MARCH 2008 UPDATE: I wrote this post nearly two years ago and a lot has changed with these systems. I have added updates to reflect the changes in the systems. Updates are in italics.

If you’re just getting into Blogging, RSS and even Podcasting you may want to consider a low risk approach to the matter. If that’s the case then you probably want to make very little (or no) financial or technological impact on your organization. These requirements might be a tall order in certain cases but not in the case of blogging.

There are a some free, hosted blog solutions that allow you to start a blog without capital investment or increased technological overhead. Hosted blog services provide the blog platform as a service with the user logging in via a web browser. So no software ever needs to be installed for you to get started. I’ve been a user of two of these services, Blogger and Wordpress.com so I thought it would be helpful to provide a side by side comparison. And while there are other free, hosted services available I think that these are two that can meet the needs of a business.

Background

Blogger started in 1999 as a free, hosted blog service. The concept has not changed since then but it was purchased by Google in 2003. Wordpress was started in 2001 as a non-hosted blog publishing platform. Wordpress.com debuted in 2005 as a hosted version of the original software.

Getting Started

Very simple for both services. The toughest part of the sign up involves choosing a name that will be the prefix for your blog’s address. Wordpress blogs have domains with the wordpress.com suffix and Blogger blogs have the blogspot.com suffix. You choose the name in front of the suffix. Either way you will have a basic blog ready to go in just a couple of minutes.

Look And Feel

Both services offer standard templates that you can choose with the click of a button. Blogger has more choices for templates, but Wordpress has ones that are a little more hip and professional looking. That said, Blogger offers direct access to the template files which means that advanced users can have full control over the blog. Wordpress offers minimal customization options.

Wordpress.com now has more themes than Blogger. WordPress has sixty-six ready-made themes and Blogger has thirty-one. Wordpress.com has also added paid access to theme CSS for $15 per year.

Ease Of Use

Blogger is very easy to use, which is partly due to the fact that it doesn’t have as many options for advanced information management. Wordpress is pretty easy as well but it requires more investigation due to it’s many features and menu items.

Blogger has added many more options for managing a blog including integration with FeedBurner and a drag-and-drop page editor for page elements.

Publishing Location

Wordpress saves the content of your blog on their servers. Blogger allows you the option of publishing the pages to your own server via FTP. This allows you to fully host the blog with your own domain name, eliminating the need to use one of the blogspot.com addresses. Some businesses may find this to be a plus if they want to have the blog seem completely integrated within their company website.

Wordpress.com now has the option to redirect your blog to a domain of your choosing. The files will still be published on WordPress.com but visitors will see your web address instead of one with ‘.worpdress.com’ at the end.

Post Creation and Editing

Both services offer WYSIWYG editing along with the option to edit the raw HTML. Both services also include the ability to upload (or link to) images for inclusion in posts. The Wordpress editor is larger than Blogger’s and has a more up to date look and feel.

Blogger has added the ability to upload videos (up to 100 megabytes each) directly from the post editor. Blogger has also added the ability to specify and enclosure link to enable podcasting. WordPress.com now accepts document uploads as well as images.

Interactivity

Both services feature commenting as well as support for comment moderation. Comment moderation allows you to mitigate the effects of blog spam. Wordpress supports Trackbacks while users of the Blogger service have to go to an outside service like HaloScan in order to trackback to related blog posts.

Blogger now has a backlinks function that works very similar to trackbacks by indicating posts that are linking directly to your post.

Syndication

Wordpress.com offers standard RSS feeds and includes native support for podcast enclosures. Blogger offers the less popular Atom syndication format. While RSS is the standard for syndication, many feed aggregators can also handle Atom feeds. In addition, services like Feedburner offer options to convert the feed to all usable formats and standards for RSS. Wordpress offers RSS feeds for comments which is a feature not available via the Blogger service.

Google purchased FeedBurner in June of 2007 and now offers feed redirection so that you may use FeedBurner or other services to manage your Blogger RSS.

Information Management

Wordpress.com is way out in front of Blogger in this category. Wordpress includes support for multiple categories, including subcategories. Wordpress.com also has an integrated search function and link management features. Blogger does not support categorization and sidebar links must be added manually by editing the HTML template. Blogger does allow you to manage multiple blogs from a single dashboard.

WordPress.com has added the ability to manage multiple blogs from a single account. Blogger allows categorization via their labels feature. An integrated search function is available for Blogger by using their NavBar which is located at the top of every page.

Collaboration

Both services support multiple authors and editors on a single blog. Blogger allows you to invite new users to a blog by submitting their email address. Wordpress collaborators must have a Wordpress.com account in order to join your blog.

Static Content Options

Both services allow you to include static content pages in order to provide a more traditional website experience in addition to blog. Wordpress makes it pretty simple by allowing you to add “pages” which automatically get added to your menus. This requires a bit more work using Blogger because you have to manually create your menus along with the links to the new pages.

Off-Site Content Integration

In recent years integration of content from other sites, like slideshows and embeddable video players, has become extremely important to bloggers. Both services offer varying levels of content integration. Wordpress.com is the most restrictive as it does not allow most external widgets to be embedded in post without special codes. YouTube embed codes are supported but many widgets must be approved by WordPress.com prior to working. Search for widgets and slideshows on WordPress.com to get more information on what works and what doesn’t. WordPress.com now also offers sidebar widgets that allow you to include content from other sites and rss feeds in your sidebar.

Blogger is more liberal than WordPress.com as far as allowing widgets. You have access to the full html of your template so you can add widgets to your template for display on all pages. You can also add most standard embed codes to your posts. Blogger’s page element features also allow you to add rss, javascript, images and slideshows to your blog layout.

Statistics

WordPress.com has integrated statistics for web page views. The stats include a clickable chart and summaries of things like post views, referrers and links that people click on your blog. Blogger will support the use of Google Analytics, FeedBurner stats or other services that provide embed codes to track statistics.

Anti-Spam

Anti-spam features prevent or at least limit spam comments from appearing on your blog. The Akismet spam protection service is a standard feature included in all Wordpress.com blogs. Blogger offers comment moderation and word verification anti-spam features to prevent unwanted comments.

Advertising

WordPress.com does not allow third-party ad serving services like AdSense or AdBrite to be present on their blogs. Since Blogger is owned by Google they support AdSense advertising on blogs and include a page element to help ease integration. Since Blogger supports adding javascript from other sites, automatic ad serving from other services should work as well.

Conclusion

Both of these services are viable options for business wanting to dip their toes into the Social Media waters. I can’t anoint one as the absolute winner over the other either. I use both for different purposes. I like Blogger’s flexibility on editing the templates and publishing files to my own server. But I also enjoy the more advanced features offered by Wordpress.com like trackbacks, podcasting support and link management.

The best advice that I can give is to take the time to start a test blog on both services. Work with both of them for a couple of weeks to see which one suits your needs best. Once you’ve made a decision on a favored platform you’ll also have the advantage of some time in the driver’s seat before you get into the blogging fast lane.

Both of these services have made great strides over the last couple of years. There is still no clear ‘winner’ if you will. My previous advice still stands. Take a spin through both services and see what will work best for you. If you like you can also get a peek at some of the features in the Blogger service via my Blogger Beta Tour. The tour is a little dated at this time but shows how the newer page elements work.