Niche Blog Hosting: WordPress vs. Blogger
Where should I host my niche blog projects? Should I purchase a hosting package and a domain and self-host WordPress? Or should I simply setup a free Blogger/Blogspot site and save some money? These questions get asked quite often. Other bloggers have talked about it from time to time. So I thought I’d examine this topic by looking at the advantages and disadvantages of each in several key areas and putting in my own inflation adjusted two cents worth (I’m not including WordPress.com hosting because they don’t allow any monetization.)
Cost
Blogger is free. You can’t beat that price. You can start as many Blogger blogs as you want. Some people have hundreds of them and it doesn’t cost them a cent in hosting costs.
For a self-hosted WordPress site you’ll need to buy a domain, which is usually between about $2 and $50 a year depending on the top level domain selected (.com, .net, .info, .tv, etc.) and additional features, such as private registration. Then you’ll need to buy a hosting package that usually start around $5 and go up from there depending on the features. This will give you a monthly fixed cost of at least $5 and probably more. Multiply this out over 50 or 100 niche blogs and it can really add up.
Advantage: Blogger
Control
Blogger is owned and operated by Google. Your blog is subject to their whims. While they’re unlikely to make massive changes to Blogger anytime soon because they probably make considerable Adsense revenue there, you are still subject to their rules. For example, many Blogger blogs saw a decrease in readership when Google changed commenting rules in December. You don’t have any control over these gyrations. Plus Google owns your data, even if you self-host Blogger on your own domain.
Self-hosted WordPress is subject to the rules of the hosting company. That’s why you’ll need to find a host that fits your needs and has a good reputation for customer service. You can even use co-location where you rent or even own the server where your blog runs if you want. If you need to move to a new host, this is relatively easy to do.
Advantage: WordPress
Hosting
Blogger runs on multiple servers that are generally well protected against hacking and huge traffic surges. The only disadvantage here is that you won’t get your own Blogspot based email address.
If you run self-hosted WordPress site on a shared server you’ll not only be at the whim of the hosting company but of other users, maybe even 1000 or so, on the system. If one of them does something stupid or malicious, your site goes down too as the server crashes. If you co-locate, you’ll have to pay a considerable amount of money to purchase the security Blogger provides for free. In most cases though, you will get multiple email addresses.
Advantage: Blogger
Flexibility
Blogger provides a simple blog interface that’s hard to extend and customize. While some have done it, it isn’t the easiest thing to do. If you want to keep it simple and color inside the lines, Blogger will work for you. But, many find it lacking if they try to go beyond this.
WordPress is a full blown content management system (CMS) in a blogging software disguise. There are so many things you can do with it in terms of modifying the core PHP code or constructing themes and plugins that it boggles the mind.
Advantage: WordPress
Extensibility
While there are Blogger add-ons and templates available they’re fewer in number than those available to WordPress users.
There are a huge number of WordPress plugins and themes available with new ones appearing every day. There are many designers and software developers who know WordPress well and who can create new ones to fit your specs.
Advantage: WordPress
Search Engine Optimization
Google loves Blogger blogs. It’s no wonder, it’s their company. Do their algorithms give Blogger blogs an unseen advantage? In a way, yes. First, by being a subdomain off of an established Google owned domain this seems to allow them to get recognized quicker than comparable self-hosted WordPress blogs. Second, the default Blogger templates are rather SEO friendly and can be made even more so. Lastly, you can find a keyword targeted URL name easier than you can in the domain marketplace although the Blogger names are also becoming more competitive.
Many WordPress themes are poorly optimized for SEO so you will need to take this into consideration. You will also have the challenge of getting Google to recognize your new domain. While rapid indexing techniques can help you’ll sometimes encounter domains that Google stubbornly refuses to recognize for various reasons. Lastly, finding a keyword rich domain name for your niche blog can be difficult. You may have to buy one from a domain broker or auction which can be pricey.
Advantage: Blogger
Reputation
Let’s face facts, Blogger blogs don’t have the best reputation. Many blog directories and services simply won’t recognize them. Many paid review brokers and advertisers shun them. Many people see them as spammy. Other’s find their interface, particularly for comments, user unfriendly.
WordPress is considered the premier blogging platform in the world today. While they can be used for ill purposes or have exceptionally ugly themes, they generally have a much better reputation in the web marketplace.
Advantage: WordPress
Resell
You can’t resell a Blogger blog because it’s against the Google terms of service. While resells do go on under the table from time to time, the price is generally much lower than a comparable separate domain since discovery of the deal by Google would destroy the transaction.
A well established WordPress blog on it’s own domain can sell for thousands of dollars.
