One of the internet’s favorite pastimes is blogging. While it initially started out as a way to share information with friends, family, and others interested in your topic, it’s now become a very prominent way to engage your business in content marketing.
Are you looking to start a new blog? Not sure if you should use WordPress vs Blogger as your blog platform? We are here to help and have the perfect comparison guide for you.
WordPress and Blogger are undoubtedly the best-known blogging platforms on the web today. You can easily create a blog regardless of whether you use Blogger or WordPress, but the truth is that they both work quite differently.
WordPress vs Blogger can become a pretty heated debate, but we’re here to set the record straight with all of the information you need to make the best choice.
What to Look for in Your Blog Platform?
We are just as excited to get into WordPress vs Blogger as you are, but first we should give you some elements to consider when choosing a platform for blogging. As you read through the article, keep the following in mind:
- Ease of Use: A good blogging platform should be quick to set up, add content, and grow your audience and viewership.
- Flexibility: Your platform should allow you to add more features and functionalities as your blow grows over time.
- Support: It’s possible that you need support as you create your blog, design it, or manage it. You want to make sure that your blogging platform has a knowledge base, contact point, or support hub for quick and easy help.
- Monetization Options: Are you looking to monetize your content creation efforts through your blog? If you are, you need to choose a blogging platform that has effective monetization options.
These are four key factors that can help you in our WordPress vs Blogger showdown to make the best choice for your needs. In addition, you’ll also need to consider things like price, themes and templates, user interface, SEO optimization features, available plugins, and more.
That being said, it’s finally time— WordPress vs Blogger! Iconic. Who do you think will win?
Note: This comparison is between the self-hosted WordPress.org vs Blogger, not WordPress.com vs Blogger.
Overview – WordPress vs Blogger
To start our WordPress vs Blogger duel, we need to consider what the two platforms really are. Both WordPress and Blogger are known as the most widely-used blogging platforms on a global scale.
WordPress does edge out Blogger in usage, though; according to Blogger usage statistics provided by BuiltWith, Blogger has a bit over 635k live sites compared to WordPress’s 28 million plus. That’s a pretty stark contrast!
WordPress is used by roughly 38% of all sites considered to be in the top one million sites, and among those sites, a whopping 95% uses WordPress. Blogger comes in second place still, used by roughly 1% of the top one million sites.
We also took a look at Google Trends to find out historically how people search for WordPress vs Blogger over the time range 2004-present. Here are the findings:
As you can see from the screenshot, Blogger had a lead on WordPress for about 4 years, and in January of 2007, WordPress became more popular in searches and never looked back, as it still remains the most popular platform for blogging.
What is WordPress?
WordPress.org was started in 2003 and now powers a significant 38% of all websites on the internet. WordPress allows you to create a website, blog, or online store via their free, open source software.
You can download the WordPress software for free and then use it on as many different sites as you wish. In order to create a blog on WordPress, you’ll need to buy a hosting plan as well as a domain name so you can install wordpress on a separate website.
It may sound a bit confusing, but it isn’t too complicated at the end of the day. There are plenty of WordPress tutorials on how to do it in a quick and easy way. Once you get everything installed and set up, you are ready and free to create.
What is Blogger?
Blogger has a big-name parent company— Google. It’s been around since 1999 and was started by Pyra Labs, only to be acquired by Google shortly after in 2003.
Using Blogger, you can create a completely free blog, paying nothing at all, and you’ll also get a free Blogspot subdomain. A subdomain is a separate segment of a main website domain, so you won’t have a dedicated web URL, but it will look something like this:
https:// yourblogname.blogspot.com/
The main domain remains blogspot, but you share a small piece of it with your free blog. If you prefer to have your own custom domain name, you can do that as well. First, you’ll need to register a domain name with a domain registrar like Namecheap, GoDaddy, and others.
After you’ve registered your domain name, you will simply connect it to your blog.
Now that we know some background info about the two platforms, let’s get into the true comparison. The first topic up on WordPress vs blogger is ease of use!
Ease of Use – Blogger vs WordPress
A vast majority of people who are looking to create their own blog aren’t bonafide web developers. Perhaps they own a small business, a non-profit, or some other organization, and they simply want to share their ideas with the internet community or try out a new hobby— blogging.
If they want to adopt this hobby, they’ll need a user-friendly blogging platform that doesn’t require a great deal of technical knowledge.
Blogger — Ease of Use
Blogger is a basic blogging tool that allows you to create a blog in a matter of minutes. You’ll need a Google account to get started, as that’s the only way to sign into your Blogger account.
Visit the Blogger website and sign up using your Google account. You’ll follow a simple three-step process that asks you to name your blog, choose your domain name, and confirm your blog’s display name.
