The Big Debate: WordPress Versus Blogger – which is the best?

It’s Find It Friday time again and this week the question was asked by FutureSME on our Facebook page.

Which blogging platform would we recommend?

I have to admit I have always used wordpress and so has Marie.  So to get a fair side of the picture, I asked Suz of Vibrant Ireland and Dee of Greenside Up to tell us about their experiences of blogger (their feedback is in italics).

I have noticed a somewhat ‘academic snobbery’ amongst wordpress users, suggesting that wordpress is THE only blogging platform to use, especially for business owners. Is this the case? Is wordpress more suitable for business blogging and blogger for personal blogging? Let’s find out!

WordPress*

Pros

• WordPress hosted blogs are free
• WordPress backs up their hosted blogs so you don’t have to worry about losing content
• Akismet anti-spam is superb
• It is reasonably easy to install
• There are hundreds of themes to choose from
• Easy to use
• Good for SEO
• Self hosting is possible, some html knowledge is needed
• A website can be built from a self hosted wordpress customised theme
• Lots of plugins
• Widgets are easy to add
• Has built-in visitor statistics that you can see at any time
• Static pages are listed separately in menus
• Good for team blogs as can have administrator, editors, authors and contributors.
• WordPress blogs offered much better SEO results than blogger

Cons

• Some plugins can be difficult to install if you aren’t a technie
• Limited number of plugins available on wordpress hosted blogs
• Irritating and somewhat inappropriate advertisements can pop up sporadically on the free version
• You do need some technical knowledge to update the self hosted version and to customise your theme.
• You have to update new versions of the self hosted blogs quite frequently

Blogger

Blogger is owned by Google so it may become more popular with the introduction of the Google + button. The SEO potential of blogger should improve too due to Google +.

Pros

• Easy to use and customize
• With Blogger, I am in control; I can do it myself. I can change the layout, fine tune fonts, headers, colours, page width, background, scrolling style and much more without knowing anything about code, searching help videos for guidance  or having to get my site designer to do it.
• Good for beginners
•  I blogged more on Blogger because I enjoyed blogging on Blogger.
• Has built-in visitor statistics that you can see at any time
• It is very easy to add widgets and polls (almost anything) to the sidebar
• It is easy to change the look of your blog
• Can create up to 20 static pages.

Cons

• There isn’t a self hosted version but you can buy a domain name so ‘blogspot’ isn’t part of the url
• I have repeatedly had difficulties leaving comments on blogger posts and since asking on twitter, it seems to be a common problem. This can be really frustrating especially if you’ve written a lengthy comment.
• I wish Blogger would have the SEO plugins that wordpress.org has.
• A static front page isn’t possible but can create up to 20 pages

As Susan says, there are lots of great bloggers using blogger very well.   From what I have read and researched over the last week and going by my own experiences and that of Susan,  blogger is a very user friendly platform especially for beginners and hence is particularly suited to personal blogs. I’m not saying it shouldn’t be used for business blogs but I think it will have limitations.  For business blogs, I think WordPress is the better option particularly going with the wordpress.org option for the extra features and other plug ins.

Considerations before you decide:

• Purpose of your blog – is it for business or personal use?
• Is the use of it likely to change? Will you need more functionality in the future?
• Do you have any html knowledge?  Can you afford some html help if you need it? If the answer to both is no, blogger or wordpress.com would be the better option.
• Would you like the blog to become a basic website? Then setting up a wordpress.org site will be the easiest in the long run.

Tumblr is a blogging platform that is growing in popularity and I’ll post about it next week.

Do share any thoughts you may have on the Big Debate – WordPress v Blogger.

If you are looking for help with a new blog or would like some mentoring for your blog content, do get in touch with Marie and I.

*See this post on choosing wordpress.com vs wordpress.org

Related: What’s the best blog platform to use?