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Blogger started in 1999.
VeloCMS is what
came next.

Blogger is Google's free blogspot.com platform, and for a personal archive posted once a month it still works fine. The moment you want reader subscriptions, a newsletter, or an editor that doesn't feel like 2010, you hit Blogger's ceiling. VeloCMS covers all of that from $9/mo — moving your posts over today is a manual copy-paste into the editor, not a one-click import, but the custom domain, newsletter, and paywall are live from day one.

Start migrating from Blogger See full comparison

Blogger vs VeloCMS — platform snapshot

Dimension	Blogger	VeloCMS
Primary focus	Free personal blogging platform owned by Google. Launched in 1999 by Pyra Labs, acquired by Google in 2003. Blogspot.com subdomain or a custom domain connected through DNS. Google handles the hosting (it has not announced a shutdown). Core use case: personal journals, hobbyist blogs, family archives — low posting frequency, no monetisation, no audience development. Few major new features in recent years.	CMS-first content and commerce platform. TipTap block-based blog editor, native newsletter sent through VeloCMS's email service, BYOK Stripe member paywall, and 40 themes — all in one admin. 301 redirect configuration for your old blogspot.com links (moving the posts over today is manual — no Blogger importer yet). Custom domain with an automatic SSL certificate. Per-post JSON-LD schema markup. Reader subscriptions and member-only content built in. Built for writers who want to own their audience, not just archive posts.
Pricing	Free. No paid tiers. Google AdSense integration for display advertising. No subscription or paywall tools. No digital product sales. If your only monetisation model is display ads on a blogspot.com URL, Blogger handles that at zero cost. The moment you want anything else — member subscriptions, paid newsletters, a content paywall — you are outside Blogger's feature set.	14-day free trial on any plan — card required, no charge until day 15. Pro $9/mo (annual) — full block editor, newsletter through VeloCMS's email service, AI drafting assist, 40 themes, custom domain, per-post SEO fields, member tiers, digital products. Business $29/mo — 5 team members, custom sender domain for email, 50,000 subscribers, unlimited AI translations. Agency $69/mo — 5 tenant blogs on custom domains (extra sites $9/mo each). 14-day free trial on all paid plans.
CMS + blog editor	Classic rich text editor with HTML editing. No block-based content structure. Per-post SEO controls in Blogger Help are headings, image alt text, and custom robots tags; the search description is set per blog under Settings > Meta tags. No SEO scoring panel. No reading time. No content blocks (callouts, code blocks, embeds). Post layout comes from the theme: custom themes mean editing Blogger's XML template language. The editing experience has changed little in years.	TipTap block-based editor: headings, paragraphs, callouts, code blocks, images (AVIF/WebP via next/image), embeds, reading time, Open Graph editor, per-post JSON-LD. AI drafting assist via Gemini 2.5 Flash. Post templates are theme-controlled via 40 preset themes — no HTML editing required for layout changes. Semantic HTML output enforced at the editor layer.
Custom domain	Supported. Add the domain under Settings > Publishing > Custom domain, then create two CNAME records at your registrar (one to ghs.google.com, one security CNAME); a bare domain needs four A-records plus the Redirect domain option. Blogger creates and renews the SSL certificate itself (if you use CAA records, allow letsencrypt.org). Google notes the blogspot.com address can take up to 24 hours to redirect to your custom domain. The work is mostly DNS setup, and any later move still needs a 301 plan for old links.	Custom domain per blog, routed through our hosting platform. Let's Encrypt SSL certificate issued automatically. No blogspot.com subdomain leakage — the custom domain is the canonical URL from day one. 301 redirects from old blogspot.com URLs configurable per post slug. DNS setup guide for every major registrar. Custom domain takes 5–30 minutes to propagate.
Theme system	A fixed set of pre-built Blogger themes (including Dynamic Views themes) with a dated visual style. Custom themes mean editing Blogger's proprietary XML template language, including its layout and widget tags. Theme changes happen on a single Theme page: apply a theme, customize background and fonts, or edit the HTML. The visual output is recognisably Blogger.	40 preset themes with modern typography and OKLCH colour palettes. One-click theme switching in admin. Themes are CSS-only — no HTML structure changes required. All themes WCAG AA compliant, fully responsive, and LCP-optimised. Theme preview before applying. Custom CSS available for fine-tuning. No XML template editing.
Comments + members	Built-in comment system with embedded replies, moderation (always, sometimes, or never require approval), a spam folder, and a choice of who can comment (anyone, Google Account users, or blog members only). No reactions. No member subscription system for your own readers. No paid content gating. No email capture. Followers exist through Google accounts, but they are not a list a creator can email.	Native member system: reader accounts via magic-link auth. Free and paid membership tiers. Member-only posts gated at the reader level. Paid subscriptions via BYOK Stripe — reader pays the blog owner directly, 0% VeloCMS platform fee. Email list in VeloCMS — newsletter sending through VeloCMS's email service, subscriber management, import from Blogger follower list. Member-only newsletter segments.
E-commerce	Not available. Google AdSense banner advertising is the only built-in revenue mechanism. No digital product sales. No subscription checkouts. No course or download sales. Bloggers who want to sell anything typically link out to Gumroad, Etsy, or PayPal — external platforms that take their own cut and break the brand continuity of the blog.	Digital product sales via BYOK Stripe checkout: e-books, PDF guides, templates, courses, one-time downloads. Member subscription tiers for recurring revenue. 0% VeloCMS platform fee — standard Stripe processing rate only (2.9% + $0.30). No external platform required. Revenue stays in the blog owner's Stripe account from day one.
Owned data + portability	Backups run through Google Takeout (Settings > Manage blog > Back up content) and can be re-imported as a feed.atom or .xml file covering posts, pages, and comments. Image URLs point at Google-hosted addresses (blogger.googleusercontent.com); Google says image owners can find their images in Takeout. Blogger Help does not describe follower or reader data in the backup, and reader email addresses are not accessible to the blog owner.	Posts in PocketBase. Images in Cloudflare R2 (your storage bucket). Subscribers in your VeloCMS newsletter list, exportable as CSV at any time. Paying members in your Stripe account. BYOK Stripe — payments go straight to the blog owner's own account. No platform lock-in. No platform-hold risk.

