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Blogger started in 1999.
VeloCMS is what
came next.

Blogger is genuinely free and has been running for 25 years. For a personal-archive blog posted once a month for friends and family, it works fine. The moment you want a real custom domain, reader subscriptions, a newsletter list you own, or a modern editor that doesn't feel like 2010 — Blogger's ceiling is right there. VeloCMS covers all of that from $9/mo, with a Blogger XML importer and 14-day migration support built in.

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 custom DNS redirect. Google handles hosting indefinitely (or until a sunset email arrives). Core use case: personal journals, hobbyist blogs, family archives — low posting frequency, no monetisation, no audience development. No new significant features since roughly 2013.	CMS-first content and commerce platform. TipTap block-based blog editor, native newsletter via BYOK Resend, BYOK Stripe member paywall, and 30+ themes — all in one admin. Blogger XML import with 301 redirect configuration. Custom domain via Cloudflare for SaaS. 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, custom domain with SSL — you are outside Blogger's feature set.	Free tier (single blog, basic features). Pro $9/mo (annual) — full block editor, BYOK newsletter, AI drafting assist, 30+ themes, custom domain, per-post SEO fields. Business $29/mo — member tiers, digital products, advanced member management. Agency $69/mo — unlimited tenant blogs on custom domains. 14-day free trial on all paid plans.
CMS + blog editor	Legacy rich text editor with basic HTML editing. No block-based content structure. No native headings hierarchy enforcement. No per-post SEO fields (meta description, Open Graph). No reading time. No content blocks (callouts, code blocks, embeds). Image handling is basic upload — no AVIF/WebP optimisation, no responsive srcset. Post templates are HTML/CSS overrides of a global theme. The editor experience has not changed materially since 2011.	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 2.0 Flash. Post templates are theme-controlled via 30+ preset themes — no HTML editing required for layout changes. Semantic HTML output enforced at the editor layer.
Custom domain	Possible, but DNS-only — no Cloudflare proxying, no SSL auto-cert managed by Google (HTTPS works via Google's own cert for blogspot.com, but for custom domains the cert is handled by the domain's own registrar/CDN). Setup requires pointing CNAME and A records. Custom domain support is functional but underdocumented and partially broken — many users report losing HTTPS after DNS changes. The blogspot.com subdomain remains accessible after custom domain setup unless explicitly disabled, which creates duplicate-content SEO problems.	Custom domain per blog via Cloudflare for SaaS. SSL certificate provisioned 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	Around 20 pre-built Blogger templates, all dating from the early 2010s visual era. Custom themes require editing raw XML template files — Blogger's proprietary template language. Mobile responsiveness varies by template. No theme marketplace. No preview without publishing. Changing a theme often breaks widget layouts. The visual output is immediately recognisable as Blogger — which signals to readers and search engines that the site has not been updated in years.	30+ 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 powered by Google Accounts or Blogger profiles. Comments have not evolved since circa 2012 — no nested threading, no reactions, no moderation tools beyond manual approval. No member subscription system. No reader accounts. No paid content gating. No email capture. Followers exist but are tied to Google Follow (largely abandoned). Reader relationships are non-existent in any actionable sense.	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 via BYOK Resend — newsletter sending, 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	Blogger XML export covers posts, comments, and basic metadata. Images are hosted on Google Photos / Blogger CDN — not included in the XML export (image URLs remain Google-hosted). If Google sunsets Blogger (they have a documented history of sunsetting consumer products), image URLs break immediately. Follower and subscriber data is not exportable — Google Follow is closed-ecosystem. Reader email addresses are not accessible to the blog owner.	Posts in PocketBase (self-hostable SQLite). Images in Cloudflare R2 (your storage bucket). Subscribers in your Resend account. Paying members in your Stripe account. BYOK architecture — every data relationship is the blog owner's from day one. Self-host option for full infrastructure control. 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 is frozen in 2010-era UX. The editor, themes, and dashboard have not changed materially in 15 years.

Blogger's rich text editor, template system, and admin dashboard have received no meaningful updates since roughly 2012. The interface looks and behaves like a product that is in maintenance mode rather than active development — because it is. Google has not added features, responded to user requests for modern SEO tooling, or updated the theme library in over a decade. Writing in Blogger in 2026 means using a 2010-era text editor with no block structure, no headings hierarchy, no per-post meta fields, and no content preview that reflects how a theme actually renders. For a blog with aspirations beyond personal archive, that ceiling becomes the ceiling of the platform itself.

Custom domain support on Blogger is half-broken. blogspot.com subdomain stays live and creates duplicate-content SEO problems.

Blogger's custom domain setup works via DNS redirect, but the blogspot.com subdomain remains accessible unless you navigate a non-obvious setting to redirect it. Many Blogger users discover years after setting up a custom domain that their original blogspot.com URL is still indexed by Google — often with higher authority than the custom domain, because that's where external links point. Canonicalisation is not automatically handled. SSL on custom domains relies on the domain's own CDN or registrar rather than a Google-managed cert, and Blogger's documentation for this hasn't been updated in years. The end result is a messy situation: two URLs, split link equity, and no clear path to consolidation without a proper migration.

