Users often ask why they should use WordPress rather than other free blogging services like Tumblr, Ghost, and Blogger? Medium is one of the rapidly growing free blogging platforms which permits anyone to create stories and make their own personal space on the web. Here in this article, I will present a contrast between WordPress and Medium with all its advantages and disadvantages.
Since both the platforms are prominent and enjoy their own space in the online world, it is important that you understand the difference between these two in a clear sense.
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Content Ownership
Medium is a completely free online community where anyone can share his or her stories. It is really easy to bring in use, rely on and has also built up social networking features.
No matter what, you simply do not own Medium. In fact, it is owned by ‘A Medium Corporation’ and they can actually decide to shut it down, cancel your account anytime and announce the new pricing plans.
On the contrary, WordPress offers you to own your personal content. As you host your own website, you have complete control over your data and also the person you share it with.
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Growing into your Own Personal Brand
When you use Medium, you are advertising their brand together with your stories. You just do not get paid for that. And if you are not someone enjoying the credibility of a famous author, chances are that medium users would consider reading a story on Medium without even keeping your name in their minds.
Medium is also a kind of network which means content from other writers often get displayed as the next stories below your personal story, Whereas on WordPress you enjoy complete control over the way you wish to promote your brand. With a growth in your popularity, it is you only who decide the way to capitalize on your brand recognition and content. Your content and ideas are simply known by your name only.
And ever since you have complete control over your WordPress site, you can do a lot of work to increase the time that your users spend on your website.
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Design Your Possibilities
Medium offers you to choose a particular layout for your publication, you simply add your own background color, your own logo and in fact image to the header. For the layout, you can actually choose a stream based or grid layout. This drag and drop editor is literally east to use and offer a lot of customization options.
However, your publication appearance can still be limited to the choices that are available in Medium. You can just not choose your own layout for the website and your own design.
On the other hand, you will get thousands of themes available on WordPress for free. These are the themes designed by the professionals with unlimited customization and innovative design options.
WordPress offers you the complete flexibility to design a site that looks exclusively yours. If you can simply spend a little more on it, then you can hire the designers and the developers to create any type of website imaginable.
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Moving Freedom
Medium offers you to export your data in the HTML format. This is something which makes it difficult to export your data to other platforms like WordPress. The likes and Responses to your articles cannot be exported at all.
When it comes to set up redirects from Medium to WordPress it is not too difficult. In fact, even if you are using a custom medium or domain, you still need to manually set up a redirect for every single story on your platform. Being an open source platform, WordPress offers you the freedom to move all your content. You can actually import or export your data from WordPress while using important plugins. Not just that you can also import/export your comments and users. WordPress comes with the amazing backup plugins permitting you to restore and migrate your site to a new host or even some new domain name.
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Security
Medium is a completely hosted platform, which means that you need not worry about the software. Your content is completely served by higher secure medium servers. All your private information is kept under security while using the industry standard security measures.
WordPress is now a self-hosted platform. This actually means that you are responsible for the security and safety of your website. It is a renowned name for its quick response to the security issues with the immediate updates which may be automatically installed on millions of WordPress sites.
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What is the Future?
Medium is one of the private companies owned by ‘A Medium Corporation’. At present, the company has got limited options of monetization offered by Partnership with chosen brands for very few publishers. We do not know what exists there in the future for Medium. It can make money and survive, or it may disappear like lots of free content hosting services before it.
WordPress is open source project, managed by a lot of independent users and developers. WordPress foundations safeguard the legal freedoms of WordPress which bring assurance that the project will continue even if the core developers leave the project.
It has been here around us for more than 13 years and has actually grown into the largest content management system across the globe. It is actually safe to say that WordPress is going to be around for several years to come.
Final Remarks
It won’t be wrong to say that WordPress and Medium both have got their own pros and Cons. Since both are the prominent platforms, these keep you at an advantage no matter what. But this guide actually works in letting you choose the best according to your business requirements.
So, let your choice come forward to make a difference!