If you are looking to create a website today, you’re going to have an almost endless amount of options to get started. Whether you decide to build your website with old-school HTML and CSS or take advantage of one of the more modern CMS platforms like WordPress or Movable Type is up to you – but you need to understand all of the major benefits that newer CMS platforms have to offer.

Super easy to use, even easier to customize, and able to have a full-fledged website up and running for you in just a few minutes, WordPress and Movable Type have dominated the CMS landscape since they were first unveiled.

So which should use for your blog?

We turned to blogging expert Scott Chow for the answer. On his site Scott answers the question “How do I start a blog?”, so we thought he would have some interesting input on this topic as well. As it turns out, we were right…

Overall cost to use

If you are looking to choose your next content management system or blog platform based on cost alone, then you would have to go with WordPress.

Though Movable Type is 100% free of charge for personal usage, it requires that you purchase a license if you’re going to use it for commercial or educational reasons. These licenses can range anywhere between $50 and $1000 depending upon the amount of people that you want using the software (authors or editors behind the scenes), something that you’ll never have to worry about when you go with WordPress.

WordPress is 100% free call will always be 100% free, and is one of the most robust blogging CMS platforms out there.

Ease of Installation

WordPress has always bragged about their “five-minute installation”, but things can get a little bit tricky behind-the-scenes if you aren’t able to set up and create a new MySQL database and all of the other essential details that need to be set up ahead of time.

Movable Type, on the other hand, is pretty simple and streamlined – especially if you’re using one of their hosting solutions as well. Installs almost exactly like a program onto a web host, all you have to do is follow the on-screen prompts and you are good to go.

A lot of new web hosts are including WordPress “one click installation tools” in their backend inside of the administrative panel, and if your host offers you this kind of opportunity you can be up and running with a WordPress blog into minutes or less!

Ease of Use

Now are diving headfirst into the world of actually publishing content on your new CMS, where things start to get a little bit murkier.

Sure, Movable Type has done absolutely everything they can to make their content upload and editing back and as easy to use as humanly possible – but there are still a couple of hitches and quirks that you will have to get used to. Movable Type continues to innovate on this side of the coin though, and their content creation backend is pretty robust.

WordPress (just like any of their other killer features) offers nearly endless customization when it comes to uploading or creating content through the back end, but it may not be quite as simple or as straightforward to use as Movable Type. WordPress does offer a WYSIWYG editor that is pretty friendly to use, and is better than the Movable Type editor.

Another thing to keep in mind is that WordPress is much more popular than Movable Type, so there are many more resources available if you run into issues.

Customization capabilities

If we are talking about customization capabilities, WordPress wins hands down and it isn’t even really that close. The preferred open source CMS platform by literally millions and millions of people across the globe (many of them developers), if you want to do something in WordPress you’re going to find that there is probably a tool already out there to help you do it – and the chances are great that it is 100% free as well!

Better blogging platform

This is where things really start to get subjective, but I think you’ll find that most people would agree that WordPress is the more polished blogging platform available – even though Movable Type was the first one on the scene.

There is just so much more you can do with WordPress without getting locked into some silly licensing agreement that will end up costing you an arm and a leg, and when you combine that with all of the different mobile and desktop-based tools they have for uploading and editing content it’s really a no-brainer.

Which one should you use?

In the end, you’re going to need to find the CMS system that works best for your needs and your desires. WordPress and Movable Type represent the highest end of the open source CMS platforms, and you would have to be at least a little bit crazy not to pick or choose one of these elite level options.