I paid USD13 to shift from Blogger to Wordpress. 28 days later, I am back to Blogger.
You know, Wordpress is like a sexy girlfriend you've always wanted, she is aesthetically pleasing and gorgeous, and you want to engage with her all day long. I did blog more when I was with Wordpress. It apparently gives you more statistics, and better search engine functions - which I've yet to truly experience for the long haul... because this same girlfriend is materialistic and perpetually asking me for money. Really, Wordpress?
At every single turn and page, Wordpress is asking me to pay for a better theme, additional plugins, and the last straw was when Wordpress required me to pay USD79 for 10GB of storage space. Hell, I can buy a 2TB hard disk drive at that price (That's 200 times). Did I put it in perspective for you yet?
So I decided - out of quite a bit of fury - to migrate back to Blogger. Bowing my head in shame and returning to home base, I needed to export my blog back to upload it back to Blogger... to realize that Wordpress will make it extremely difficult for you to do that.
Because they decide only allow you to export it in chunks - ie. first 200 posts, second 200 posts, and so on. It is not technically obvious to me how I should merge them given they are in XML document - which by the way you still have to convert to make it readable to Blogger.
To add insult to injury, Wordpress kindly offer an option - 'Guided Transfer' - for a gentle price tag of USD 129.
Never mind. I'll do it manually myself then.
You know, I can be a sucker for pretty things. I pay for apps, I pay for pixels, I pay for filters. And granted that the Wordpress template is indeed prettier.
But I cannot overlook how unscrupulously this is done.
You go into Wordpress, thinking you're going to have a user-friendly experience blogging... Then hidden costs pop up all over the place like mines. You feel invested into the blog, and you feel compelled to pay for the add-ons even though it's so ridiculous. That is unless you walk the full perimeter to find out where the mines are first.
So, 28 days later, goodbye Wordpress. Sorry to the folks at Vodien that I've to ask for more technical help - with no additional costs - which by the way they are awesome. And hello Blogger.