefits in the future.

So, guys that is it. I hope you found this article helpful and if so, then don’t forget to subscribe and share this blog on social media with your friends and family or any newbie blogger who is confused as to which platform to choose to begin with. Share your views on WordPress and Blogger in the comment section below.

Happy Blogging!