Where Blogger stops working for you

Blogger works as a personal archive. These are the structural friction points that surface the moment your blog becomes more than a personal journal — when you want a brand, an audience, and ownership of both.

Blogger's editor and themes have seen few major updates in years.

Blogger's rich text editor, template system, and admin dashboard have seen few major updates in recent years, and Blogger Help still documents XML layout and widget tags for theme work. Google has not announced a shutdown, but the product reads as one in maintenance mode rather than active development. Writing in Blogger in 2026 means a classic rich text editor with no block structure and per-post SEO controls limited to headings, image alt text, and custom robots tags. For a blog with aspirations beyond personal archive, that ceiling becomes the ceiling of the platform itself.

Custom domains work on Blogger, but the setup is DNS-heavy and old blogspot.com links still need a plan.

Blogger supports custom domains: you add the domain under Settings > Publishing > Custom domain, create two CNAME records (one pointing at ghs.google.com plus a security CNAME), and add four A-records if you also want the bare domain to redirect. Google says the blogspot.com address redirects to your custom domain, which can take up to 24 hours, and Blogger issues and renews the SSL certificate itself. The friction is the DNS work and the history: years of incoming links point at blogspot.com post URLs, so moving to another platform later still needs a careful 301 redirect plan to keep that link equity.

Google has a history of retiring consumer products. Blogger has no announced shutdown, but your archive sits on a platform you don't control.

Google Reader. Google+. Google Podcasts. Google Play Music. Google Stadia. Inbox by Gmail. The list of discontinued Google consumer products is long. Google has not announced a Blogger shutdown, and Blogger Help still documents themes, custom domains, HTTPS, backups, and imports. But platform risk for a blog is not just "will the site go down?" — it's what happens to the post URLs, the image hosting, the comment archive, and the reader relationships if that ever changes. Blogger's backup (through Google Takeout) covers posts, pages, and comments as a feed.atom or .xml file. Images are served from Google-hosted addresses, and incoming link equity to blogspot.com URLs is not something an export carries.

