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Blogger or WordPress
Which Free Blogging Platform is Best?

Two of the biggest names of free blog sites are Blogger and WordPress. Both have huge numbers of followers. WordPress has the additional option of hosting a WordPress site on your own domain with no connection to the hosted free version of WordPress. The self-hosted version of WordPress is also free. In addition a self-hosted WordPress site can be treated as a regular site and not a blog.

The two main hosted blog types, are Blogger and WordPress – you’ll find that whenever a discussion about where is the best to host your blog, if you’re not hosting it yourself, that these two services are rated the highest.

So which of the two services is better?

Ultimately, both services will offer you a strong and solid base to blog from, but there are a couple of distinct differences between Blogger and WordPress.

WordPress

WordPress hosted services are not designed to be used for commercial purposes – nevertheless, most people do.  You get a choice of themes (and without paying, you can’t design your own theme) and a choice of plugins.  You can ‘map’ your domain to the site, for a fee, giving you the appearance of hosting it yourself.

WordPress hosted (at http://wordpress.com) is almost identical to hosting it yourself, other than the obvious ‘bonus’ of not needing to look after your install.  But the disadvantages include being at the mercy of a third party site, WordPress, and needing to pay for additional services.  Even so, these still cost less than buying hosting and setting the blog up yourself. But the tradeoff here is you don’t have total control of your site for it is possible they could suspend or not allow you to have a site there anymore for violating their “rules.”

Blogger

Blogger is owned by Google, and is designed around ease of use.  You can ‘ftp’ your blog onto your own site, or host at a domain (yourblogname.blogspot.com) of your choice.

Blogger doesn’t use plugins, but does let you use your own theme, within certain limits.

A huge community has been built around Blogger, but unlike WordPress.com they allow commercial based blogs as well as non commercial, which means they are more prone to spam. Blogger also has the same provision as WordPress hosted in that they can revoke your privilege to use their platform if you violate their rules.

In conclusion if you really can’t host your own blog at your own site or don’t want to, play with both WordPress and Blogger, because ultimately, the main difference will be between which one you’re more comfortable with.  Once you determine that they it’s the one you should use.