Your Blog: WordPress or Blogger?

WordPress and Blogger are two blogging platforms that have been around a long time. Each has its advantages and disadvantages. Both will allow you to get a blog up and running fairly quickly. But if you are trying to decide between the two, you'll want to consider your blogging goals and size up how each platform can help you reach them.

Whether you want to publish personal writing, put together an online portfolio or start a monetized blog, there are criteria you are going to want to evaluate:

• ease of use
• designs and customization
• features and plug-ins
• scalability and monetization
• support and resources
• cost

Depending on the purpose of your blog, some of these traits may be more important to you than others.

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WordPress and Blogger are both very friendly to the new blogger. They are easy to set up and get started. Of the two, Blogger may have the advantage here.

• ​Blogger​ is owned and managed by Google, so to get started, all you need is a Google account and a few minutes. The interface is clean and simple.
• ​WordPress​ is easy to learn. Its step-by-step directions and point-and-click interface make for quick setup.

Blogger might be the easiest to learn, but that may have more to do with the simplicity of the platform and its very basic features.

Blogger is basic. Basic designs and simple templates. That simplicity might make getting up and running a breeze, but it can be limiting if you want to expand your horizons. With Blogger, if you want to customize beyond the basic, you need HTML skills.

WordPress boasts thousands of designs and templates. You can choose from those on the WordPress site or import and upload custom themes. You don't need to know how to code to get a design that makes you look like a pro.

If you want to publish some writing with minimal flair, Blogger will do. If your goal is a slick-looking blog that showcases what you offer and can grow with you, WordPress is for you.

Both Blogger and WordPress let you monetize your site.

WordPress and Blogger are far apart when it comes to features. They share some basic features, like enabling you to add images and videos, and supporting RSS feeds to pull together your new content.

Blogger recently dropped the FollowByEmail feature supported by FeedBurner to email subscribers. If you have a Blogger site, you'll have to make a new plan for that. WordPress offers a Mailchimp block plug-in.

WordPress offers more than 59,000 free plug-ins to enhance your site. Blogger uses Google gadgets, which is a short list of features and configurations for your blog. WordPress has flexibility and versatility when it comes to ways to grow your site and its capabilities.

Adding a podcast can increase how long readers stay on your blog. WordPress makes this easy. You can either convert a post to a podcast via Anchor or you can host a podcast right on your blog. On Blogger, however, you need to record your podcast somewhere else and add a link to the sound file. In other words, it's more complicated and not very beginner friendly.

Both Blogger and WordPress let you monetize your site. Blogger allows AdSense, as it's a Google product. You can use AdSense with WordPress, too, along with several other options. Both platforms allow you to be an Amazon affiliate too. In the end, though, the success of monetizing a blog will depend on traffic and scalability.

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WordPress is a powerhouse. Whether you have a handful of followers or have a high volume of traffic, the platform can handle it.

You also have the potential of many more followers with WordPress because more people use it. There are reportedly over ​600 million blogs​ in the world, with more than 7 million posts daily across all platforms.

WordPress currently reports ​409 million people​ view more than 20 billion WordPress pages each month. Blogger sites get a fraction of WordPress activity.

WordPress has robust online resources, online learnings and live chat support for users. There are several popular free resource sites and guides, such as WPBeginner and YouTube videos. If you have access to LinkedIn Learning, you can find more than 40 courses related to WordPress.

Blogger support has a help page, a blog and a community page but doesn't come close to the depth and breadth of resources offered by and for WordPress.

Blogger is completely free if you use the platform-generated URL, which will contain blogspot.com. If you choose to buy a custom domain, you'll pay about ​$10 to $20​ per year for that. But there are no fees for the Google-provided web hosting.

With WordPress, you pay a monthly fee for web hosting, but if you purchase an annual plan, you'll get a ​free domain for the first year​. Depending on the plan, the number of features and whether you pay by the month or the year, your WordPress site is priced from ​$4 for a personal plan​ to ​$59 for a full-featured eCommerce site​.

If you want a simple blog for writing and you aren't concerned about traffic, features or growth, Blogger works just fine. WordPress, on the other hand, can offer a simple blog or a fully-functional eCommerce site. Blogger will get you off the ground, but with WordPress, the sky is the limit.

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