Google has a documented history of sunsetting free consumer products. Your 2009-2024 archive is at platform risk.

Google Reader. Google Plus. Google Podcasts. Google Play Music. Google Stadia. Inbox by Gmail. The list of discontinued Google consumer products is long, and Blogger fits the profile: a free, legacy product with a declining active user base and no significant revenue for Google. Blogger has survived for 25 years, but it has also received essentially no investment in those years. Platform risk for a blog is not just “will the site go down?” — it's “if Google sends a sunset email with 90-day notice, what happens to the post URLs, the image hosting, the comment archive, and the reader relationships that took 15 years to build?” Blogger's XML export covers text. It does not cover image hosting (images remain on Google's CDN and break immediately if Blogger is shut down), reader email addresses (Google Follow was abandoned, not exportable), or incoming link equity to blogspot.com URLs.

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 Blogger XML import and 301 redirect configuration from old blogspot.com slugs to new VeloCMS post URLs. Cloudflare for SaaS handles the custom domain SSL. The migration path exists and is documented step by step. 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, 30+ professionally designed themes, and native BYOK newsletter 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 on a personal blog with a few thousand monthly readers generates $5-30/mo in display advertising revenue, depending 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 Business at $29/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.

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: custom domain, 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 (no subscriber cap)	—	✓
Member subscriptions + paywall	—	✓
Digital product sales (e-books, downloads)	—	✓
301 redirects from old URLs after migration	—	✓
Modern responsive themes (30+ 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 16 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 domainDNS redirect only — no Cloudflare, SSL varies by registrar
Free
Editorlegacy rich text + HTML — no blocks, no per-post SEO fields
Free
Themes~20 templates, XML-based, visually dated 2010-era design
Free
Newsletter toolMailchimp / ConvertKit / Beehiiv — separate platform required
$13-50/mo
Member subscriptionsGumroad / Patreon / MemberSpace — separate platform required
$9-29/mo

Blogger hosting is genuinely free. Add a newsletter tool ($13-50/mo) and a member subscription platform ($9-29/mo) for features VeloCMS includes natively, and the “free” framing changes.

VeloCMS — all layers included

VeloCMS Freesingle blog, VeloCMS subdomain, basic editor, limited themes
$0
VeloCMS Proannual — full editor, BYOK newsletter, AI assist, 30+ themes, custom domain
$9/mo
VeloCMS Businessannual — all Pro + member tiers, digital product sales, advanced analytics
$29/mo
VeloCMS Agencyannual — unlimited tenant blogs on custom domains
$69/mo
Newsletter (BYOK Resend)your own Resend account — 3K emails/mo free, owned subscriber list
from $0
Member paywall (BYOK Stripe)your own Stripe — standard 2.9%+$0.30 rate, 0% VeloCMS cut
0% fee

VeloCMS Pro at $9/mocovers custom domain, block editor, BYOK newsletter, AI drafting, and 30+ themes. Newsletter and member paywall included at zero platform fee — versus $22-79/mo for the equivalent Blogger + separate tools 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, ConvertKit, or Beehiiv — at $13-50/mo depending on subscriber count and features. A blogger who wants reader subscriptions needs Patreon, Gumroad, or MemberSpace — platforms that take 5-12% 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 BYOK newsletter with unlimited subscribers on your own Resend account, and AI-assisted drafting in a modern block editor. Business at $29/mo adds member subscriptions at 0% platform fee. 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 — migration support covers it.

1
Export your Blogger XML archive
In Blogger: Settings → Other → Back up content → Download. This exports an XML file containing all your posts, pages, comments, labels (tags), and post metadata including publication dates. Keep this file — it is your complete archive. Check the file size: a blog with 500 posts and embedded images may produce a large XML file but the posts themselves (text content) are compact. Images in the export are referenced by URL, not included as binary data.
2
Import the Blogger XML into VeloCMS
Sign up for VeloCMS (14-day trial at /signup). In Admin → Tools → Import → Blogger XML, upload the XML file. VeloCMS creates posts with their original publication dates, labels mapped to tags, and content preserved. Review the first 10-20 imported posts for formatting accuracy — rich text formatting (bold, italic, links, basic HTML) imports correctly; custom Blogger template widgets and gadgets do not import (these are layout elements, not content). This is typically a 5-15 minute step for most archive sizes.
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 30+ 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 via Cloudflare for SaaS 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 → Custom Domain, enable the redirect from blogspot.com to your custom domain. 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), the migration support period covers batch image migration tooling and guidance. 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 offers no path to that. When you want to gate premium content for paying supporters, Blogger has no mechanism. When you want a custom domain that does not leak the blogspot.com URL in Google Search results, the setup is non-trivial and the canonicalisation is broken by default. When the blog's SEO matters — because you write regularly on a topic people search for — Blogger offers no per-post meta description editor, no JSON-LD schema generation, no Open Graph control, and no reading time signal. A decade of writing on a platform that can't set a meta description is a decade of SEO ceiling you can't break through. 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 almost no new features since 2013. 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.

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.