Three Blogger archetypes, three reasons to move

Long-time Blogger users with deep archives, hobbyists who want a real brand on a custom domain, and personal bloggers who want reader support beyond display ads — these are the audiences where Blogger's ceiling meets VeloCMS's floor.

The long-time Blogger user with 10-20 years of archives and incoming links

A blogger who has been posting on blogspot.com since 2007 has a different migration concern than someone starting fresh. The archive has real SEO value: years of incoming links, indexed posts, and domain authority tied to that blogspot.com URL. Migrating without proper 301 redirects means losing all of that. VeloCMS supports 301 redirect configuration from old blogspot.com slugs to new VeloCMS post URLs — moving the posts themselves is a manual copy-paste into the editor today, since there's no Blogger importer yet. VeloCMS handles the custom domain SSL automatically. See how VeloCMS compares to WordPress.com for the managed-hosting cluster context.

The hobbyist wanting a real brand on a custom domain with reader subscriptions

Blogspot.com is not a credible brand address in 2026. Every ".blogspot.com" domain signals to readers — and to search engine crawlers — that the blog is a hobbyist operation on a legacy platform. Moving to a custom domain changes that signal. VeloCMS Pro at $9/mo covers a custom domain, a modern block-based editor, Gemini AI writing assist, 40 professionally designed themes, and a native newsletter sent through VeloCMS's email service so readers can subscribe to email updates. For a blogger who posts twice a month and wants readers to take the work seriously, the jump from blogspot.com to a custom domain on a modern platform is the single highest-leverage improvement available. See how VeloCMS compares to Tumblr for the free-platform-to-custom-domain migration pattern.

The family or personal blogger who has outgrown Google AdSense and wants direct reader support

Google AdSense revenue on a personal blog with a few thousand monthly readers is usually modest and depends heavily on niche and traffic. A member subscription on VeloCMS — a "buy me a coffee" tier at $3-5/mo via BYOK Stripe — with 50 subscribing readers generates $150-250/mo at 0% VeloCMS platform fee. The comparison isn't about volume; it's about relationship. Readers who pay a small monthly amount to support a blog they love are qualitatively different from anonymous visitors who happened not to run an ad blocker. VeloCMS Pro at $9/mo covers member tiers, digital downloads, and the BYOK Stripe integration. AdSense can run as a supplementary revenue layer via standard ad embed code if preferred.

how VeloCMS compares to WordPress.com how VeloCMS compares to Tumblr

Feature parity grid — what each platform covers

Honest grid. Blogger leads on free hosting and Google AdSense integration. VeloCMS leads on everything that matters when you want to grow beyond a personal archive: modern editor, newsletter, member subscriptions, SEO tooling, and owned data.

Feature	Blogger	VeloCMS
Free hosting (no subscription required)	✓	~
Google AdSense integration (display ads)	✓	—
Basic HTML template editor (raw XML override)	✓	—
Custom domain support	✓	✓
SSL certificate auto-provisioned	✓	✓
Block-based CMS editor (Notion-style)	—	✓
Per-post JSON-LD schema markup	—	✓
Per-post Open Graph + meta description editor	~	✓
Native newsletter (sent through VeloCMS's email service)	—	✓
Member subscriptions + paywall	—	✓
Digital product sales (e-books, downloads)	—	✓
301 redirects from old URLs after migration	✓	✓
Modern responsive themes (40 presets)	~	✓
Owned subscriber email list (exportable)	—	✓
AI writing assist in editor	—	✓

native ~ partial/limited — not available

Pricing breakdown — free vs the full picture

Blogger is free if your time and brand equity are free. If you spend any time worrying about losing years of posts to a Google sunset email, that worry is worth more than a VeloCMS Pro subscription.

