Free vs Paid Blogging

Blogging is a great way of expressing yourself on the web. It is incredibly easy to do without the need of knowing HTML, MySQL Databases and Website Hosting. With so many free options out there such as Blogger and WordPress, it often makes people wonder:

"why should I go for a hosted option? What are the benefits?".

Free Blog Hosting

If you are ready to get started with a blog, creating your own is quick and simple. For free blog hosting, WordPress has become the most widely used and the most popular. All you have to do is go to WordPress.com and sign up for a free account. From there you can name your blog, pick a template or design, and start posting (aka blogging).

The biggest downfall with a free blog hosting account is that you are fairly limited in your capabilities. Listed below are a few examples:

• BrandingYou cannot have your blog domain name as the URL without the free host’s name incorporated (i.e. you cannot have myblog.com, it would be myblog.wordpress.com or myblog.blogspot.com). This can look very unprofessional and often gives the impression that you are not serious about your blog
• Resources
  Free blogs have limited resources, meaning you can only host a certain number of files
• TemplateWordPress.com only allows you to choose from a selection of templates meaning it is hard to make your site look different from the others. Blogger allows template editing but it is not very user friendly and mostly requires a lot of hacks and workarounds to get right.
• AdvertisementsYou cannot post adverts on your WordPress.com blog meaning you cannot generate any sort of ad revenue. Although Blogger does allow Google Adsense if your site is accepted.
• Plugins and Widgets
  WordPress.com does not allow the installation of new plugins, widgets or any other extra features

Paid Blog Hosting

Paid blog hosting is a perfect solution for a business or individual that wants to increase their visibility by establishing a long term web presence, generate revenue from advertisements, or to simply show featured products or services.

You will be able to use your own domain name and choose from a vast selection of themes, plug-ins, add-ons, plus even more features as they continue to get produced. You also have the ability to use simple programming such as HTML and PHP to create your own unique themes and plug-ins. This gives you complete freedom over your blog and a real sense of individuality, making you stand out against other more generic ones.

The only real downfall to paid hosting is that often you will need to keep up with software updates yourself. WordPress does make this much simpler with user-friendly interfaces, notifications and update packages, but some minor technical knowledge (or more so confidence with computing) may be required.

Recommendation

For those of you looking to take blogging to another level, wanting a stronger online presence or more freedom with what you can do, paid blog hosting is for you.

WordPress.org offers fantastic free blogging software which is incredibly flexible and easy to use. With many cheap hosting packages out there, using this with paid hosting is our most recommended solution.

Our website hosting packages come with Fantastico De Luxe which enables you to install WordPress on your website with minimum fuss and is ideal for non-technical users who may be nervous and lack experience with web hosting.

As always, you can contact us for more information and take comfort as we provide complete support for all our clients.