Pros and Cons of Using Hosted/Free Blogs

This blog is hosted by Blogger and is considered as a free blog. While there is cons and pros of using a hosted blog, there is no universal requirement that you must own your blog in order to be successful. They are many business that have used hosted blog for a long time and they are still doing very well. Though it is true that  using a free blog comes with certain  some limitations which may affect your marketing abilities.

If you are looking for a hosted blog, you can read my previous article on free blogging platforms but before you decide whether you should go for a owned blog or hosted blog, here is pros and cons of using a hosted blog.

Pros

• One of the most obvious benefit of using a hosted blog is that there is no charge. It is free to use a hosted blog. You do not have to worry about monthly charges.
• You do not have to wait for a domain name to be approved. You can start a blog anytime, anywhere provided the name that you choose for your blog is not been used by anyone else.
• Hosted blogs are easy to use and less complicated.

Cons

• Everyone can know that you are using a free blog since the URL has the name of the blog host.
• Some peoplel may have problem remembering your blog URL since you have to put your host name togher with your URL.
• The URLs are usually much longer in comparison to URL of owned domain name.
• The hosted blogs only have a few choices of templates.
• You can lose ownership of your blog anytime without notice.
• You do not have much control of what you can do in your blog

These are  the cons and pros of using a hosted blog. This post is meant to help new bloggers in deciding whether to use a hosted blog or a owned domain. Though there are many more things that you can do to improve a hosted blog such as designing a blog layout which can make it look more less like a owned blog.