After you finish those three steps, your Blogger site will be set up. You can then move on to configure your blog settings, choose a blog layout, and add your first post.
In terms of WordPress vs Blogger, the setup process of Blogger is pretty straightforward. It’s easy to get going, but if you’re looking to customize your blog’s theme, it becomes a lot more complicated. You’ll need HTML skills to do that— you may have some from the old Myspace days, but if you don’t have any HTML skills, you’ll struggle to customize your blog in the way that you want.
WordPress — Ease of Use
Setting up a blog in WordPress is a quick, straightforward process. There’s no coding or HTML involved; all you’ll need to do is follow the prompts on the computer screen to set up your WordPress account and install WordPress plugins.
On top of that, there's tons of cheap hosting providers for WordPress that make it painless to set up.
You can get everything customized and ready to go in less than thirty minutes, in fact, so your blog will be ready to share with the world in no time. Once the basic setup is complete, we’re ready to move on to one thing that stands out in WordPress vs Blogger — themes.
You can choose from a wide range of WordPress themes; a theme is a template for your blog that controls how it appears to users who visit it.
Once you choose a theme that you like, you can move on to installing the best WordPress plugins to add additional features to your WordPress blog.
After all that is done, you’re ready to create your first blog post. It’s a very straightforward process; simply click the New button at the top of the page.
When you create a blog post on WordPress, the editor organizes your content into blocks, making it incredibly easy to customize each portion as you wish, add text content, add images, media, videos, and more. The block editor is extremely useful.
In terms of WordPress vs. Blogger, Blogger’s editing platform looks a lot more reminiscent of Google Docs.
WordPress, on the other hand, has not only the block editor but also drag-and-drop page builders that allow for customization of just about everything.
It’s true that the setup for Blogger is quicker, but WordPress allows you to create your blog exactly as you want it and has more intuitive editors and themes.
WordPress vs Blogger Winner: WordPress.
Ownership – Blogger vs WordPress
The second area we will take into account in the WordPress vs Blogger duel is ownership. Ownership is another vital element to consider when creating a blog.
If you have ownership of your blog, you’ll be able to have control over everything— what you do with it, how you handle it, how you monetize it, and when it gets shut down.
Who Owns Your Blog on Blogger?
Blogger is a free blogging platform provided by Google, which is free, reliable, and has sufficient features for you to create a blog and get your content out to the world on the internet.
Unfortunately, it’s not owned by you.
Because Google provides this blogging service, it has the power to shut it down at any time, or even shut down your access to it. It’s exactly like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube— people can be suspended from the platform at any moment.
Even if you don’t get yourself suspended, if Google decides to stop supporting Blogger one day, your blog is in jeopardy and could be lost.
Who Owns Your Blog on WordPress?
When you use WordPress as a blogging platform, you use a WordPress hosting provider to host your site. You can decide how long your blog runs for, and there’s no chance it will be shut down without any warning.
What’s more, no matter which WordPress hosting provider you select at the beginning, you’re not tied to any particular one. As your blog grows, you could decide to move your WordPress site to a more powerful WordPress hosting provider, such as WP Engine.
In terms of WordPress vs Blogger, Blogger doesn’t allow you to migrate your blog to any other website except for Blogger, making it less flexible.
Using WordPress allows you to own your site, your data, and control everything about what happens on your site.
WordPress vs Blogger winner: WordPress.
Control and Flexibility – Blogger vs WordPress
The third section in the WordPress vs Blogger arena is about control and flexibility— what can you actually do with your blog and how much say do you have in terms of what happens?
Does your blog allow you to fully control its design? Can you add new features and functionalities to your blog as you wish?
Here’s our take on WordPress vs Blogger on control and flexibility.
Blogger Control and Flexibility
Blogger’s design clearly reflects that of a simple, everyday blogging tool, so the things that you can do on your Blogger blog aren’t fully comprehensive. There are customization options, though.
If you navigate to the layout section of the left sidebar, you’ll be taken to a page that has a rough skeleton of your blog and offers you the ability to add Gadgets. Gadgets are similar to plugins, and they offer you features such as advertising, blog search, archive, subscription links, contact forms, and more.
While it’s great that they offer added functionalities, all of these gadgets are provided by Google and you don’t have any other alternatives— you have to use what Google provides.
If you’re looking for advanced functions like popups, e-commerce features, integrations, and more, you’re out of luck. They simply don’t exist on Blogger, which can ultimately limit your potential to make money on your blog as well as what you can get your blog to do.
WordPress Control and Flexibility
Because WordPress is an open source software, there is a lot of flexibility in adding supporting plugins to bring new features to your blog. You can add virtually any feature you can imagine to your WordPress blog through the use of third-party integrations and plugins.
