I am doing a private research of comparisons made about some of the various blogging platforms. To start I am posting a chart and comments from a blog post done in January, 2008. Now lots can happen in just a few months on the internet. But I decided to start providing some of the information I am coming across.
This post was made by Andrew.
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The table shows that the comparison is a tricky one, in that WordPress.com and TypePad are packaged differently. Automattic offers free, ad-supported, hosted blogging at WordPress.com, and offers a few specific paid upgrades. Six Apart offers paid, ad-free blogging at TypePad.com in the form of different packages: Basic and Plus are the “smallest.”
| WordPress.com | WordPress.com upgrades | TypePad Basic | TypePad Plus | |
| Price (year) | Free | $50 | $90 | |
| Storage | 3 GB (= 3000 MB) | + $20 for + 5 GB,… | 100 MB | 500 MB |
| Can store JPG, GIF | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Can store MP3, video | No | With storage upgrade | Yes | Yes |
| Bandwidth | Unlimited | 2 GB/month | 5 GB/month | |
| Domain mapping | No | + $10 | No | Yes |
| Ads | Yes, by/for Automattic | Ad-related upgrade in the works | Yes, by/for you if you want | Yes, by/for you if you want |
| Templates/themes | Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Drag and drop to customize layouts | Using sidebar widgets (only within sidebar) | No | Yes | |
| Customize CSS | No | + $15 | No | No |
The mapping between features of WordPress and of TypePad isn’t always a neat one. This is borne out in particular by the last rows of the table, and by the notes they prompt me to add. Custom CSS for TypePad requires the Pro package, which costs $150/year. But TypePad plus offers some customization options not available at WordPress.com, even with the CSS upgrade.
The difference is sufficient to prompt the cliche of “comparing apples and oranges.” It might be interesting to expand the comparison to include pears and kiwi fruit: that is, Blogger and Vox. In fact, Matt made the comparison with Blogger’s storage allowance in the above quote. Vox is the most recently-introduced of Six Apart’s blogging services.
For a comparison between Automattic and Six Apart, see my guest post at Read/Write Web. But note that Six Apart has since sold LiveJournal.
Posted by Andrew