Is It Blogger or Blogspot? The Actual Difference (And Whether It's Worth Caring About)

The short version: Blogger is the free publishing platform that Google owns, and Blogspot is the free web address that platform gives you if you never bother buying your own domain. They're not two competing brands, one is the house and the other is the free flat above the shop. Whether it matters depends entirely on whether you're treating your blog as a hobby or as a business asset.

What Blogger is, in plain terms

Blogger is the software. It's the dashboard where you write posts, pick a theme, add images, and hit publish. Google bought it in 2003 from a small San Francisco company called Pyra Labs, who'd built it back in 1999, which makes it one of the oldest blogging tools still limping along on the internet. You can look up the full history on Wikipedia's Blogger entry if you want the dates.

When people ask "is it called Blogger or Blogspot," what they usually mean is: what do I say when someone asks where my blog lives. And the honest answer is Blogger is what you'd say if you're talking about the tool, and Blogspot is what you'd say if you're talking about the address, because Blogspot.com is the domain Google slaps onto every blog that hasn't paid to remove it.

What is Blogspot? (And why Google gives it away free)

Blogspot is a domain, full stop. When you sign up for a new blog on Blogger and skip the custom domain step, you get something like yourblogname.blogspot.com. That's it. It's not a separate platform, it's not owned by a different company, it's just the default web address Blogger hands you because most people who start a blog never intend to pay for a domain and Google needs somewhere to put the site.

Think of it the way you'd think of a Gmail address versus your own email domain. Nobody says "I use Gmail and Googlemail as two different things," they say "I have a Gmail account" or "I have my own domain." Same logic applies here. You don't have a Blogger blog and a separate Blogspot blog. You have a Blogger blog that's currently living at a Blogspot address, or you've moved it to your own.

The client who thought Blogspot was her brand name

A few years back I worked with a woman running a small cake business from home, and she'd been blogging recipes and behind-the-scenes stories for about four years at somethinglikecakesbysarah.blogspot.com. When we sat down to talk about her marketing, she introduced her blog to me as "my Blogspot," as if that were the name of the thing she'd built, not the leftover address she'd never got round to changing.

She had around 40 posts, a decent amount of comments, and a handful of local press mentions that all linked back to that blogspot.com URL. When she finally rebranded and moved to her own domain, cakesbysarah.co.uk, she lost most of that old link equity overnight because she didn't set up proper redirects, she just started fresh. Four years of work, gone in an afternoon of enthusiasm. That's not a Blogger problem or a Blogspot problem, that's a "nobody told her the difference mattered until it was too late" problem, and it's the exact reason I now bring this up with every new client in the first meeting, before we've even talked content strategy.

Does the difference matter for SEO and how you look to strangers

Here's where I'll say something most posts on this topic avoid saying outright: a blogspot.com address makes you look like you haven't committed yet. Not always fairly, but consistently. When a journalist, a potential client, or a brand you want to work with lands on yourname.blogspot.com instead of yourname.com, there's a small but real credibility tax. It reads as "started this on a Tuesday afternoon and never got round to the rest," even if the writing inside is brilliant.

On the technical side, Google doesn't penalise blogspot.com subdomains outright, plenty rank fine for low competition terms. But you're sharing domain authority with millions of other blogspot.com sites, some of them spammy, abandoned, or dodgy, and you have zero control over that shared reputation. Your own domain builds authority that belongs to you alone. A blogspot.com subdomain builds authority that belongs to Google's giant shared pool.

• A custom domain costs roughly 10 to 15 pounds a year through most registrars.
• Mapping it inside Blogger takes about 10 minutes: Settings, then Publishing, then "Custom domain," then you add two CNAME records at your registrar.
• Your existing blogspot.com posts don't need to be deleted, Blogger automatically redirects the old address to the new one once it's set up, which is the step my cake client skipped by rebuilding from scratch instead of migrating.

Should you even be starting a new blog on Blogger in 2026

This is the part most "Blogger vs Blogspot" articles quietly step around, because it's uncomfortable if you're trying to sell someone on starting today. Blogger hasn't had a meaningful feature update in years. Google's own commitment to it is, at best, on autopilot. It still works, it's still free, it still lets you publish a post in under two minutes, but it's not being built for anymore, it's being maintained. Compare that to WordPress, which powers over 40 percent of all websites and gets constant plugin and security updates, or Squarespace, which redesigns its editor regularly because it's a paid product with a reason to keep improving.

If you're 53 and rebuilding a business in public, as I have been for the last five years, you don't want your foundation to be something the owner has quietly stopped investing in. I still think Blogger is fine for a genuine hobby, a family travel diary, a recipe collection you're doing for fun. But if there's any chance this blog becomes a business asset, a lead generator, something you'd point a client or a journalist to, start it somewhere that's still actively developed and put it on your own domain from day one. Don't do what I did with my very first blog back in 2007, which lived happily on a free subdomain for nearly two years before I realised every bit of traffic I'd built was sitting on rented land I didn't control.

How to fix it if you're already stuck on a Blogspot address

If you've got a blog on blogspot.com right now with posts you care about, here's the order I'd do it in:

• Buy your domain first, before you touch anything else in Blogger's settings.
• Go to Settings, then Publishing, then add your custom domain and follow the CNAME instructions exactly, one typo in those records and it won't connect.
• Wait 24 to 48 hours for DNS to propagate before assuming it's broken.
• Once it's live, check five or six of your old posts to confirm the blogspot.com version now redirects to the new domain rather than throwing a 404.
• Update your author bio, your email signature, and any social profiles that still list the old blogspot.com link.

None of that is difficult. Most of it is just tedious, which is exactly why so many people never get round to it and end up, four years in, calling their blog "my Blogspot" the way my cake client did.

For guest contributors covering this area, read How to Get Paid Writing for Marketing Blogs (And Land the Gig).

Frequently asked questions

Is Blogger the same company as Blogspot?

Yes, in the sense that Blogspot isn't a company at all, it's the default domain Google's Blogger platform assigns you. There's one company involved, Google, and one product, Blogger, with Blogspot simply being the free address that comes attached to it.

Can I remove Blogspot from my blog's web address?

Yes, by connecting a custom domain in Blogger's Settings under Publishing. You'll need to buy a domain separately for around 10 to 15 pounds a year, then add a couple of CNAME records where you bought it, and Blogger handles the rest along with redirecting your old blogspot.com links.

Is Blogger still free to use in 2026?

Yes, Blogger remains completely free, including hosting, and it has done since Google took it over in 2003. The only cost you'll ever pay is for a custom domain if you choose to move off the blogspot.com address, which is optional but worth doing if you're serious about the blog.

Should I start a new blog on Blogger or somewhere else?

For a genuine hobby blog with no business ambitions, Blogger is fine and low effort. For anything you want journalists, clients, or search engines to take seriously long term, I'd point you toward WordPress or a similarly actively developed platform on your own domain from the very first post.