Advantages and Disadvantages of Blogger [Blogging Platform]

What is a blogger blogging platform?

Pyra Labs developed Blogger in 1999, and Google bought it in 2003. By 2006, all accounts were housed on Google’s servers, significantly improving the platform’s reliability. 

It’s a platform for bloggers and online content makers similar to YouTube and Gmail.

It is the oldest and most excellent free blogging platform available.

Is it better to use Blogger or BlogSpot?

Before we continue, let’s clear up any misunderstandings about Blogger and BlogSpot’s names.

Blogger is a free blogging platform, and BlogSpot is a free domain registration service.

They’re both Google products and utilized in tandem on the Blogger platform.

Enter the following URL: blogspot.com

You’ll arrive at this address: blogger.com.

When you establish a blog on Blogger, you’ll be given a BlogSpot domain by default. You don’t have to use the BlogSpot domain; instead, you buy a custom domain for Namecheap or other domain registrars and use it with the blogger platform.

Advantages of blogger blogging platform

Blogger blogging platform provides free web hosting.

Out here, there are many free web hosting providers. Others provide free trial hosting with no credit card. However, none of these can beat the free services offered by blogger blogging platforms.

Your blog will be hosted on google’s cloud servers. It means your website will;

• Load faster
• Safe and less likely to be hacked

Having said that, this implies that you will never have to worry about the loading speed. Also, your website will be secure.

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An easy-to-use UI.

For beginners, blogger has a simple-to-use and understand interface. Everything is well organized. This makes it incredibly simple to write blog posts.

For example, at the top, you can choose posts and start creating a new article instantly. Also, you can quickly change themes and add widgets without any issues. 

Overall, the website interface is quite user-friendly and straightforward to comprehend.

Blogger provides unlimited storage space.

There is no limit to the amount of storage used for the website.

Blogger gives you unlimited storage for your blog.

You can put as many photos, videos, and blog entries as you want on your blog without worrying about the website’s storage space.

Other free blogging platforms provide fixed and limited website storage for free blogs and then need you to subscribe to costly premium plans, but this is not the case with Blogger.

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Blogger provides a free SSL certificate.

Since 2018, having an SSL certificate has been essential in search results rankings. An SSL certificate allows users to provide sensitive information such as their name and address without fear.

If you’re selling products or services, you need an SSL certificate to protect information such as credit card details, bank passwords, email passwords from hackers.

With an SSL certificate, the information will be encrypted to a sacred code to conceal the accurate information.

Many Hosting companies provide SSL certificates for free. Bluehost, Hostarmada, HostPapa, green geeks, wp engine, ionos, rocket.net, Hostpinnacle, and Interserver are good examples. 

And for free blogging platforms, the blogger platform provides a free SSL certificate. This way, you can protect any sensitive information when you sell that ebook or course.

There are no concerns with the website’s uptime.

Most web hosting provides a guarantee of over 99.9% uptime. However, this list doesn’t include free hosting providers. 

However, with bloggers, you can rest assured that your website will be available all the time. Google servers are excellent for web hosting. This explains why hosting providers such as Cloudways and Kinsta use them.

Having said that, your website will always be available. Furthermore, you won’t have to worry about surges in traffic. 

Google services are simple to incorporate.

Integrating google services in a website takes time. Those who know how to code can easily incorporate; for the rest, they either hire a freelancer from Fiverr or any other site or use a blogger blogging platform.

Google services such as Adsense, search console, google analytics, and page insights are integrated with the blogger platform. Configuring them will take a couple of minutes, and you’re done.

Google indexes websites more quickly.

You’ve created your first post and published it. What’s next? Your post needs to be indexed by Google to appear on search results.

There are so many ways of having your pages indexed faster by google. However, none beats having your site hosted on google cloud servers. 

Google’s crawlers will index your web pages faster than other websites. This will make your posts available to users within a short period.

check out this video on how to index your web pages faster.

It’s simple to get started and set up.

We all know how hectic the process of starting a blog is. It takes time to purchase a domain and web hosting, install themes and plugins, and customize your site.

However, you can start writing your first post within minutes with a blogger blogging platform as you don’t need all the above. The themes are ready to use, domain and Webhosting are already set and verified, and there are no plugins to install.

In a matter of minutes, you can start building an online business!

Your blog’s theme is free of needless advertisements.

Another advantage of a blogger blogging platform is that it doesn’t place display ads. It’s pretty different from other free blogging platforms like Wix and Weebly. 

They offer free blogging in exchange for displaying advertisements on these free sites and generating money.

Disadvantages of blogger blogging platform

You do not have complete control over the website.

 We rarely read the terms and conditions of using any product; all we do is check the box and agree. When reality hits, we start complaining about how we are mistreated.

And this is no different with blogger. One of the conditions is, you don’t own the blog. Google owns it. It is a very harsh reality considering the effort we put into creating content, optimizing it, and promoting it to the target audience.

There have been instances in the past where people’s blogger accounts were suspended by Google without cause, as well as being removed due to violations of Google’s regulations.

To be on the safe side, follow google’s content policies and create content strictly following the guidelines.

Building Backlinks and authority in any niche is challenging.

The importance of link building cannot be ignored. It’s the easiest way to build authority in any niche. While blogger blogging platform provides everything for free, building high pr backlinks to your blog is extremely difficult.

Why?

Google Blogspot blogs account for over 75% of spam accounts. It’s pretty easy to know why.