Blogger — free with trade-offs

Hostingblogspot.com subdomain, Google-managed infrastructure
Free
Custom domainConnect via DNS (CNAME + A records) — SSL certificate issued by Blogger
Free
Editorclassic rich text + HTML — no blocks, limited per-post SEO controls
Free
Themesfixed theme set, XML-based templates, dated visual style
Free
Newsletter toolKit Free to Kit Creator at 1,000 subscribers — separate platform required
$0-33/mo
Member subscriptionsMemberful Standard — separate platform required
$49/mo + 4.9%

Blogger hosting is genuinely free. Add a newsletter tool (Kit is free up to 10,000 subscribers, Creator from $33/mo billed yearly at 1,000) and a membership platform (Memberful Standard is $49/mo plus a 4.9% transaction fee) for features VeloCMS includes natively, and the "free" framing changes.

VeloCMS — all layers included

VeloCMS Proannual — full editor, newsletter through VeloCMS's email service, AI assist, 40 themes, custom domain
$9/mo
VeloCMS Businessannual — all Pro + 5 team members, custom sender domain for email, unlimited AI translations
$29/mo
VeloCMS Agencyannual — 5 tenant blogs on custom domains (extra sites $9/mo each)
$69/mo
Newsletter (VeloCMS email service)sent through VeloCMS's email service, exportable subscriber list; own sender domain on Business and Agency
Included
Member paywall (BYOK Stripe)your own Stripe — standard 2.9%+$0.30 rate, 0% VeloCMS cut
0% fee

VeloCMS Pro at $9/mo covers custom domain, block editor, a newsletter through VeloCMS's email service, AI drafting, and 40 themes. Newsletter and member paywall included at zero platform fee — versus roughly $49-82/mo plus a 4.9% fee on member revenue for a Blogger + Kit + Memberful stack.

The real cost of "free"

Blogger costs $0 in subscription fees. That framing ignores several real costs. A blogger who wants to send a monthly email newsletter to their readers needs a separate platform — Mailchimp, Kit (formerly ConvertKit), or Beehiiv — with paid tiers that rise with subscriber count and features. A blogger who wants reader subscriptions needs Patreon, Gumroad, or MemberSpace — platforms that take a share of revenue on top of Stripe fees. A blogger worried about platform continuity spends cognitive time wondering when Google's next product sunset might include Blogger. None of these costs show up in the Blogger pricing page — because Blogger has no pricing page.

VeloCMS Pro at $9/mo covers the blog, the custom domain with SSL, the newsletter sent through VeloCMS's email service (up to 5,000 subscribers on Pro), and AI-assisted drafting in a modern block editor. Pro also includes member subscriptions at 0% platform fee, and Business at $29/mo adds 5 team members and a custom sender domain for email. Neither tier takes a cut of newsletter revenue or member subscriptions — that money goes directly to the blog owner's Stripe account. The trade-off against Blogger is the $9/mo subscription cost vs. the zero-cost status quo. The question is whether the features, the brand, and the ownership model justify that difference for your use case. For a purely personal archive with no monetisation ambition, Blogger may still be fine. For anything beyond that, the math shifts quickly.

Migrating from Blogger to VeloCMS — five steps

A realistic migration path for Blogger users. The XML export covers your post archive. The 301 redirect setup preserves your link equity. Image migration is the highest-effort step for large archives — so plan time for it.

