Hosting your blogs at both Blogger.com and WordPress.com is free. While Blogger.com is still far more popular, especially for new bloggers, many seasoned bloggers have begun to migrate from Blogger to WordPress. Let’s take a look at the features and limitations of hosting your blog with WordPress.com. Bear in mind that we’re discussing the hosted version of WordPress, not the self-hosted version (downloadable at WordPress.org).

Here are some of the features and benefits associated with hosting your blog at WordPress.com:

1. It’s free (though there are costs associated with ‘premium’ services)

2. It includes 3 gigabytes of file storage

3. Select from more than 60 themes

4. Basic stats system is built in

5. Virtually spam-free

6. Sidebar widget-ready

7. Large active community for help and support

8. Automatic backups of your blog

9. All upgrades are performed seamlessly, in the background, automatically

10. Any large traffic spikes will be managed by WordPress.com’s server load-balancing

Now let’s have a look at some of the limitations inherent to using WordPress.com as your blogging platform:

1. Your money-making ads cannot be displayed (no Adsense, Chikita, etc.).

2. WordPress.com reserves the right to display THEIR ads on your blog. You can opt out of this for $30/yr.

3. Want more storage space? It will cost you. You can add 5 more GB for $20/yr – and it goes up from there.

4. Mapping your own domain name to your WordPress.com blog will cost you $10/yr.

5. Few customization options. To access the CSS code for your theme will add another $15/yr to your costs.

6. If you violate the WordPress.com Terms of Service your blog will be deleted.

As bloggers, we have a wide array of choices for blog hosting solutions. By understanding what our choices are, we will be better positioned to select the blogging software that is best suited to our needs and goals.

Among the many blogging software choices available, WordPress is by far the most popular.  We’ll look at the reasons for that in a few moments, but first let’s clarify the differences between the two main categories of blogging software:

1. Hosted blogs refer to those blogging platforms that are hosted for us by other companies on their servers. Two examples of hosted solutions are Blogger.com and WordPress.com.

2. Self-hosted blogs refer to those blogs which we set up ourselves by downloading blogging software such as WordPress (from WordPress.org) or Movable Type, and installing the blog software on the servers of our own web hosting company.

So in the case of hosted blogs, you simply go to their site, create an account, choose a template from their selection, and start blogging. The main advantage of hosted blogs is that they’re free and simple to use. The primary disdvantage is that their features – that is, what you’re able to do with them and what you can add to them – are very limited.

On the other hand, while self-hosted blogs are not free, the fees are quite reasonable and they have tremendous feature advantages over hosted blogs. You also have sole and complete control over when and how to implement the many features available. While the tradeoff is that you must also manage all the behind-the-scenes actions and issues, including software upgrades, most consider this tradeoff well worth the effort.

Some further clarification. Note that the hosted version of WordPress is found at WordPress.com, while the self-hosted (i.e. downloadable) version of WordPress is located at WordPress.org. At WordPress.com, you create your free blog on WordPress’s servers, and they maintain control over what limited feature set and templates to make available to you. At WordPress.org, you would download the software and install it on a web host of your choice, at your expense, but you maintain full control over your blog.

With respect to self-hosted blogging solutions, the advantages that WordPress has over other offerings (such as MovableType) are numerous:

1. WordPress is completely free. MovableType has several levels varying from free to very pricey.

2. WordPress is ‘open source’. This not only means that it will remain free, but that its source code is readily available to developers all over the world, enabling them to enhance the functionality of WordPress by developing such things as themes and plugins (feature-enriching modules).

As a result, there are thousands of feature-enhancing plugins and crisp colorful themes from which to choose. In fact, the choices are so many and varied that the process of selecting a theme from the thousands available, for instance, can be quite overwhelming.

While there really is no substitute for the self-hosted blogging platform, many bloggers actually use both the hosted and self-hosted solutions. When used properly, hosted blogs that are complementary to our self-hosted blogs can provide a ranking boost. We’ll talk about the SEO benefits to using blogs in an upcoming article, so watch for it.