Blogger is a blog-publishing service that allows private or multi-user blogs with time-stamped entries. It was created by Pyra Labs, which was bought by Google in 2003. Generally, the blogs are hosted by Google at a subdomain of blogspot.com.
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WP Engine
Score 7.2 out of 10
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WP Engine is a website hosting service built to host WordPress for companies of any size, with features such as daily backups, firewall,SSL, and proprietary caching technology.
$35
per month
Pricing
Blogger
WP Engine
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Startup
$35
per month
Core
$400
per month (annual contract)
Enterprise
Custom
*Per Month
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Blogger
WP Engine
Free Trial
No
Yes
Free/Freemium Version
No
No
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
—
Discount available for annual billing on the Startup plan.
It's well-suited for helping you reinforce SEO for another site. It's OK for creating a real quick blog if you or a client needs something fast that does not demand a great visual design or a lot of visual content. If you want to create a super sharp-looking blog with a lot of visual content, WordPress will outperform Blogger by about 16 zillion to 1. Like, it's not even at all close. I would never use Blogger as my company's website. That would almost automatically consign your site to a very lonely existence.
I am an enterprise user of WordPress and host over 7000 sites with WPEngine. Areas that I think they are well suited for include customers that need enterprise-level support and uptime and have more complex needs than a simple blog. They also manage scale well with a variety of isolated install options that you can scale up or down depending on your contract needs. They also provide premier support for enterprises and have highly knowledgable Technical Account Managers that provide a significant value add. If I were to look at where it isn't as appropriate for usage I would focus on the low-end needs and say while they do support small sites, there are options out there for cheaper hosting that lack the support a WPEngine gives you.
I love the database backups and how quickly & easy it is to restore from an old backup point. This gives me & my clients confidence that any change can be rolled back.
The built in caching & CDN mean that I have to spend less time worrying about the speed of the server & site. The caching has some side-effects that take getting used to (on-page dynamic PHP code sometimes needs to be moved to API endpoints), but this is true for most caching systems.
They have really good support for multiple environments. It's very easy to have separate production & staging environments. It's also very simple to deploy from staging to production, making product launches and large scale website copy changes much easier to coordinate.
I'd like to see WP Engine offer their own monitoring solution. When I say monitoring, I mean specific use cases that may end up being something you could script. This would keep customers from having to pay for additional services like Pingdom, New Relic, etc.
I would like to see some proactive analysis done by WP Engine on their customer sites - at least on their home pages, and offer up suggestions. This kind of goes along with the other example.
Finally, it would be nice to see a "lighter" offering, perhaps a plan that costs $49 for those who want to host only a few sites, or even 1 site.
I love the additional income and how great my blogs have turned out. It's given me ideas for others to build their blogs and has attained new clients for me. I make money using AdSense, how little or how much I want to make is up to me promoting my Blog.
I was in a situation where I had to bolt Wordpress on to an existing infrastructure that could not support it. If I ever end up in that situation again, please kill me. Other than that reasonably common use case, I don't think it offers a lot of value over robust shared hosting, virtual private server (VPS) or dedicated servers.
Blogger has a simple layout with descriptive instructions when you first sign up. It can be intimidating at first but is easy to learn through simple navigation and a little trial and error
From the onboarding and in the days afterward, it was very easy to get into the platform and begin creating important websites and configuring user options. The interface is easy to navigate, and the platform pages load quickly. Since the platform is built for Word plus press, it has features including backup, staging, maintenance mode, and direct WP-Admin login to make configuration and site management faster. We have never had any issues on the billing side of the account.
Google doesn't support anything that's free. Anything. Seriously, when was the last time you saw a help number for a free Google app where you could pick up a phone and get a credible voice on the other end. Unless you're actually paying Google for a service you don't exist.
Support is generally great. Enterprise support is fantastic, with little to no wait times. I find that chat support can almost always take care of the problem without escalating to a ticket for a higher level of troubleshooting. The chat support for many other hosting providers can only handle basic issues. This is a big bonus for us to get quick and helpful answers.
Have a plan written out for yourself, you can always make changes as you go. It's more difficult to build a Blog if one doesn't even know what the Blog is going to be about. It's best to plan what your Blog is going to be about and what your audience is going to be and what you want to accomplish before you start building.
I've selected Blogger due to its simple user interface and open source feature. I can make my pages within a few minutes and add them to my website quickly, unlike other software, Iike Wix or WordPress, which is more advanced and requires pre-learning to make efficient use of them. With Blogger, I can start my blog building directly without any prior knowledge and coding.
While we still use GoDaddy for some services, WP Engine definitely has been a major upgrade for our WordPress hosting. In addition to faster load speeds, WP Engine has been more adept at allowing us to manage a high number of websites without straining the system. We have never used Network Solutions for our own hosting needs, but when we do interact with them on behalf of our clients, their systems always seem to be clunky and hard to use, and they often overcharge customers by selling them products they do not need.
Before using Blogger, we were sending out information to agents via email and they would either delete them or just not find them. Now since we keep all the information in one place, it has cut down repetitive questions and has given our agents a voice as to what is working for them and what is not.
We don't have any hard numbers, but we have heard back from our agents that the blog posts help them and not have to rely on contacting support stuff as often to find answers to simple questions.
The only negative impact felt so far is with a few select agents leaving negative feedback to blog due to personal issues they have with policies within the company.