1
Export your Blogger archive (XML format)
In Blogger: Settings → Manage blog → Back up content → Download (the backup runs through Google Takeout). This exports a file containing your posts, pages, comments, and labels (tags), including publication dates. Keep this file — it is your complete archive. Check the file size: a blog with 500 posts may produce a large file, but the posts themselves (text content) are compact. Post bodies reference images by URL; Google says image owners can find the image files in Takeout.
2
Bring your Blogger content into VeloCMS — there's no Blogger importer yet
VeloCMS doesn't have an automated importer for Blogger's XML export yet, so today's path is manual: open the export, and for each post copy the title, body, and publish date into a new VeloCMS post through the editor (Admin → Posts → New), setting the original publish date yourself so your archive timeline stays intact. Custom Blogger template widgets and gadgets aren't content, so there's nothing to carry over there. For an archive under 100 posts this is a realistic afternoon project; for a 500-post archive, budget several sessions or bring in help.
3
Port your Blogger template to a VeloCMS theme and configure custom CSS
Browse the VeloCMS theme library and choose the preset that most closely matches your Blogger template's layout direction: two-column with sidebar, single-column editorial, or full-width magazine. Apply your brand colours and typography via the theme customiser. Custom CSS is available for fine-tuning specific elements. Most Blogger migrations map to one of VeloCMS's 40 preset themes without requiring custom development. The visual output will be meaningfully more modern than any Blogger template from the 2010-2020 era.
4
Set up custom domain and configure 301 redirects from blogspot.com
In VeloCMS Admin → Settings → Custom Domain, add your custom domain. VeloCMS provisions an SSL certificate automatically. Update the CNAME record at your domain registrar to point to VeloCMS. In Admin → Settings → Redirects, configure 301 redirect mappings from Blogger's URL format (/YYYY/MM/post-title.html) to VeloCMS's URL format (/blog/post-slug). In Blogger Settings → Publishing → Custom domain, check that your domain is set; Google notes the blogspot.com address redirects to your custom domain (it can take up to 24 hours). This creates the full chain: old incoming links → Blogger redirect → VeloCMS 301 redirect → correct post URL.
5
Migrate images from Google CDN to Cloudflare R2 (optional but recommended)
Images in migrated posts load from Google's CDN at their original Blogger URLs. This works as long as your Google account and Blogger blog remain active. To fully own the images independent of Google: download the images from Google Photos or Blogger's CDN, upload them to VeloCMS's media library (backed by Cloudflare R2), and update image references in the migrated posts. For large archives (200+ posts with images), plan the image move as a separate batch job. Once images are in R2, the Google hosting dependency is fully eliminated.

The honest trade-offs

Blogger's genuine advantages deserve honest acknowledgment. Free hosting backed by Google infrastructure means your blog has essentially zero risk of a hosting bill, a server going down, or an unexpected cost when traffic spikes. Google AdSense integration is seamless — no plugin, no API setup, just paste the ad unit code and AdSense revenue flows. The 1999-era simplicity is not a bug for everyone: you write, you publish, it's live. No deployment pipeline, no theme updates, no plugin compatibility matrix. For a blog that posts once a month for an audience of family members who read it over morning coffee, Blogger genuinely covers the use case at zero cost. That is not a dismissal. It is the actual value proposition, and it is real.

The calculus shifts when the blog is no longer purely a personal archive. When you want readers to subscribe to email updates, you need a newsletter platform, and Blogger's settings and help center document no path to that. When you want to gate premium content for paying supporters, Blogger has no mechanism. When you want a custom domain, Blogger supports it through DNS records, but the old blogspot.com links still need handling if you ever move. When the blog's SEO matters — because you write regularly on a topic people search for — Blogger's documented per-post controls are headings, image alt text, and custom robots tags, with no SEO scoring and no reading time signal. VeloCMS is not Blogger's natural successor for everyone. It is the natural successor for Blogger users who decided the blog is going somewhere.

Where Blogger fits in the legacy blogging cluster

The legacy free blogging cluster includes Blogger, WordPress.com (Automattic's commercial hosted WordPress, freemium), and Tumblr (reblog-centric social blogging, free). Blogger is the most genuinely static of the three: WordPress.com has been actively developed with Gutenberg blocks, Jetpack features, and commercial tiers. Tumblr has had ownership changes and some feature investment. Blogger has received few major new features in recent years. Among the three, Blogger is the clearest case of a platform in indefinite maintenance mode. It will keep working until Google decides it won't, and that decision will come with the notice period Google typically gives — which is sometimes generous and sometimes not. WordPress.com Tumblr

