Thursday, February 25, 2010

Devil’s Advocate: 5 Reasons Why You Should Use Blogger Instead Of WordPress

Despite the power and popularity of WordPress amongst the blogging elite (at least upon the Techmeme Leaderboard), Blogger still remains the dominant blogging platform in the world, with the glorious WP coming in at a distant second.

Some in the WordPress faith may wonder why anyone would consider using Blogger, especially since WordPress boasts thousands (or is it tens of thousands?) of plugins, themes and developers–not to mention awesome smartphone apps upon the iPhone, Blackberry and Google's very own Android OS.

However upon closer examination, BlogSpot fans may not be as "delusional" as some geeks may think for choosing Google over Automattic, as there are at least 5 major advantages of using Blogger instead of WordPress–both WP.com and WP.org.

1) Problogging On Your Domain

No matter how you slice it or dice it, Blogger is just far cheaper when it comes to blogging underneath your custom domain.

Backed by the mighty Google, Blogger is free when it comes to hooking up your domain. WordPress charges you $10 per domain (and that is on top of what you pay for registering your domain elsewhere).

While this may seem like a small price to pay, the bill can add up quickly if you own 5 or 6 domains.

2) Image Hosting

When it comes to default image hosting, WordPress beats Blogger 3 times over (as the former offers 3 gigabytes of default space vs Google's 1 gigabyte).

However when it comes to upgrading to the next level on both accounts, Blogger destroy's WordPress by offering users 20 GB of space for $5/year while WP.com offers users 5GB of space for about $20/year (note: the options become worse for us WP fans the higher up we go).

3) Video Hosting

If image hosting wasn't bad enough, the video options alone will make one weep when you consider that WordPress charges users $60/year to use VideoPress–a fee that does not include any extra space.

BlogSpot fans on the other hand are offered video uploading for free (thanks to Google Video), with no limits on space.

4) Themes: Free for thee, but not for me?!

Despite Blogger's popularity, WordPress (to my knowledge) still has more custom themes than its Google rival. However a new trend that I am noticing is that many premium WordPress themes are available for FREE (or very cheap) on Blogger.

One example (out of many) would be a premium WordPress theme called Church is available for $60 for WP fans. BlogSpot lovers however can get the same exact theme for free.

In fact there are many sites out there (like WordPress To Blogger) that convert premium WordPress themes to Blogger for free or very inexpensive prices (note: I am not sure how legal these businesses are, but thus far they seem to have faced little action against the original creators).

5) Security

This last point is probably debatable, but lets just face the facts: Google has one of the most secure platforms in the world.

Although WordPress.com and many hosting companies (such as Media Temple, Host Monster and GoDaddy) provide excellent security for their customers, the fact that Google can take on foreign hackers from semi-hostile nations speaks volumes about how tough their defenses are.

So is Blogger better than WordPress?

Answer: That depends on who you ask. ;-)

I personally use WordPress for most of my blogging needs right now, although I do also use other platforms such as Tumblr, Joomla–and yes, even Blogger.

However now that I'm done playing Devil's Advocate, I'm interested in hearing what your opinion is regarding these two rival platforms (and the reasons why you chose one over the other).







Sent from James' iPhone

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