Whether you follow the rule, content is king, and create excellent content, bloggers and other web admins will find it hard to link back to you. Bloggers are scared of being punished by Google.

It is impossible to develop authority [EAT] and construct a brand in your field if you do not build links to your Blogspot blog. This explains why Blogspot blogs do not rank well on google.

Blogger doesn’t have plugins. 

While the blogger platform is easy to use and set up, it’s difficult to customize. You can’t use plugins to increase the functionality of the website. For example;

• You can’t use plugins like Squirlly, Yoast, or Rankmath to optimize posts.
• You can’t back up your blog automatically
• You can’t compress and optimize images
• You can’t add any social media sharing button

All the above must be done manually. However, you can use chrome extensions for SEO purposes. 

Other media files are difficult to upload.

On the blogger platform, the only shareable content has to be texts, videos, and images. It isn’t accessible if you include other media files such as pdf files, audio files, and gif.

Furthermore, if you want to personalize your blogger blog posts, you’ll have to manually copy and paste the code every time.

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You can’t access the FTP location.

FTP or file transfer protocol is a method of transferring data between your web server and your website. In most cases, your web host stores all relevant files and data for a website on the webserver.

FTP allows you to access and edit the files on your website, saved immediately on your server and website.

With FTP access, you can;

• Install a new theme and alter your website
• Upload large files and remove images
• Fix websites issues

Unfortunately, with the blogger blogging platform, you cant access the FTP folder because google has restricted it. So if anything goes wrong with your website, be prepared to live with it.

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It’s challenging to make money from your blog.

One of the aims of starting a blog is to make money. Several bloggers choose to monetize from the start. Google AdSense gives you the chance to monetize your blog with zero traffic.

If you’re blogging on google’s blogger platform, it’s easy to monetize with Adsense. However, it comes with some consequences. 

You’ll have to manually place google Adsense codes in your blog posts because there are no plugins to assist. Furthermore, you’ll have to share the earnings with google. You’ll get 68% of revenues generated through AdSense.

To make it worse, other blog monetization methods are limited.  They include;

• We are selling ebooks and courses.
• Having an online shop and,
• Offering consultancy services

However, if you love affiliate marketing, it’s achievable with a blogger blogging platform. Also, you can use the site to create a portfolio website for your freelance work.

No CMS updates and limited support

Using an updated content management system(cms) is essential as it helps with good performances, a high level of security and increases the speed of web pages.

CMS such as WordPress is updated frequently, unlike Google’s blogger platform. Maybe this is because blogs hosted on google’s reliable cloud servers rarely have speed or security issues.

However, the performance and support are wanting. 

The google blogger forum is an excellent place to find answers to your problems. But the same can be said; its responses are outdated. It’s hard to find relevant content to help you with your issues. 

The only way to find meaningful assistance is from other blogs or on youtube.

Fewer modification options are available.

I love WordPress because you can build stunning posts and landing pages using page builders such as Elementor, Brizzy, or beaver builder.  There are also themes with inbuilt page builders such as Divi, themify, newspaper, etc.

However, this is almost unachievable for beginners with no coding knowledge to build a professional website in blogger blogging platforms.

For example, you can’t collect emails using pop-ups and landing pages. It’s less customizable compared to other blogging platforms such as Wix and Weebly.

Blogger blogging platform has an ugly URL structure

With a free blogging platform comes a free domain. If you decide to use the blogger blogging platform, be prepared to use a subdomain unless you buy a domain from domain registrars.

This is the look of your blogger blog’s domain.

example.blogspot.com.

This URL structure looks ugly, and visitors can quickly get the wrong impression of your blog. When you write an article on Blogger, which is something you will most likely do,

This is how your URL will appear.

example.blogspot.com/year/month/yourblogtitle.html.

To make it appealing when sharing social media sites, you’ll have to shorten it using URL shorteners.  This is because people tend to click on concise URLs. Furthermore, Google also favors shorter URLs.

Domain redirection is not easy.

With time, any serious blogger who starts blogging on the google blogger platform will purchase a top-level domain. Next, he will transfer his blog from blogger to WordPress.

 However, this will come with consequences. All the efforts of building excellent content, driving traffic, and building high pr backlinks will be at risk of loss.

To redirect all your traffic to the new domain, you’ll need coding experience. You need to know about HTML and javascript. If you’ve no prior knowledge, then hiring a freelancer from Fiverr is help you avoid;

• Losing your search engine rankings
• Losing traffic
• Lose authority you’ve spent time building.

Should I start a blog on blogger?

now that you know the advantages and disadvantages of blogger platform, should you start a blog on this platform?

It depends on your needs.

If you’re just creating a blog to share personal stuff, aren’t too serious about blogging, or want to see if you can succeed, then you can set up your blog on blogger. or else, you can start on blogger and transfer your site to another host later. 

However, if you want to emulate the likes of Pat Flynn and Neil Patel, then blogger won’t work for you. You’ll need a self-hosted website to achieve those dreams. The good thing is you can start with less than $100 a year.

Recommended: how to start a successful blog in 2022

What are the alternatives to blogger blogging platforms?

If you find that creating a blog on google’s blogger ain’t for you, you can try other blogging platforms. Wix, Weebly, Squarespace, wordpress.com, Joomla, ghost, and Tumblr provide similar services to bloggers.
Next, explore Bluehost hosting: is it the preferred hosting for beginners in 2022