For Blogger users who decided the archive matters

The most important thing about a Blogger migration is the archive. If you have been writing since 2005, those posts represent years of indexed content, incoming links, and Google authority that took a long time to accumulate. The migration path through VeloCMS is built around preserving that: XML import with original publication dates, 301 redirects from blogspot.com slugs, and image migration tooling for R2. The goal is that your readers and search engines see a seamless transition — not a restart. See how VeloCMS works for Medium migrants for the managed-platform-to-owned-domain pattern applied to a different legacy platform, and the book blogger niche page for the long-form reading community specifically. how VeloCMS works for Medium migrants the book blogger niche page

Three illustrative Blogger migration scenarios

These are hypothetical, composite scenarios, not customer quotes. The figures are worked examples, not results that anyone achieved.

Illustrative scenario

A blogger who has been on Blogger since 2008 has fifteen years of posts, a blogspot.com address that draws some organic search traffic, and little control over any of it. The trigger to move is wanting a newsletter sign-up form that Blogger does not offer natively, after years of sending monthly updates from a personal Gmail account. VeloCMS has no Blogger XML importer, so each post is copied into the editor by hand, which for an archive this size can take a couple of weekends. After that come 301 redirects from the old slug format to the new one, and pointing a custom domain at VeloCMS.

Illustrative: long-time blogger with a 15-year archive, moving post by post, then adding 301 redirects, a custom domain and a newsletter.

Illustrative scenario

A personal finance blogger writing for people in their thirties finds that a blogspot.com address undercuts the blog in a portfolio. In this scenario they move to VeloCMS Business, connect a custom domain, pick the Serif theme, copy about 80 posts across by hand, and add a "support my work" member tier through their own Stripe account instead of Patreon. As simple arithmetic, 11 readers paying $5/mo would bring in $55/mo before Stripe's processing fees, which would cover the $29/mo Business plan.

Illustrative: personal finance blog moving from Blogger to VeloCMS Business with a custom domain, the Serif theme and a member tier through BYOK Stripe.

Illustrative scenario

A couple running a family travel blog, started on Blogger in 2011, want a monthly newsletter with trip updates and a paid tier for detailed destination guides. Blogger makes neither easy. With no Blogger importer, moving roughly 240 posts means copying them across in batches over a couple of weeks, cleaning up image captions and links on the way; the 301 redirects are a short job once the posts are across. As simple arithmetic, 90 members paying $4/mo is $360/mo before Stripe's processing fees, and with BYOK Stripe VeloCMS takes no platform cut (0% platform fee).

Illustrative: 12-year travel blog (about 240 posts) moving to VeloCMS with a custom domain, a newsletter and a paid guide tier.

Frequently asked questions

Can I bring my Blogger export (XML format) into VeloCMS?

Not automatically yet — VeloCMS doesn't have an importer for Blogger's XML export. That export gives you post titles, body content, labels, publication dates, and comments, so the content is all there; today's path is to open it and copy each post into a new VeloCMS post through the editor, setting the original publish date so your archive timeline stays intact. Images referenced in the post body stay at their original Google-hosted URLs unless you re-upload them to Cloudflare R2 via the media library. The move is self-serve: copy the posts across through the editor and re-upload the images to the media library, and email [email protected] if you get stuck.

What happens to my Blogger comments when I migrate?

Blogger's XML export includes comment data (author name, comment text, timestamps), but VeloCMS doesn't import it automatically. If preserving your comment archive matters, decide what's worth manually recreating versus starting your VeloCMS comment section fresh — most site owners moving from Blogger start clean rather than hand-copying years of comments.

How do I set up a custom domain and redirect my blogspot.com URLs?

Step one: add your custom domain in VeloCMS Admin > Settings > Custom Domain. VeloCMS provisions an SSL certificate automatically — this takes 5-30 minutes after you update your DNS CNAME record at your domain registrar. Step two: configure 301 redirects from your blogspot.com post slugs to the equivalent VeloCMS URLs. VeloCMS supports redirect mapping via Admin > Settings > Redirects. Step three: in Blogger Settings > Publishing > Custom domain, check that your domain is set — Google notes the blogspot.com address redirects to your custom domain (it can take up to 24 hours), so incoming links to your old blogspot.com URLs follow to the new custom domain. The 301 redirects preserve your accumulated link equity from years of incoming links pointing to blogspot.com post URLs.

