Blogger is Google's free blogging platform, launched in 1999 and acquired by Google in 2003. It's free, requires no technical setup, and integrates with AdSense for monetization. For a long time, it was one of the easiest ways to publish on the web.
But Blogger hasn't seen a meaningful update in years. The editor is a basic rich text area, the templates look dated, and the feature set hasn't kept pace with what writers expect from a modern blogging platform.
Blogger is free, but the tradeoffs are significant.
The editor hasn't evolved. There's no block-based writing experience, no syntax highlighting, no LaTeX math, and no modern formatting tools. You get a toolbar and a text area — the same experience writers have had since the early 2000s. The toolbar offers bold, italic, links, images, and a handful of text formatting options. That's it. If you want a code block, you're manually inserting HTML. If you want a table, you're writing Design is limited to a set of templates that haven't changed much in years. Customization requires editing HTML and CSS directly, and the themes feel out of place on the modern web. Most Blogger templates were designed before responsive design was standard, and while some have been updated, the overall aesthetic hasn't kept pace. Your blog will look like a Blogger blog, and visitors will notice. Storage is tied to your Google account's 15GB limit, shared with Gmail, Google Drive, and Google Photos. For a content-heavy blog with many images, that ceiling can become a real constraint. If you're an active Gmail user with files in Drive and photos backing up to Google Photos, the storage available for your blog may be less than you think. There are no built-in analytics beyond basic stats, no newsletter tools, and no SEO controls beyond what you manually add. For a platform owned by the company that built Google Search, the SEO tooling is surprisingly thin. The deeper concern is the platform's future. Google has a well-documented history of shutting down products. Google Reader, Google+, Google Stadia, Google Podcasts — the list is long. Blogger has survived so far, but it receives almost no development attention. There's no public roadmap, no recent feature announcements, and no indication that Google considers it a priority. Building your blog on a platform that could be deprecated with a single corporate decision is a risk, even if that decision hasn't come yet. Data portability is limited. Blogger exports your content as Atom XML, which isn't a format most other platforms can easily import. If you decide to move, you'll need to convert your content, and the process isn't clean — especially for posts with images, custom HTML, or embedded content. Pluma is built for how writers work today — with a modern editor, clean design, and tools that grow with you. An editor that belongs in this decade. Pluma's block-based editor treats every element as a discrete, manageable unit. Paragraphs, headers, code blocks, quotes, tables, and math each have their own block. You add, reorder, and style content without touching HTML. Code blocks render with syntax highlighting as you type. Math renders inline with LaTeX. The difference between Blogger's toolbar-and-textarea and Pluma's block editor isn't incremental — it's generational. Modern by default. Pluma articles load fast, look clean on every device, and don't require theme configuration or template editing. The design is consistent and readable, like a minimalist blogging platform should be. Built-in tools that matter. Analytics, newsletters, SEO controls, syntax-highlighted code blocks in 190+ languages, and LaTeX math are all included. No plugins, no workarounds, no manual HTML edits. Independent hosting. Your blog lives at username.pluma.ink or your own custom domain. It's not tied to a Google account, a storage cap, or a platform that hasn't shipped a major update in years. Portable content. Pluma stores your content as Markdown and exports to Markdown files or bulk ZIP archives. Markdown is a universal format that every major platform can import. If you ever leave, your content comes with you cleanly. Blogger is the right choice in a few specific cases. If you want a completely free platform with no limits on articles, Blogger has no paywall at all. You can publish unlimited posts with images, custom domain mapping, and basic analytics without ever paying a cent. Pluma's free plan covers 20 published articles — if you need more than that and can't pay $5/month, Blogger removes that constraint entirely. If you're already deep in the Google ecosystem, Blogger integrates natively with your Google account, Google Analytics, and Google Search Console. There's no separate account to create and no separate login to manage. If all your tools are already Google, keeping your blog there reduces friction. If you need AdSense monetization built in, Blogger has native AdSense integration that lets you place ads on your blog and earn revenue directly. Pluma doesn't have built-in ad monetization. If running ads is part of your blogging strategy, Blogger makes that straightforward. vs Medium · vs Ghost · vs WordPress · vs Substack · vs Bear Blog · vs Hashnode tags by hand. The editor was built for a web where blog posts were a few paragraphs of text with maybe an image, and it hasn't been redesigned for anything more.
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