Devil’s Advocate: 5 Reasons Why You Should Use Blogger Instead Of WordPress
Darnell Clayton wrote this post on February 16th, 2010 in
21 Comments
Despite the power and popularity of WordPress amongst the blogging elite (at least upon the Techmeme Leaderboard), Blogger still remains the dominant blogging platform in the world, with the glorious WP coming in at a distant second.
Some in the WordPress faith may wonder why anyone would consider using Blogger, especially since WordPress boasts thousands (or is it tens of thousands?) of plugins, themes and developers–not to mention awesome smartphone apps upon the iPhone, Blackberry and Google’s very own Android OS.
However upon closer examination, BlogSpot fans may not be as “delusional” as some geeks may think for choosing Google over Automattic, as there are at least 5 major advantages of using Blogger instead of WordPress–both WP.com and WP.org.
No matter how you slice it or dice it, Blogger is just far cheaper when it comes to blogging underneath your custom domain.
Backed by the mighty Google, Blogger is free when it comes to hooking up your domain. WordPress charges you $10 per domain (and that is on top of what you pay for registering your domain elsewhere).
While this may seem like a small price to pay, the bill can add up quickly if you own 5 or 6 domains.
2) Image Hosting
When it comes to default image hosting, WordPress beats Blogger 3 times over (as the former offers 3 gigabytes of default space vs Google’s 1 gigabyte).
However when it comes to upgrading to the next level on both accounts, Blogger destroy’s WordPress by offering users 20 GB of space for $5/year while WP.com offers users 5GB of space for about $20/year (note: the options become worse for us WP fans the higher up we go).
3) Video Hosting
If image hosting wasn’t bad enough, the video options alone will make one weep when you consider that WordPress charges users $60/year to use VideoPress–a fee that does not include any extra space.
BlogSpot fans on the other hand are offered video uploading for free (thanks to Google Video), with no limits on space.
4) Themes: Free for thee, but not for me?!
Despite Blogger’s popularity, WordPress (to my knowledge) still has more custom themes than its Google rival. However a new trend that I am noticing is that many premium WordPress themes are available for FREE (or very cheap) on Blogger.
One example (out of many) would be a premium WordPress theme called Church is available for $60 for WP fans. BlogSpot lovers however can get the same exact theme for free.
In fact there are many sites out there (like WordPress To Blogger) that convert premium WordPress themes to Blogger for free or very inexpensive prices (note: I am not sure how legal these businesses are, but thus far they seem to have faced little action against the original creators).
5) Security
This last point is probably debatable, but lets just face the facts: Google has one of the most secure platforms in the world.
Although WordPress.com and many hosting companies (such as Media Temple, Host Monster and GoDaddy) provide excellent security for their customers, the fact that Google can take on foreign hackers from semi-hostile nations speaks volumes about how tough their defenses are.
So is Blogger better than WordPress?
Answer: That depends on who you ask. ;-)
I personally use WordPress for most of my blogging needs right now, although I do also use other platforms such as Tumblr, Joomla–and yes, even Blogger.
However now that I’m done playing Devil’s Advocate, I’m interested in hearing what your opinion is regarding these two rival platforms (and the reasons why you chose one over the other).
There are many points to make here, but the main one I want to make is regarding your first point:
Basically, if you’re going to use your own domain with WordPress, then you’re not going to use the wordpress.com site, you’re going to download the stuff off wordpress.org and use it, making your only cost the cost for hosting, which is much better than paying $10 /month.
It seems like most of these advantages relate only to WP.com. The self-hosted versions of WP don’t share the restrictions you’ve listed here. The themes and security are an issue.
But as you said, the Blogger version of the themes don’t seem to be legal. And security is based more on your host than the platform itself.
For me and my blog i prefer still wordpress cause it a lot of people use it and many of the theme is good and clean.
