Blogging Platforms Compared

You have already made an amazing step in right direction when it comes to choosing your blogging platform, by looking up a comparison chart!

There is a Drag & Drop Table for 1 vs 1 comparisons at the bottom of this page.

Other Comparison Charts

I’ll go ahead and clear up some of the language used in the chart so you can understand it better. Let me just go ahead and say that the most popular ones strictly for blogging are WordPress.org, WordPress.com and Blogger. Most people will choose those because they are beginner-friendly. Although you can see all of those features ticked off… what’s the difference?

Want a video tutorial to show you step-by-step how to build your own platform with WordPress? Click here for that video and get your hosting here.

WordPress.org

You will have free and total control over the look, customization and monetization of your site with the WordPress self hosted solution. However you will have to get web hosting (Yes, there is also a chart for that!) which will cost you a few bucks a month. Some people can become overwhelmed by this option because there are a few steps into setting it up. But if you want to start a business and earn money then this is absolutely the choice you should go with because WordPress.org has more development and support than any other platform listed on this entire chart.

I even teach a free video course here titled: A True Beginner’s Guide where I take you step-by-step through all of the skills you should have before you even touch your own blog. I also show you how to setup this WordPress.org option and go way beyond into teaching you how to get visitors to your blog and keep them coming back.

But if you are not into building your own business with your blog and making money, let’s move along.

WordPress.com

If you are just wanting to start dabbling into blogging then this is a great platform to start with because it is also the most encouraging. The reason that WordPress.com is probably the most encouraging platform for beginner bloggers is the fact that is has the most traffic out of any other platform. That alone means diddly if you do not know how to properly use their tagging feature which will help you get your posts discovered when people are searching for content on WordPress.com. What the hell does that mean? You write a post and you want people to read it right? As a beginner you will have the best chance of getting your content read and commented on if you use this platform and learn how to tag your posts to where people can read them. Tagging is basically like categorizing your posts with the many different topics that are mentioned in it. Let’s just say you posted a beef stew recipe for an example. Then some of the tags you might use would be: beef, stew, recipe, food, cooking, Imadeitsoitsfrickingyummyok. Then when people go to search for posts on the platform and they want to find a beef stew recipe and they type in beef stew recipe then you have a very high chance of your post showing up in those search results. If you have a catchy title then you will get that person to click on your posts out of the results and read it then hopefully comment and tell you how awesome it is.

Even if they don’t atleast with stats & analytics (Which most of these platforms have) you can see if people are landing on your posts. Now, this is an awesome pro that I had to tell you about but the platform does have it’s cons. You will have limited customization of the look. You will not be able to add any of the cool plugins that can allow you to totally transform your blog into whatever you want it to be, like you could with WordPress.org. You can make money with this blog but if you want to do it with on-page ads then you will have to purchase their Premium plan and you can only use their ad network: WordAds.

Blogger

It’s not a contrarian thing to say that Blogger is actually a good option for the beginner blogger. WordPress does get alot of love and recommendations because of everything that you can do with it and turn it into but if you just want to straight-out blog for free without limitations then this is a fantastic choice. There is honestly only one downside to Blogger that I can think of and to me it is a very big one. Not as many developers building plugins and widgets for it like WordPress, Joomla and Drupal have. It’s basically like this: If you want to do nearly anything you can think of on WordPress then there is a plugin for that. With Blogger there isn’t.

 

Ok, I’m not going to really drill-down into the pros and cons with the rest of these as I have done with these top three. But I will summarize them for you.

 

Medium

A place to read, write, and interact with the stories that matter most to you. Every day thousands of new voices share…

 

Ghost

Ghost is an open source publishing platform which is beautifully designed, easy to use, and free for everyone. Start a blog with Ghost today and learn to blog!

 

Joomla.com

Start a free website with just few clicks! Pick your site template, enter the desired username and you’re ready to go!

 

Joomla.org

A free and open-source content management system (CMS) for publishing web content. Moderately technical. Options are kind of all over the place in menus that don’t make much sense.

 

Drupal

Drupal is an open source platform for building amazing digital experiences. It’s made by a dedicated community. Anyone can use it, and it will always be free. Very technical. Non-intuitive.

 

Squarespace

Squarespace is the all-in-one solution for anyone looking to create a beautiful website. Domains, eCommerce, hosting, galleries, analytics, and 24/7 support all included.

 

Wix

Create a free website with Wix.com. Customize with Wix’ free website builder, no coding skills needed. Choose a design, begin customizing and be online today!

 

Weebly

Weebly makes it surprisingly easy to create a high-quality website, blog or online store. Over 40 million people use Weebly to bring their unique ideas to life.

 

LiveJournal

A service for journals and blogs, that also offers privacy controls, photo storage, publishing tools, style templates, and online communities for many interests.

 

Svbtle

A writing and reading network designed from the ground up to work the same way your brain does. It helps you curate ideas and includes everything you need to develop and publish your thoughts to the world.

 

TypePad

Service for hosting and publishing weblogs and photo albums.

 

Zoho Sites

Every free website comes with a free blog, business email and unlimited web hosting, all in one place.

Chart for 1 vs 1 Comparisons