Advantage: WordPress
The Bottom Line
For a social blog, the choice is clear, self-hosted WordPress is your best bet. The advantages beyond the basic operating costs are enormous. But, with niche blogs, which is best? It depends a lot on your goals with the blog.
For establishing a quick niche blog on the fly for free, Blogger is the ticket. It’s quick, cheap and easy. You can go from concept to execution in minutes with no money out of your pocket.
But, if you’re wanting something more long term, particularly if you want to setup domains for resell, develop a presence beyond simple search engine marketing, establish a local niche blog or have a greater degree of control then a self-hosted WordPress install is what you want.
My own niche blog strategy is evolving around using both, Blogger for the quick and cheap niche or for testing ideas and WordPress for the long haul niche development. What’s your strategy?
Do you have anything to add to the differences for using Blogger vs. Self-Hosted WordPress for niche blogs?
Wow, very timely post! And nice comparison as well.
I have niche sites on Blogger, and I am contemplating on using Wordpress. I’ll give it a shot by using sub-domains (kinda like niche-name.blogspot.com, but replace blogspot with my domain name).
I wanna compare the performance and whichever is better, i’ll stick to it.
Thanks Saedel,
I’ve also been thinking about subdomains as well for self-hosted WordPress but I didn’t bring this up in the article since I didn’t want to muddy the water.
From some comments he’s made on his blog, it seems that Court doesn’t seem to care for the idea too much, preferring the resell value and authority of the top level domain. But there could be some value in grouping similar ideas into sort of a network. I’ve got a niche domain that’s unused right now where I may try this out to see how it works.
Another thing to look at if you do this is to get a hosting plan that allows unlimited subdomains and MySQL databases or at least into 3 digits worth of them.
Who doesn’t hate leaving a comment on a Blogger blog?!
I complained about it on Blogger’s Help Blog (I’m sure 100s other than me complained also) lets hope they upgrade the system soon.
Hi Y.S.,
They could make it worse, that’s for sure. Some sort of AJAX based editor would be nice. It’s not like Google doesn’t have plenty of software engineers sitting around playing Wii and sipping cappuccinos. Or they could just hire some of those people Yahoo just fired today to do it.
I’m actually a fan of wordpress.com for little niche blogs, even if you can’t run ads on them. (It’s the familiar interface/ease of use.)
But for the most part my strategy is on par with yours.
Hi Sucker,
It’s good to have a small entourage of blogs.
I disagree with a few of your items not in favor of Wordpress because you can ameliorate issues with hosting, cost, and SEO (Google preference aside, what can you do?
) with a little bit of research, though it would be accurate to say Blogger would be easier by default to set up.
I gave up commenting on Blogger blogs, but I guess even some others that make commenting unfriendly, like when you set the “must register to comment” option. I don’t have issue with moderated comments though.
Hi Robert,
With Blogger being free to build as many monetized blogs as you can handle with no bandwidth restrictions it’s hard for any hosting plan to come close. Host Gator’s plans are about the best I’ve seen although you could have bandwidth issues. SEO is always part guessing game but the right WP theme can help.
Wordpress rules, if you utilize a variety of SEO plugins and have some of your own SEO knowledge you will win the battle!
How’s it going Frank? Hopefully all is well, I see you are killing me in the Alexa ranks, hehehe.
Bye for now,
Fabien
Hi Fabien,
You also have to have a SEO friendly WP theme. So many themes are designed poorly for SEO, from hidden links being inserted to poor sidebar placement in code to mismatched header tags. But even if you get that right, it won’t address Google’s apparent preference for indexing Blogger blogs first.
On the Alexa, it’s really not that important. While having EntreCard helps with boosting this number, I have a niche blog with 4 times as many daily unique visitors as I get here but it has an Alexa rating of around 900K.
I’ll agree with Robert in that Blogger will be easier to set-up and that if you search properly, you can find a lot of help with the cost. For example, the company that I’m hosted with has blogging plans starting at $1.50 a month.
Back to the set-up part, Wordpress is tricky if you try to tackle it yourself, especially if you’re not the most PHP savvy. I remember I had a lot of trouble trying to work with it when I first started and well, let’s just say I’m much better at it now, but am still missing a few areas (like the widgets)
I’ll also agree with Y.S. that the damned Blogger commenting system isn’t the best around. I like that Wordpress allows you to have three different input areas and I don’t have to worry about my email being exposed for the bots to see.
Hi Maria,
Most of the sub $5/month hosting plans I’ve seen had some pretty tight bandwidth restrictions or other limitations. The last thing you want is to get a good niche blog established that starts getting a good amount of Google traffic and then gets shut down quickly.
WP setup can be a little tricky but if you put together kind of a set build order it can go a lot smoother.