What replaces Google AdSense in VeloCMS?

VeloCMS doesn't have a built-in display ad network to replace AdSense. You have two options. First: you can embed AdSense ad units directly into VeloCMS post templates or layout areas via the Custom HTML block in the blog editor — AdSense doesn't require a platform integration, just the JavaScript snippet on page. Second: member subscriptions via BYOK Stripe. A small membership tier ($3-5/mo) with 50 subscribers generates $150-250/mo before Stripe fees, which can exceed what display ads earn on a small personal blog, without the ad load that affects reader experience and LCP scores. Many Blogger migrants run both for a transition period, then gradually shift readers from AdSense-funded free content to subscription-funded member content.

Will my old blogspot.com URLs still work after migration?

Yes, with setup. Once your custom domain is set under Blogger Settings > Publishing > Custom domain, Google notes the blogspot.com address redirects to it (it can take up to 24 hours). This sends visitors from blogspot.com URLs to the equivalent page on your custom domain. On the VeloCMS side, you configure 301 redirects that map the old blogspot.com post slug format (/YYYY/MM/post-title.html) to the VeloCMS post slug format (/blog/post-slug). Together, the chain is: old incoming link to blogspot.com/2015/04/my-post.html → Blogger redirects to yourcustomdomain.com/2015/04/my-post.html → VeloCMS 301 redirects to yourcustomdomain.com/blog/my-post. Link equity is preserved through the chain.

Can I migrate my Blogger template/theme design to VeloCMS?

Not directly — Blogger templates are XML files in Blogger's proprietary template language, which is not compatible with VeloCMS's theme system. The migration path is to choose a VeloCMS theme that most closely matches your Blogger template's visual direction, then apply your brand colours and typography via the theme customiser. Custom CSS is available for fine-tuning. Most Blogger templates from the 2010-2020 era map cleanly to one of VeloCMS's 40 preset themes in terms of layout type (two-column blog list, single-column editorial, sidebar navigation). The theme customiser handles the rest.

What happens to images hosted on Blogger's CDN after I migrate?

Blogger images (uploaded to Blogger's CDN or your Google Photos storage) remain at their original Google-hosted URLs after you export the XML. The XML import preserves those image URLs in the migrated post content — images continue to load from Google's CDN for as long as Blogger and your Google account remain active. To fully own the images and eliminate dependency on Google's hosting, you re-upload images to VeloCMS's Cloudflare R2 media library and update image references in the migrated posts. This is an optional but recommended step for long-term platform independence. Plan this step before going live if you want it done at launch.

Is VeloCMS free like Blogger?

No. VeloCMS has no free plan: every plan starts with a 14-day free trial (a card is required to begin, and nothing is charged until day 15), then the Pro plan is $9/mo (annual) for a custom domain, full block editor, a newsletter through VeloCMS's email service, AI drafting assist, and all 40 themes. Blogger's zero-cost model is a genuine advantage for pure personal-archive use where the blogspot.com URL is acceptable and AdSense revenue covers the 'cost'. For any use case where brand, reader ownership, or monetisation beyond display ads matters, the $9/mo Pro plan changes the calculus significantly — particularly compared to the accumulated time cost of working around Blogger's older editor and limited SEO controls.

A note from the founder

Blogger deserves respect. It launched in 1999, before blogging was a word most people knew, and it has been running continuously for more than 25 years. The people who built their writing lives on it — the 2007-era food bloggers, the personal finance writers who found their voice on blogspot.com before anyone was reading — those are real creative histories on a platform that genuinely worked for its time. I am not dismissing Blogger. I am saying that what "works" means in 2026 is different from what it meant in 2007. A modern blog needs a newsletter list you own outright, a member paywall you control, and an editor that doesn't feel like it was built for a dial-up connection. Blogger can't provide those things. VeloCMS is built for the Blogger users who have decided their writing is going somewhere — and who want to own the journey, not just archive it.