Three Blogger migration scenarios

“I had been on Blogger since 2008. Fifteen years of posts, a blogspot.com URL that had somehow accumulated a decent amount of organic traffic, and zero control over any of it. I kept meaning to migrate but the thought of losing the URL equity stopped me every time. What finally moved me was trying to add a newsletter opt-in form and realising there was no native way to do it — I'd been sending a monthly email update from my personal Gmail for years. The Blogger XML import took about twenty minutes. Setting up the 301 redirects from my old slug format to the new one took another hour with the migration support team. The custom domain had been parked for three years — it was live on VeloCMS within the afternoon. Six months later the custom domain has caught up to the old blogspot.com authority and I send a monthly newsletter to 340 subscribers I actually own.”

Long-time blogger: 15-year Blogger archive migrated with XML import + 301 redirects. Custom domain + newsletter now live. 2026

“I write a personal finance blog aimed at people in their thirties. The content is decent but the Blogger URL was killing me professionally — when I included the blog in my portfolio, people clocked the blogspot.com immediately. I switched to VeloCMS because the custom domain setup was simpler than I expected, the themes looked like actual publications rather than 2012 templates, and I could add a “support my work” tier via Stripe without going through Patreon. I chose the Serif theme, got the custom domain live in an afternoon, imported 80 posts from the Blogger XML, and had a member support tier up within the first week. Eleven readers pay $5/mo. That's $55/mo covering the VeloCMS Business subscription and then some. The blog finally looks like I take it seriously, because I do.”

Personal finance blogger: Blogger → VeloCMS Business. Custom domain + Serif theme + BYOK Stripe member tier. 2026

“We run a family travel blog — my partner and I started it in 2011 on Blogger because it was free and we were travelling on a budget. Twelve years later, the blog has real readership and we wanted to monetise it properly: a newsletter with trip updates and a paid tier for detailed destination guides. Blogger made neither of those easy. The migration was the part I was dreading, but VeloCMS's XML import handled 240 posts in one go. Some formatting needed touching up (Blogger's image captions don't import cleanly), but the text came through intact. The migration support team walked us through the 301 redirect setup. We're now on a custom domain, sending a monthly newsletter to 1,200 subscribers, and have a paid guide tier at $4/mo for 90 subscribers. The BYOK Stripe setup means 100% of that $360/mo goes to our Stripe account, no platform cut. It felt overdue.”

Family travel blog: 12-year Blogger archive (240 posts) → VeloCMS. Custom domain + newsletter (1,200 subscribers) + paid guide tier (90 members). 2026

Frequently asked questions

Can I import my Blogger XML export into VeloCMS?

Yes. Blogger's XML export file includes post titles, body content, labels (tags), publication dates, and comments. VeloCMS supports Blogger XML import via Admin > Tools > Import > Blogger XML. Posts import with their original publication dates, preserving the archive timeline. Images referenced in the post body remain at their original Google-hosted URLs in the initial import — you can then re-upload images to Cloudflare R2 storage via the media library and update image references in bulk. The 14-day Blogger migration support included with your trial covers hands-on help with the XML import and image migration process.

What happens to my Blogger comments when I migrate?

Blogger XML export includes comment data (author name, comment text, timestamps). VeloCMS imports comments alongside posts. Comment attribution uses the original commenter's name and date — there's no Google Account reconnection, which is expected since the commenter may not have a VeloCMS account. Existing comments display as read-only historical records; new comments on migrated posts use VeloCMS's comment system. If preserving the comment archive precisely is important, the migration support period covers reviewing comment import quality before you go live on the new platform.

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 uses Cloudflare for SaaS to provision 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 > Custom Domain, enable the redirect from blogspot.com to your custom domain — this ensures any 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 more revenue than AdSense on a typical personal blog with under 20,000 monthly page views, 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. Blogger allows you to configure a redirect from your blogspot.com domain to your custom domain in Blogger Settings > Custom Domain > Redirect blogspot.com to [your domain]. 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 30+ preset themes in terms of layout type (two-column blog list, single-column editorial, sidebar navigation). The 14-day migration support covers theme selection and customisation guidance.

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. The migration support period covers this process if you want to handle it before going live.

Does VeloCMS have a free plan like Blogger?

VeloCMS has a free tier that covers a single blog on a VeloCMS subdomain with basic features — similar to Blogger's always-free model. For a custom domain, full block editor, BYOK newsletter, AI drafting assist, and all 30+ themes, the Pro plan is $9/mo (annual). 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 15-year-old editor and SEO limitations.

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 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 custom domain that doesn't leak the platform name, 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. Blogger XML import, 301 redirect setup, custom domain via Cloudflare for SaaS, block-based TipTap editor, Gemini AI drafting assist, 30+ modern themes, BYOK Resend newsletter with unlimited subscribers, 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.

14-day Blogger migration support included. XML import, image migration from Google CDN to R2, 301 redirect configuration, and custom domain SSL — all covered before your trial ends.

Start free — no credit card See pricing plans

14-day Blogger migration support — hands-on help with Blogger XML import, image migration from Google CDN to Cloudflare R2, 301 redirect configuration from blogspot.com slugs, and custom domain SSL setup before your trial ends.

Blogger started in 1999.VeloCMS is whatcame next.