Blogger comments are pretty bad. Fortunately, you don’t depend on comments that much in niche blogs unlike in a primarily social blog.
Having been on Blogger for quite awhile, and now on Wordpress, I definitely prefer Wordpress. Courtney Tuttle’s SEO Wordpress Themes are great and I highly recommend them.
I haven’t stopped commenting on Blogger blogs at all. For me, building relationships with other bloggers has nothing to do with what service they use to host their blogs.
Hi Lin,
Sorry about the moderation delay due to the link. I’m going to have to look into whitelist comment plugins at some point.
I try to comment on them as well although I’m a lot more likely to comment on a WP blog than I am a Blogger one. Having to switch pages really disturbs the chain of thought for me.
Frank that was a very good comparison. As a blogger user my single biggest complaint is the comments - it boggles me that a company like Google can’t or won’t update this feature. Surely they must know by now just how crappy it is and the fact that they don’t mind being embarrassed by wordpress is amazing to me. I would think they would want to be the cream of the crop but they seem oblivious to this. With their talent and money they could certainly produce a better product.
If they suck at many things (and they do) I still use them for 2 simple reasons - it is so easy to use for set and forget niches (using adsense) and of course it doesn’t go down often and when it does it’s fixed in a jiffy. Google makes a lot of money off of the platform so it ensures that it stays up.
There is no doubt that Social blogs are much better on wordpress and niches can work with both platforms but each has some downsides that need to be taken into account and I think you’ve listed them very adeptly.
Great post Frank
Thanks Grizzly,
I don’t think the commenting system is a priority to them, probably because it doesn’t impact their advertising cash flow. I also doubt that any of the bright young Wii playing cappuccino swilling Google engineers who could work on it during their 30% “do what you want” time would select this over something much cooler like cloud computing or video context searching.
What about comment moderation on blogger?!! You just have two options: Publish - Reject ! It seems that they forgot to add the Edit button!
Anyway, in the beginning it does seem that you can’t do much with your blogger blog ( in terms of creativity ) but everything changes once you get a little savvy!
Forget the basic blogger options and start experimenting with your blog’s HTML. If you have an idea or saw something cool on another blog just do some googling on how to do it. You’ll be amazed how much you can do.
Hi Y.S.
Edit comment would be a nice feature to have. I’ve used this a few times on WordPress to fix up some comments that needed it.
I have played around with some of the Blogger HTML. I am a web and software developer after all so I can’t resist. But, since you don’t have access to the backend server processing this limits some of what you can do.
Oh Frank, do I get a gift or something on my 20th comment!
Take care
Hmmm….
Maybe I can move your blog up to the front of the line in the review queue.
[…] or another. I think it’s obvious enough from my end which I prefer for niche blog hosting: Wordpress or Blogger. If you want to be taken seriously as a blogger, you need […]
thats all very nice information, thank you for that!!!
You’re welcome Zobibi.
I think blogger is perfect for beginners and also for people who wants a simple place on internet to share their experiences. If you want something more professional, you should use wordpress
Hi Javo,
That’s part of the reputation thing. Beyond something simple to get started blogging with, it’s also a good and cheap place to setup a “set and forget” niche blog.
[…] at Blogger or get your blog self-hosted with Wordpress should read up on OpTempo which did a cost-benefit analysis between blogging host Wordpress and Blogger. Personally, I have experienced blogging on both these platforms as I started out with a blogspot […]
[…] Niche Blog Hosting: WordPress vs. Blogger from OpTempo […]
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Is there anyway to use a different comment system on blogger? I’m not sure, but I remember blogger blogs with modified commenting forms.
If its not possible I wont google it.
Hi Y.S.,
I’ve heard of some but none that are anywhere near as trouble free as what you get with WordPress. That’s what make WP a much better social blogging choice. Google around and you’ll probably find a few of them.
This is directed at those of you out here who were not brought up on computers. . .Wordpress is a tough nut to crack. If you don’t have the code background along with other strong computer skills, Wordpress will be difficult for you to use. For instance, Wordpress tells you to do something, but nowhere does it explain how it’s done if you do not know the procedure. Now, having said the above, you will be able to complete some of the steps required rather easily, but then, you’ll run into a brick wall. It is not easy to use unless you’re well-versed with computer skills. It does have much more options if you have the required skills.
Hi Dan,
That’s an interesting thought. Sometimes I have to force myself to think like a regular computer user since I’ve been programming professionally for right at 20 years.
A lot of users do need a certain degree of hand holding and this can be hard to find with many open source projects like WordPress. Blogger is fairly easy for a non-tech to work with although modifying beyond the default gets tricky.
Has anyone tried http://disqus.com/ ?
Feedback would be appreciated.