Your Blogger archive deserves a platform that keeps up with it.

14-day free trial. 301 redirect setup, custom domain with automatic SSL, block-based TipTap editor, Gemini AI drafting assist, 40 modern themes, a newsletter sent through VeloCMS's email service, BYOK Stripe member paywall at 0% platform fee — all from Pro $9/mo (annual). No plugin dependencies. No Google account required. Your data, your domain, your readers.

Moving from Blogger is self-serve — use the built-in importers and the help-center guides, and email [email protected] if you get stuck.

Start your 14-day free trial See pricing plans

Moving from Blogger is self-serve — use the built-in importers and the help-center guides, and email [email protected] if you get stuck.

Blogger started in 1999.
VeloCMS is what
came next.

Blogger vs VeloCMS — platform snapshot

Where Blogger stops working for you

Blogger's editor and themes have seen few major updates in years.

Custom domains work on Blogger, but the setup is DNS-heavy and old blogspot.com links still need a plan.

Google has a history of retiring consumer products. Blogger has no announced shutdown, but your archive sits on a platform you don't control.

Three Blogger archetypes, three reasons to move

The long-time Blogger user with 10-20 years of archives and incoming links

The hobbyist wanting a real brand on a custom domain with reader subscriptions

The family or personal blogger who has outgrown Google AdSense and wants direct reader support

Feature parity grid — what each platform covers

Pricing breakdown — free vs the full picture

Blogger — free with trade-offs

VeloCMS — all layers included

The real cost of "free"

Migrating from Blogger to VeloCMS — five steps

Export your Blogger archive (XML format)

Bring your Blogger content into VeloCMS — there's no Blogger importer yet

Port your Blogger template to a VeloCMS theme and configure custom CSS

Set up custom domain and configure 301 redirects from blogspot.com

Migrate images from Google CDN to Cloudflare R2 (optional but recommended)

The honest trade-offs

Where Blogger fits in the legacy blogging cluster

For Blogger users who decided the archive matters

Three illustrative Blogger migration scenarios

Frequently asked questions

A note from the founder

Your Blogger archive deserves a platform that keeps up with it.

See also — legacy blogging cluster and alternatives

76 platforms compared. Honestly.

Blogger started in 1999.VeloCMS is whatcame next.

Blogger vs VeloCMS — platform snapshot

Where Blogger stops working for you

Blogger's editor and themes have seen few major updates in years.

Custom domains work on Blogger, but the setup is DNS-heavy and old blogspot.com links still need a plan.

Google has a history of retiring consumer products. Blogger has no announced shutdown, but your archive sits on a platform you don't control.

Three Blogger archetypes, three reasons to move

The long-time Blogger user with 10-20 years of archives and incoming links

The hobbyist wanting a real brand on a custom domain with reader subscriptions

The family or personal blogger who has outgrown Google AdSense and wants direct reader support

Feature parity grid — what each platform covers

Pricing breakdown — free vs the full picture

Blogger — free with trade-offs

VeloCMS — all layers included

The real cost of "free"

Migrating from Blogger to VeloCMS — five steps

Export your Blogger archive (XML format)

Bring your Blogger content into VeloCMS — there's no Blogger importer yet

Port your Blogger template to a VeloCMS theme and configure custom CSS

Set up custom domain and configure 301 redirects from blogspot.com

Migrate images from Google CDN to Cloudflare R2 (optional but recommended)

The honest trade-offs

Where Blogger fits in the legacy blogging cluster

For Blogger users who decided the archive matters

Three illustrative Blogger migration scenarios

Frequently asked questions

A note from the founder

Your Blogger archive deserves a platform that keeps up with it.

See also — legacy blogging cluster and alternatives

76 platforms compared. Honestly.

Blogger started in 1999.
VeloCMS is what
came next.