If you are interested in creating your own blog and thinking about which platform to choose, this article will help you. There are many platforms used nowadays for blogging. In this article we will mention the most well-known, evaluating them based on some criteria that we consider important for such a choice.

Criteria for evaluating a blog platform

Before we start evaluating the tools/platforms we came up with it is important to mention what we think is important and should determine the choice of a platform to create a blog.

General criteria regarding the evaluation

Ease of use
Regarding the initial configuration of the platform, but also how easy it is to create content/articles. This is a very important criterion especially for users who have never started blogging before.
Flexibility in expanding the blog
You should think about why you are creating the blog and what goals you want to achieve (if you have specific goals). If you have specific goals regarding the success and future expansion of the venture, it would be better to take this element into consideration during the initial selection of the platform.
If you wish to bring you income
If your goal is to find ways to bring you income in the future, the evaluation of the platform should also include this criterion.
What language will you write in?
If you wish to write articles in English, the blog platform options may be even more.

More specific criteria

  • Do you need to install the platform yourself?
  • Do you need to do the technical maintenance of the platform yourself?
  • Is it easy to add and publish content inside?
  • Can you choose your own domain name?
  • Do you need to buy hosting services?
  • Does the platform give you access to its own readers?
  • Do you have the ability to shape the aesthetics of your blog as you wish?
  • Does it give you access to tools to extend its features?
  • Can you link it to statistical tracking tools (eg Google analytics)?
  • If you need help how easily will you find it?
  • Does it enable you to optimize your pages for organic traffic with SEO techniques?
  • If in the future you choose to put an eshop in your blog, is it possible?
  • Can you add code better performance ads on facebook, tiktok, google?
  • You can add marketing tools (e.g. newsletter, CRM, etc.)
  • Cost. Is it a good choice in terms of the financial amount you can allocate?

The platforms we chose to build a blog

Then follow the platforms we have chosen. If you want to see our opinion on a specific one of them, just click on the link. If you wish to read about all of them, just keep reading our article.
a. WordPress.org
b. WordPress.com
c. Wix
d. Blogger
e. Weebly

a. WordPress.org

WordPress.org is the world’s most popular website and blog creation platform. It appeared on the market in 2003 and at the time of writing (2022) is the platform used for 43% of websites worldwide. In Greece, this percentage certainly exceeds 60-70% because many IT companies have chosen it as a solution.
Advantages

  • Easy to use after installation
  • Easily scalable and low cost
  • You can choose your own domain name
  • You can add whatever extension you want in the future or from scratch.
  • It connects with many marketing tools
  • You can easily add code to display Google ads within your site and get paid from your readers’ clicks on Google ads.
  • There is a large community of writers and developers using this platform. So if you need support with something you will be able to find information for free and if you cannot do what is required you can easily hire someone to do it for you.
  • Perhaps it is also Google’s favorite platform in terms of the classification of its content in its catalogs and its appearance in the results of users’ searches.
  • Θα σας επιτρέψει να συνεργαστείτε με όλες τις δημοφιλή πλατφόρμες marketing.
  • It will allow you to work with all popular marketing platforms. There are many ready solutions for its collaboration with platforms such as facebook, instagram tiktok etc. if you wish to run ads.
  • In the future, you can easily and inexpensively add even the functionality of an eshop.

Disadvantages

  • If you are not willing to spend several hours learning how to install and maintain this platform, you are better off hiring someone to do it for you. Contact us if you want us to do it for you.
  • You should take care of the maintenance of the blog by updating WordPress and the plugins you will use with their new versions.
  • You should take care of it when renewing your hosting package and domain name.

Regarding the cost of maintaining a WordPress blog you should calculate that you will need to pay the hosting package and the domain name once a year (if you buy annual packages). For these two costs, for a simple blog, the total cost is from 50-90 euros per year. If you entrust its maintenance to an IT company, for example, they renew what is required once a year, a minimum cost of such support is about 50 euros a year.

b. WordPress.com

WordPress.com is a platform used to host blog websites, small business websites and eshops. The owner of the company that built it is one of the co-founders of WordPress.org.

