Self hosted blog VS Third party blog hosting – Ultimate comparison
You have gone through many blogs like (blablasite.com) and (blabla.blogger.com, blabla.wordpress.com). Yes, you got that! Today we are going to compare all the pros and cons of self hosted blog VS third party blog hosting.
Before we compare let’s see what is self-hosted blog and third party blog hosting in a nutshell
Blogs that have their own domain name (blablasite.com) hosted in their own paid server (shared or dedicated) with the help of some online blogging software (wordpress.org, Joomla, Drupal) is known as self-hosted blog. Best example would be this site Blog Time Now hosted with Hostgator.
Third party blog hosting is well known for most users, it’s a blog hosted in free services (blogger.com, wordpress.com, livejournal, Tumblr) which have their own blogging softwares.
Self hosted blog Vs Third party blog hosting – Ultimate Comparison
Branding and reputation
Blogging can be done in both self-hosted and third party hosts but when it comes to a professional blogging self-hosting will be the best as it show your reputation and field of interest in blogging. You can have an own e-mail set up something like “yourname@yourdomain.com” so that your loyal subscribers can connect you easily where you don’t have such e-mail facility in third party hosting.
Pricing
Most third party hosting sites are free. Free space and free sub-domain on the other hand you need to spend a little penny in one way or other to owe a self-hosted blog. You have to spend for both domain name and server annually.
Managing & customizing
Blogger and wordpress.com are the most famous third party hosting used by many and so let’s take that two platforms for comparison. You can manage as many blog posts equally in both self-hosted and third party hosting.
When it comes to customization self-hosted is best since you can integrate any blogging platform and you have own control of your blog and you can customize as like you want whereas in third party hosting your back end panel is limited and you don’t get that much control to your blog.
Themes and plugins are limited whereas your imagination is the limit to design your self-hosted blog
Web exposure & SEO
If there is useful and unique stuff in your blog then there will be rich traffic coming to your site frequently which applies to both. All your posts get equally indexed in search results if the content is unique and on-page optimization lies in your control for both self-hosted and third party hosted
When it comes to backlinks (off page optimization) it’s better to have an own domain name because the link that points to your subdomain doesn’t reputes you, all the credits go to main domain.
[box style=”light-blue note shadow” ]Do you want all the hard earned backlinks to point to domain name that doesn’t even belong to you?[/box]
Money making
You cannot integrate any ads in third party hosting, but you can integrate your affiliate links, banners and start earning. Just blogger supports adsense because both are maintained by Google.
In self-hosted blogs you can integrate any kind of ad service and affiliate links.
Bandwidth & space
In self-hosting bandwidth and space are allocated by plan that you choose with your hosting company. Penny matters if you wish to choose to blog with self-hosting.
Free space given by blogger and wordpress.com is more than enough for a descent blog.
Support & Blog control
Whenever crawler or a visitor comes to your blog it should be live for 24×7 and that implies a successful blogging. There is no need to worry about blogger and wordpress.com since they are provided by reliable companies. In self-hosting it’s all about reliable hosting company that you pick. Hostgator and Bluehost are two best hosting companies that provides more features and live supports.
Blog Time Now Verdict
If you want make a full time living from your blog then you should opt for self-hosting which you have to spend some little penny to afford it. If you are blogging for hobby then you can go for blogger or wordpress.com which has enough features. With all the above comparisons made with self hosted blog Vs third party blog hosting you should take the final decision to choose the right way of blog that meets your qualities.