WordPress offers thousands of free and paid WordPress plugins that can completely transform the functionality of your blog and expand on the default features WordPress provides.
You can do things like:
- Add an online store to your website
- Add popups and opt-in media
- Create WordPress forms to engage with visitors
- Add social sharing buttons
- And much, much more
If you are more advanced in your tech skills, you can create custom plugins by coding and use them on your blog as you wish.
So, how does WordPress vs Blogger compare in terms of customization and flexibility? There’s no question that WordPress is the best option for bloggers who want the capability to add additional features and customizations to their blog, especially those who want to grow their blog or build an online business.
WordPress vs Blogger winner: WordPress
Appearance and Design Options
Let’s move on to WordPress vs Blogger and how they measure up in terms of appearance and design. As you can imagine, if you want to attract visitors to your blog and get them to stick around, the appearance and design of your blog is a key factor.
Your blog’s appearance should make an impact on the visitor and encourage them to engage with your content so that your bounce rate doesn’t skyrocket.
The design should also offer visitors an exceptional user experience; it should be easy to navigate to increase the amount of time visitors spend on your blog.
Blogger Design Options
Blogger provides its users with a set of limited design templates in a range of colors. The templates are basic and have been recycled on many different Blogger blogs. Blogger offers these blog design options:
- Contempo (5 color themes)
- Soho (5 color themes)
- Emporio (5 color themes)
- Notable (5 color themes)
- Essential
- Simple (6 color themes)
- Dynamic Views (6 color themes)
- Picture Window (3 color themes)
- Awesome Inc (6 color themes)
- Watermark (4 color themes)
Those are all of the options Blogger provides to tailor the appearance and design of your blog. You can also change the colors and layouts using built-in tools, but you won’t be able to make any modifications or create your own templates.
You may be able to find non-official Blogger templates out there, but you’ll need to pay for them and it’s very difficult to find ones that are high quality.
With limited options from Blogger for templates, customization, and layout choices, Blogger remains a bit dated when it comes to appearance and design.
WordPress Blog Design Options
There are thousands of free and premium themes available in WordPress, making it much easier to choose the ideal theme for your WordPress blog.
WordPress themes are available for virtually any type of website that you can think of, so no matter what your side is about, you’ll be able to choose from a range of high-caliber themes that allow for plenty of modifications.
There are not only thousands of themes, but thousands of those themes are free. If you’re looking for more options, you can work with a third-party theme provider such as Astra Themes, TemplateMonster, Themify, and others.
Additionally, you can create your own custom WordPress themes, no code required.
Again, looking at WordPress vs Blogger, there’s a clear distinction in appearance and design options.
WordPress vs Blogger winner: WordPress.
Security – WordPress vs Blogger
Security is another key component in our WordPress vs Blogger debate. You want to ensure that your blog will remain safe even in the event that your site gets blacklisted or hacked. If not, you may lose months, or even years, of your hard blogging work.
Security in Blogger
Because Blogger’s platform is provided by Google, you have peace of mind knowing that your blog is taking advantage of Google’s secure platform. You won’t have to deal with things such as managing server resources, securing your blog, or creating backups.
The one downside here, though, is that if Blogger goes down, your site also goes down, so you have zero control over downtimes. All Blogger sites go down when the main domain is down. You can’t recover or access your blog if the site is down.
Security in WordPress
WordPress is secure on its own, but because it’s a self-hosted solution, you are ultimately responsible for securing your site and creating backups.
This may sound disappointing, but WordPress makes it easy through the use of effective and expansive plugins that do all of the heavy lifting.
For instance, there are a handful of best WordPress backup plugins to choose from, and you can use a site such as Sucuri for firewall and site security, among other options.
WordPress vs Blogger winner: Tie.
Support – WordPress vs Blogger
As we continue the discussion on WordPress vs Blogger, it’s time now to move on to support. If you get stuck while creating your blog or new posts, you may need some help along the way. Let’s find out what type of support both options offer.
Blogger Support
Support options are limited for Blogger. There is some basic documentation provided and a user form, but that’s pretty much it. There is a Help icon in the top right corner that allows you to search for topics and find related documentation, but options are very limited.
Blogger is a free service, so it simply isn’t feasible for Google to provide one-on-one user support.
WordPress Support
WordPress also offers an array of documentation and forums, but the support is much more robust for WordPress. There are Q&A forums for each theme and plugin on WordPress as well as a comprehensive knowledge base for users to find information about getting started, installing WordPress, basic usage, admin, customizing, maintenance, security, advanced topics, and troubleshooting.
Because WordPress is a self-hosted blog platform, you can also get support from your WordPress hosting provider and support from any paid WordPress plugin providers.
