When Blogger IS Better Than Wordpress

Wordpress is the site of choice for most bloggers, and for good reason. But sometimes, Blogger IS the better choice!

I might be one of the only bloggers, or at least one of the very few, to write a post favoring the Blogger platform. You see endless reasons to "switch to Wordpress" and why it's better, and why that particular blogger made the switch. I don't read those posts anymore. I get it. We all get it. Wordpress (self hosted) is indeed better - for the most part. You own your site, own your content, better image quality, blah blah blah. Got it. Kthanxbai. But I'll tell you what: There IS a time when Blogger is better than Wordpress.

I don't have any formal HTML coding education or experience. I'm all self taught. When I started this blog two years ago, I had no idea what I was doing! I started on Blogger because I had a gmail account so it was easy to open a Blogger one, too. In case you didn't know, Gmail, Google and Blogger are all one big happy family on the internets.

Additionally, when I opened said account, I could figure out how to use it. I fumbled through some of my first posts, and certainly had a terrible site design until I got a professional to do a custom one for me. But it was manageable for someone who was a writer by trade and dumb as an ox with technology. I should mention, I also opened a Wordpress account. I stared at that screen for about 10 minutes before I gave up. It wasn't inherent to me; I had no idea how to even post on that platform the way I wanted to!

Are you on Wordpress, Blogger or some other platform?

So when is Blogger better than Wordpress? Simple: when you're not tech-savvy and furthermore, when you don't have capacity to sit and google or youtube hundreds of how-to videos/tutorials. And that's just for a basic post! Never mind the fact that self-hosted Wordpress sites crash, need to be backed up and regularly are down for maintenance. Kate from The Small Things Blog says making the switch was the worst decision she's ever made. Her site hasn't worked consistently since switching because of all the tech problems! She's also an enormously popular blogger who has a following large enough to crash a site #goals.

Blogger is user friendly. My site is ALWAYS up. That means that when I actually get 25 minutes of both kids napping, I can actually create a post. I don't need to fumble through tech problems or update the latest plugin. Blogger is better for us busy moms, or work outside the home moms, or just busy career gals who don't want to futz with tech problems - we just want to BLOG! I have juuuuuuuust enough time to crank out two posts a week, take the photos for them, edit them, insert them in my post, and schedule it. Just enough. I do not have time for site crashes, plugin installs and updates, hosting issues and heck - even figuring out how to get a dang post to look the way I want it to!

Blogger is the most realistic choice for me, right now

Look, Wordpress delivers better quality. You have more choices and control over your blog. Have you ever noticed how my images sometimes aren't quite the same size? I size them all in editing software to 950x1400. But when I upload them in Blogger, I can only select "small medium large xlarge" for the sizes, and for whatever reason, they don't always line up. That annoys me to no end. But it's not nearly as annoying as having your site down when you only have 15 minutes to crank out content! It's not nearly as annoying as having friends text you that your comment plugin isn't working, and you have to spend the next two hours troubleshooting why.

Blogger is turnkey. I never worry about any of those issues. Yes, I can't reply to people who are still "no-reply" bloggers, which some of my favorite bloggers and regular commenters are (that's why you haven't heard from me!). It's true, I have limited control over image size, and even though I have high res photos, I feel like the quality is always a bit blurry after uploading them to Blogger. But this platform is so user friendly! Since I stay home with kids and blog (I officially call myself a work from home mom now) I need my blogging platform to be as quick, turnkey, functional and easy to use as possible. My time needs to be spent on content, not technology.

Don't get me wrong. The second I have more capacity, I'll make the switch! But currently, my reality is that I have two kids under two that rarely nap at the same time. I have super limited time to spend that isn't with a baby or toddler on my lap. Blogger is conducive for that kind of blogger. And for folks like me, Blogger IS better than Wordpress.