It’s been a week since I switched this blog from Posterous to WordPress.com. I’m very happy with the change, but it is clear to me that Posterous offer very compelling features for a free service.
What follows isn’t a complete comparison of the two services, it just highlights what I consider the most important differences between the two services for a typical blogger.
| WordPress.com | Posterous | Big library of free themes (100+). Premium themes. No custom themes. | Decent library of free themes (46). No premium themes. Custom themes. |
|---|---|
| Custom domain mapping ($12 per year). | Free custom domain mapping. |
| Regular users may see ads on your blog. Signed in WordPress.com users won’t. ($29.97 to remove.) | No on-site advertising. |
| No direct HTML editing. CSS access paid upgrade ($30 per year). | Full free access to HTML and CSS. |
| Image-heavy posts are a pain to manage. | Excellent, intuitive image galleries. |
| Excellent, but expensive HD video support (VideoPress: $60 per year). | Free video uploads (100MB per video limit). |
| A basic stats tool in the dashboard. No export functionality. No Google Analytics support. | Support for Google Analytics. |
| Threaded comments. | No threaded comments. |
| Fantastic commenting and comment moderation features. | Comments can be a bit buggy for users. Poor moderation features. |
| Both services offer great customer support and have good iPhone and Android apps. | |
| Neither service permits the use of JavaScript. | |
Note that I stopped using Posterous just before it transformed into Posterous Spaces. Their blogging service remains basically unchanged, so these points are still valid, but there is now a whole social aspect you may want to consider.
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