If that’s still not enough, there are literally thousands of online tutorials created by WordPress developers and you can find countless tutorial videos via YouTube as well.
All in all, WordPress has a much larger community of support and due to the nature of the platform, you have more resources and avenues to get help.
WordPress vs Blogger winner: WordPress.
Future – Blogger vs WordPress
If you want your blog to continue to expand, the future of the blogging platform you choose is important. We’ll now consider in our WordPress vs Blogger comparison where each platform may be going in the next year, five years, and beyond.
Your Blog’s Future on Blogger
Blogger hasn’t seen any major updates in quite some time. Not only that, Google has proceeded to remove some popular services over the years, including Google Reader, FeedBurner, and Google Adsense.
At the end of the day, the future of Blogger is completely dependent on what Google decides to do, and they are within their right to shut it down when they see fit. As it can be tough to predict what decisions Google will make, your blog hinges on the unknown.
Your Blog’s Future on WordPress
WordPress isn’t dependent on any one company or individual; it’s managed by a community of both developers and users because it is open source software. If you’re curious about the course of WordPress over the years, check out WordPress History.
And, as we mentioned earlier, WordPress is responsible for about 38% of all sites on the internet, leaving thousands of businesses and bloggers on a global scale depending on the platform.
There’s absolutely no indication that WordPress is going anywhere anytime soon, and you have complete control over when your site is shut down or whether you want to continue to expand it.
WordPress vs Blogger winner: WordPress.
Portability – WordPress vs Blogger
While the goal of our WordPress vs Blogger comparison is to help you choose the best platform for your blogging needs, you may need to move your site at one point for whatever reason. It’s a good idea to check and see if your blog platform helps you to move to another platform securely.
Blogger Blog Portability
Blogger does allow you to export your content, but your data will remain on Google’s servers for quite some time. It’s not a simple task to move your site away from the Blogger platform.
What’s more, It’s likely that you’ll lose your SEO (search engine optimizations and rankings), followers, and subscribers during the migration.
WordPress Blog Portability
As you may have guessed based on other sections of WordPress vs Blogger, WordPress allows you the freedom to move your site as you wish. You can select a new WordPress hosting provider, you can change your domain name, or even move it to another CMS (content management system) completely.
WordPress vs Blogger winner: WordPress.
Pricing – Blogger vs WordPress
The final consideration for the WordPress vs Blogger debate comes down to price. You don’t want your blog to become a financial strain and you also don’t want to limit yourself to only free if you need more resources to expand your blog.
Here we’ll consider how both options measure up in terms of money and opportunity.
Cost of Making a Blog in Blogger
Blogger’s service is entirely free— hosting, Blogspot domain, themes, gadgets, and everything else are also free. You could, if you wanted more options, pay for a third-party theme.
Also, if you want to use your own custom domain name, you’ll need to buy it from a domain name registration company like Namecheap or others. The standard price for a domain name is roughly $6-$15 and Namecheap frequently offers promo codes.
Blogger is a free platform that has a few small costs to make your blog more effective in the long run.
Cost of Making a Blog in WordPress
WordPress is also free, but you’ll have to buy a domain name as well as a hosting plan to begin.
There are many options for WordPress hosting providers in all types of price ranges, but if you’re looking for a powerful host that has the highest uptimes, quickest loading speeds, and most robust features and support, WP Engine is the best choice.
Costs that you incur after choosing your hosting plan depend entirely on you. There are both free and paid themes and plugins for WordPress, so paid ones will obviously cost you more.
That said, if you know how to use them strategically, paid themes and plugins for WordPress can help you to generate more revenue if your goal is to monetize your blog, so they may be a worthwhile investment.
The truth is that on either WordPress vs Blogger you can create both sites for a very insignificant cost, and it depends on what you’re willing to pay. It could be either incredibly cheap or costly based on what you require.
WordPress vs Blogger winner: Tie.
Conclusion: Blogger vs WordPress – Which One Is Better?
WordPress and Blogger are the two most popular options for blogging on a global scale. At the end of the day, you must choose one, and it depends on the purpose of your blog.
If you’re looking to make a personal blog and just want to share written stories, Blogger is a viable option.
If your goals are to create a long-term, professional blog that you can build towards monetization, there’s no contest in terms of WordPress vs Blogger— WordPress is the clear winner here.
WordPress offers a world of capability and functionality; you can add a shop, create a membership-based website, incorporate marketing tools, ultimately earning money.
We hope that you enjoyed our WordPress vs Blogger comparison and that now you have an idea of which platform might be better for your blog!
Which platform are you going to use? Why? Let us know in the comments!
If you found WordPress vs Blogger helpful, share it with someone who might as well! Also, if you’re wondering about e-commerce and WordPress, check out our Shopify vs WordPress comparison.