WordPress.com offers a basic package for creating a blog site completely free. If you want your blog to have the domain of your choice or additional storage space, you can upgrade the package from their free service to one of the premium ones they have and essentially a small fee is required.

If you wish to create a blog for hobby without having any particular expectations from it then WordPress.com is a very good and economical solution.

Advantages

  • No need for installation and knowledge related to technical web support issues
  • It is easy to use
  • If you don’t mind your domain having the format https://yourname.wordpress.com you can use it for free.
  • If you need help to better understand how to use it there is a large community of users online who can help you with the posts they make.

Disadvantages

  • Small selection of designs / design templates from which you can choose yours.
  • Limited extensibility in terms of additional functionality you can add to the blog.
  • You cannot add Google ads to your blog in the free plan. In the free plan WordPress.com will display its own ads within your site.
  • You do not own your blog. WordPress.com may disable your site if it deems that its content does not comply with its terms of use.

At the time of writing (July 2022) WordPress.com offers two subscription plans. The Starterwith a charge of €60/year and the Prowith a charge of €180/year. If you want to compare the features of WordPress.org with those of WordPress.com you should compare with the Pro package but again compared to WordPress.org WordPress.com is very limited.
In terms of ease of use, they are both very easy with the difference that WordPress.org will have to be installed for you by someone who knows why it requires installation. There is also the option if you start with WordPress.com to migrate to WordPress.org in the future if you wish. It’s just more likely that you will need help with this too, and sometimes in such transfers technical problems arise that make them difficult.

c.Blogger

Another solution for creating a blog for free is offered by the Google platform called Blogger. It is one of the first (1999) platforms created purely for blogging.

To start your blog on Blogger you just need a Google account (ie a gmail).

Advantages

  • It is a free platform
  • No technical knowledge is required to maintain it
  • It has Google’s seal of approval and is frequently visited by Google’s algorithms to rank its content in Google’s search results.

Disadvantages

  • Limited functionality
  • There is no scalability
  • Design options are minimal.
  • Google can, as in the case of WordPress.com, disable your blog if it considers that its content does not comply with its rules.

If you just want to create a blog for free then the Blogger platform is a very good solution. If in the future you wish to move it to WordPress.org you can do so with some help. At least at the time of writing there are ways to transfer it.

Wix.com

Wix is ​​a platform that in recent years has become very popular mainly because of the advertising it has done. Of course, this does not mean that it is not worthy. Simply, she gained ground over others because she invested a lot in becoming famous.
In our view it is worthwhile because it is an intermediate solution. Compared to WordPress.com and Blogger it offers more features in an easy way. Compared to WordPress.org it cannot reach the level of functionality it has and can be developed on WordPress.org.

Wix is ​​a good solution for small and medium businesses that want to experiment and build their website themselves without dealing with technical issues. It offers various website creation packages for either corporate presentation or eshop creation. It is not so much aimed at bloggers although a blog can be added to the sites created in win if the owner adds the blog function with a plugin they have.

Advantages

  • It has a wide variety of design templates for choosing a design for the website
  • Ease of creating the website with tools that do not require programming knowledge
  • The installation of the website is done with ease and speed even by ordinary users

Disadvantages

  • Their free plan is very limited and the Wix logo appears there.
  • Its free third-party plugins are few and far between, and there’s simply no comparison to what WordPress.org provides.
  • If you choose a design / template design then you cannot change it.
  • The functionality for eshops is provided by subscription packages and compared to the functionality that eshops may need, the capabilities of wix eshop packages are limited.
  • In Greece most IT companies do not deal with Wix and if you need help it will be more difficult to find a good partner.

In theory it is a very good solution for bloggers as well. It is not as simple and easy as blogger but if your relationship with technology is good it is definitely worth trying to experiment. This is also its biggest advantage compared to WordPress.org

Conclusion

We hope this article will help you choose a platform to create your blog. We believe that all the platforms mentioned in this article are worthy and can definitely give you the solution you need depending on what you want your blog to achieve. If you choose WordPress.org as a solution, you can contact us for its installation. We offer a package to install WordPress with a premium theme. In this case the cost of maintaining your blog will be less than the well-paid packages offered by the platforms and you will have the possibility to expand it much more in the future if you wish compared to the packages of the aforementioned websites.