WordPress vs. Blogger vs. Medium

What is the best blogging platform?

I love answering questions on Quora, and I have seen this one many, many times. People are always looking for the best places to blog and want to know other people’s experiences with all of the available options.

While it often comes down to personal preference, there are a few key factors I want to examine:

• Audience
• Control
• Money

Note: Just to clarify, wordpress.com is a blog service and includes hosting. Wordpress.org was launched in 2003 as a basic blog tool but has since really changed into a content management system, is self-hosted, and is part of Open Source, so you can use the software for anything with no license fee.

Audience

All three options make it easy for people to follow your blog and get to see your writing.

My favorite thing about Medium is that there is a built-in audience already on the platform looking for new things to read. Because of this, I find Medium to be the easiest platform on which to build an audience of readers and followers.

On blog sites like Wordpress and Blogger, I feel it is much harder to build an audience because you have to get people to go to your site first before they can find your writing and choose to follow you. In this way, you are forced to figure out how to drive traffic to your blog before you can really build an audience.

Control

HOWEVER, on both Blogger and Wordpress you have more control over your site.

Blogger is more limited in your customization options, but you can change themes and colors and name your blog whatever you want.

Wordpress has tons of customization options and features, especially if you upgrade your plan to one of the paid plans. You can change and customize every part of your blog and site to make it a fully-functional website and not just a blog page. My own website is on Wordpress, while my personal blog is here on Medium. There are a ton of options and themes, as well as being able to add additional pages, options, funnels, photos, and even a store on your site. It is more challenging to manage and get used to all the features, but once you figure it out, there is SO MUCH you can do to make it your own and fit your brand.

I actually often think of Wordpress as more of a website option and less of a blog hosting option.

Medium has little to no options for customization and control, though you do retain your rights to your own work.

Money

WP, Blogger, and Medium are all free to create an account on and start using.

However, WordPress does have costs associated with additional features (I am specifically talking about the a-bit-easier-to-use wordpress.com).

For example, you can create a simple website with a blog for free, but if you want a custom domain name, you need the Personal plan, which is $4 per month. They also have a Premium plan for $8/month, which comes with more design tools and Google Analytics, a Business plan, and an eCommerce plan.

The free version does have ads, a limited number of themes, and limited storage (3GB), but for a straight-up blog, it is a good free choice.

Blogger is free and easy to manage and is hosted by Google, so it does have the option to monetize your blog with Adsense. The downside is that the social sharing is geared to Google+, which is not the best social network (in my opinion).

Medium is free to join and use, though it does encourage you to be a member at $5 per month to read more articles. You can read 3 posts per month for free and it is free to follow people.

Conclusion

Depending on what you are looking for, any of these 3 options could be a good fit for you. I personally use Wordpress for my website and Medium as my blog, though I used Blogger for a solid time, from 2011–2016, and LiveJournal before that.

Though Medium has fewer customization options, I find the built-in audience to be a huge pull for me. The downside of Medium for me is all the “how I made 10k on Medium” and “how to get 1 million followers on medium” articles that seem to pop up everywhere even if I don’t follow those writers.

Though Wordpress has a ton of features, it can be confusing to set up and perfect, and I find the ability to have a full stand-alone website a big reason why I use it.

I personally do not maintain or use my Blogger account, though I know others like how easy it is to use and maintain. It is a good option for a simple no-frills blog without needing to maintain an entire website.

I hope this helps you make the right choice for your blog!

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