I’ve been using privately hosted WordPress installs since back in the 1.X days, so I’m pretty entrenched and comfortable with the platform at this point. I’d consider trying Blogger, but to my knowledge there isn’t an open source distribution out there that I can unzip and upload to my space.
If you have even a minimal bit of technical knowhow then it’s easy to take off the training wheels and host your own WordPress install rather than relying on a company to maintain the backend for you. At that point there’s no question in my mind as to which is the superior platform.
There are porbably 100 reasons why you should use wp instead of blogger. I think number 4 is a particular stretch on your part Darnell, with assuming no legal harm because of a lack of (publicized) law suits.
I’ve used Blogger for about 5 years, but have recently begun to build a self hosted WordPress blog. I have to tell you I’m finding it a lot harder to do that which Blogger. I started two different versions of my new blog just for giggles one on Blogger, one self hosted WordPress. I’m done with the Blogger one. I’m running into all kinds of issues with the WP one. I have to say, without some assistance from someone more WP savvy than me, I may have to stay with Blogger.
Hi Darnell,
By the tone of the comments following your post, doesn’t exactly look like any of your readers really use “Blogger” except for Todd. As for me, hey, I like Blogger, I don’t use, but I like it. Please ……… grab a mitt and get in the game!
Devil’s Advocate indeed!
Jeffrey,
Actually, my blog started on blogger, and I moved on when I felt it was limiting what I could do with my blog.
Haven’t been happier since running my self-hosted wordpress blog.
My last blog was on blogger (http://clapico.blogspot.com) but as I’m writing about open source, I now use wordpress wich is open source
I agree with Todd that the article is really comparing WordPress.com and not WordPress, the technology. I have both Blogger and WordPress blogs (self-hosted) and the advantages of WP over Blogger are so huge that there really isn’t a comparison anymore.
However, I’d lay it out this way:
Blogger: Quick, up and running; useful for the true blogger, journalist type. Good for the straight arrow blogger type who wants nothing more than to develop a readership where the blog posts are the entire focus.
Wordpress (self-hosted): BlogSITE. WordPress blogs are not really blogs, they’re entire websites, CMS, whatever you want to call it. Good for hosting just about anything – true blog, blogsite, e-commerce site, community/forum, ANYTHING. That’s what all of those plugins are for, after all.
Wordpress.com: Not really a competitor in this case. Lots of people sign up, and stop blogging (like I did) because it’s just so inflexible. And it IS ludicrous that you have to pay that money just to hook up your domain; it’s not like it costs them anything extra.
I do want to say that there are cross-over services coming out now, like mine, which is http://bizchickblogs.com. These services offer the flexibility and functionality of self-hosted WordPress with easy setup of Blogger. With free custom domain.
P.S. since leaving this comment, I’ve stopped offering hosting at BizChickBlogs.com. Just FYI.
Still wordpress have more features and get more search hits compared to blogger
I think wordpress (self-hosted) is the best for pros. For people who don’t want to earn money by blogging, blogger suits them better.
I don’t really agree. Blogger if used properly can generate a good income for its owner. The basic rule would be to use your own domain and a great template.
The 4th point by Darren is pretty true but I can only see bloganol doing something pretty grey in law point of view, the site you mentioned that converts wordpress to blogger seems to only convert for free according to people’s request and must be a free wp theme. Nothing illegal there.
I started with Blogger a couple of years ago, but had problems with either my browser (Safari) or operating system (Mac OS X) – didn’t quite figure it out. So I switched to WordPress and never looked back.
Tia is quite right that WordPress.com is more inflexible – and yes, it does cost money to add things that Blogger does for free, and, yes, you can monetise Blogger out of the box.
But Todd Michael Greene says “without some assistance from someone more WP savvy than me, I may have to stay with Blogger”. Well, that’s one big advantage of using WordPress.com – it is a good route for upgrading to self-hosted WordPress. Get to grips with the user interface and functionality of WordPress.com first, then take the big step of moving to your own host.