Free Blog Services Rated: Blogger, Livejournal, WordPress.com

Jun 25, 2007 by Matt | Posted in Services and Tools 17 Comments

So, you’re not serious enough about blogging to host your own blog? You’d rather use a free blogging service? Are you sure? You can get a domain and hosting for only $3.99/month. No? Okay, then I guess we can get started.

Okay, here’s how this fill work. I’m going to compare Blogger, LiveJournal, and WordPress.com. We’ll see what free blog provider is the best. Let’s start with LiveJournal.

LiveJournal

LiveJournal has been around since 1999, providing blogs mainly for people in the 13-20 age range. Personally, I’m not a fan of LiveJournal, but I’ll keep this review unbiased.

  • URL Format: you.livejournal.com.
  • Domain Allowed?: Not for free accounts, though the ad-supported “Plus” account allows the use of a domain name (which costs $5-7/year, and I highly recommend).
  • Major Flaws: Transfer speed of free blogs is limited at peak hours. Very limited theme support.
  • Any Ultra-Cool features?: No.
  • Themes: Very limited. Some color changes mainly. To create your own theme, you must have a paid account.
  • Ads: No ads in the basic free plan, though there’s a “Plus” plan which offers more features in exchange for some ad space.
  • Ease of use: Not great.
  • Rating: 2/5

WordPress.com

WordPress.com, is based off the very nice blogging software available at WordPress.org. WPC offers blogs that have some of the features of the WordPress blogging software, though the feature-set is not really comparable.

  • URL Format: you.wordpress.com or domain.
  • Domain Allowed?: Yes.
  • Major Flaws: Really limited themes.
  • Any Ultra-Cool features: Free OpenID URL (your blog’s URL).
  • Themes: Choose from small selection. You cannot create your own theme, though if you pay you can edit the CSS.
  • Ads: None. You cannot add your own, for lack of theme support.
  • Ease of use: Fairly easy.
  • Rating: 3/5

Blogger

Blogger is the best of the free blog providers, a Google service for the past few years. Many of the shortcomins of other providers are nonexistent, thanks to Google’s generosity.

  • URL Format: you.blogger.com or domain.
  • Domain allowed?: Yes.
  • Major flaws: Atom instead of RSS (though Feedburner, another Google service, can remedy that). Limited themes, though the least limited compared to the others.
  • Any Ultra-Cool features: N/A.
  • Themes: Limited, though the least limited compared to WordPress.com and LiveJournal.
  • Ads: No ads. You can easily add your own and make a few cents.
  • Ease of use: Really easy.
  • Rating: 4/5

Blogger, it seems, is the easiest to use free blog provider….Though you can’t compare it to the self-hosted WordPress system (which isn’t that hard to install). If your on a really tight budget, and need to use a free host, I suggest using Blogger. Get a domain, if you can afford $6/year. If your blog starts to gain popularity, and you decide to give WordPress a go, you’re covered. WordPress can import posts (and comments) from Blogger, and you can re-point your domain to the WordPress installation.

If you want to install WordPress, we’ve got a tutorial. The Starting a Great Blog tutorial covers everything from Domains and Hosting to Installing WordPress to Stat Tracking.

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  • girl

    LJ themes are very limited for basic users but there are hundreds of LJ communities providing great layouts at no cost at all.I have both WP and LJ accounts and each has its own advantages. In fact, my LJ is a paid account because the interactive blogging experience is just awesome.

  • http://www.findmycompany.com Stathis Adel

    I found an excellent comparison chart for Blogger vs WordPress standard functions – excluding live journal at this website url – http://pulsed.blogspot.com/200.....chart.html it made it easy for me to make a decision after seeing it in chart formate. Thanks.

  • http://meaningfulblog.blogspot.com Blogger Blog

    Very nice comparisons here. It definitely helps newbies to decide what decisions to be made. I use both Blogger and WordPress.com for my blogs. I Just want to get the experence with both of them. I prefer Google Blogger over WordPress.com so far. It gives me more controls of my html codings. Plus it allows me to put Google AdSense on my blog. Lanna

  • http://www.webmaster-source.com Matt

    @Blogger Blog, I agree with that statement. Funny, since I’m usually a total WordPress fan. However, the WordPress.com service is just too lacking in control for my tastes.

  • http://iXpress.me iXpress.me

    WordPress is probably the best blogging platform I ever came across. LifeJournal is too of a modern community. People contribute little in terms of writing, just exchanging Wow-and-Bow…

    They now add the community and other useful features. Did you know that you can have the same WordPress blogs, just with much more impressive URLs?

    Just have a look:

    Joking.Of-Cour.se and Nespresso.Of-Cour.se

  • http://www.houstonfreebies.com Houston Freebies

    Just a few others to consider.

    Weebly.com, Bravenet, Yahoo Geo cities, Thoughts, myblogsite, blog.com, sitekreator, tripod.lycos.com, synthasite, i3log, aol journals, myfamily, onebp, blogspot, blogsboom… and the list goes on and on.

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  • a.

    i STRONGLY disagree with the statement, that LJ has very limited themes and is not great to use – as the first commenter said, there are hundreds of communities providing free layouts and LJ is actually (out of these three) the most customizable. and rather simple to use, once you’ve got everything figured.

    having said that, i’d like to add, that i’m not a supporter of LJ. it is great, if you want to ‘belong’ – you can join communities and participate in various web-circles, but blogger and WP are definitely for the more solitary blogger interested in really writing and not simply randomly blogging.

  • Meara

    I really enjoy Blogger. Although Google “owns” your material that you post, they don’t take control unless there’s something really inappropriate posted.

    Just to be safe, I keep a WP blog updated with imports from Blogger. However, I still don’t care too much for WP. It’s not as simple as Blogger and much less creative in my mind.

    I have not tried LJ, but from what I am reading, I don’t know if I’d even care to try. It doesn’t sound comparable to WP and Blogger.

    • http://www.webmaster-source.com Matt

      No, I wouldn’t call LiveJournal comparable to blogger either. It’s primarily a social networking platform, not so much a publishing service.

      I think you’re probably right in thinking that Blogger is a better service than WordPress.com, but the full WordPress software (available at WordPress.org) is much more powerful. That’s beyond the scope of this article though. :)

  • http://zwingly.wordpress.com zuingli

    I have wordpress

  • Austin SEO

    I think WordPress beats all of those other ones.

  • http://www.sbwire.com/press-releases/urbanlandscape-offers-an-ideal-landscape-contractor-192953.htm landscape contractor

    This article is in fact a nice one it helps
    new the web viewers, who are wishing for blogging.

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  • http://www.t-online.de/ Jessica

    Schöner post:)

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