I have something special for you. You might have heard of Blog Advertising before and how you can make some good money by blogging. But what about the payments?
Every blog (except non-family friendly blogs) is accepted at [removed]. Just visit the site at [removed] and sign up as a Blogger. Select the categories your blog is about and away you go.
Tasks will be sent to you via your nominated email address to either accept or reject each task. Once tasks are completed by you, you get paid. Simple huh?
You might want to be an Advertiser as well. You will need to sign up separately as an Advertiser and submit a task. It’s as easy as that.
[removed] has brought the best practises of all Blog Advertising services together under the one roof. No more strict rules, no more waiting around and bigger payouts for Bloggers.
Sounds good? You know what to do.
Enjoy!
Colin, Colin, Colin,
This is how you get flagged as spam by Akismet. I didn’t do it but someone probably will soon. That you’re going around spamming comments doesn’t engender a lot of trust among bloggers who you want to use your service. You should seriously reexamine your marketing strategy.
Nice post.
I have a free Blogger account and I have tried to modify my blog the best I can, but WordPress definitely has got advantages. I think one big one is this comment box right under the post. In Blogger, you have to click on “Post a Comment” to go to another page and put your comment; and not many people will do that.
Hi Ashutosh,
The commenting system is certainly the weakest link in the Blogger system. Maybe someday soon Google will address this properly.
http://www.bloggeries.com/forum/blogging-basics/3005-never-ending-controversy-blogging-what-your-stand.html#post11739
I’m a wordpress for life person myself unless of course another third party script rivals it which would be difficult considering all the mods and free templates already available for it. Blogger is great for a first blog if you’re unsure but seriously it runs at ~70$ a year to maintain; easily within most people’s budget.
Wordpress all the way; it’s been debated to death but if you’re serious why not own it straight up for ~$70 a year compared to something you COULD loose to do a wrongful TOS violation etc…
[Edit: I blended your moderated comment, with a link, with your unmoderated comment.]
Hi Bloggeries,
It depends on what you’re going for. I do think WordPress is better for a social blog. For a monetized niche blog, Blogger has some things going for it, particularly if you don’t want to throw away that $70 you mentioned on a test market.
This is a very thoughtful comparison.
A couple of items:
a) hosting WordPress
This will give you a monthly fixed cost of at least $5 and probably more. Multiply this out over 50 or 100 niche blogs and it can really add up.
That assumes you have a host where you have to pay for a new hosting account for every site/blog. I have an account with a well known provider (rhymes with elevator) on which I can add sites at my pleasure without affecting the monthly fee, which is modest anyway.
b) degree of difficulty
While I recommend people don’t use Blogger for business for the reasons you have listed, I have to say that there is merit in the argument that WordPress can be a killer for people without the tech background. I’ve been fiddling with html for years and can put up a (not very elegant but functional) website fairly unaided, but I would not like to even think about the hours I have spent getting WordPress to work for me and not the other way around. Legions of volunteers and support forums are great - if you speak the language (WordPress experts can be very cruel and arrogantly rude to newbies on the support sites).
Too often I’ve seen total newbies led up the garden path by well-meaning people, who might not actually see themselves as techies and even attest that they are not, telling others that setting up and managing a WordPress site on your own server is easy/a breeze/you just use Fantastico to install/.
The option of an own domain, hosted WordPress site, ie from WordPress.org not WordPress.com, may be not attractive to multiple niche site players but useful for others - for around $10 a month people can have someone else take care of the basics, make sure the site is set up, security managed etc. As far as I know, with this option you would get the multiplication you have mentioned, i.e. a new account for every site.
Hi Des,
I assume you’re talking about the Host Gator plan. It’s not a bad option although you could get burned by having too much traffic. Also, a cost to consider is the domain renewal at about $15-20 a year, if you get privacy, which I highly recommend. If you have 100 blogs on 100 domains you better be making enough to cover the cost or else use subdomains.
The thing about WordPress.org is that they don’t allow you to monetize, period. Blogs there can be useful in other ways but they’re still fairly aggressive about dealing with what they consider spam.
Great Article. It made me laugh. It made me cry. It made me question my reasons for being online. Most of all it made me think. Think about life, love and happiness as well as making me most of all think about what is acceptable on the Internet. That’s what a great article like this does. Thank you for writing such a fantastic article about Blogger and WordPress.
Your two word spam comment was a little too short. I fixed it up a bit for you.
I found this:
http://js-kit.com/comments/?wow
I’m using it as a commenting platform on my Blogger blog. Till now it is working very well for me.
I hope you like it.
Thanks Y.S.
I had seen this commenting kit before, almost a year ago it seems, but it was kind of buggy at that time. Maybe they’re improved on it since then.