Let’s discuss best four paid Blogging utilities or The “Big Four” according to media available, though these provide trial version or shareware version. Are they really impressive compare to free utilities we use? Are they worth paying the price?

• TypePad [http://www.typepad.com]

It’s more like a Blog hosting system rather than a utility. Pc Magazine’s editor’s choice and many more award winner cost starting $49.50/yr up to $149.50. They offer tree Levels of Blog hosting—Pro Level, Plus Level and basic level with 30-days free trial. Apart from traffic, good looks, easy design it didn’t had any effect on me. It’s recommended for those who can’t or don’t want to buy a domain and setup his/her own Blog. A little effort can certainly save you the cost of TypePad. Since I noticed they are using almost MovableType alike Blog software which is free, they just make some modification and put some script which allow user to use built in features easily.

• Blog Harbor[http://blogharbor.com]

There are no installations required, same like TypePad a Blog Hosting system. Plus, there are great features like moblogging/photoblogging, peer-to-peer sharing and private access which isn’t present in TypePad yet. The price starts from US$8.95/month. They have no obligation unlimited trial, which doesn’t require credit card. So if you are having problem hosting your Blog I will recommend the free Trial (100 MB disk space) of Blog Harbor which will be hosted in sub domain of Blog Harbor. Have rich variety of features, some awesome looking templates and the Hot stuff is the Mobile Blogging, that’s making Blog harbor so unique.

• pMachine[http://www.pmachine.com]

pMachine is recommended for professional Blogging or business Blogging. Some technical knowledge required in order to install the program of your choice. That is, unless you opt for their Blog hosting service. As a stand-alone software, pMachine Pro’s and Expression Engine’s licensing fees are: US$45 and US$149 respectively (non-professional), as well as US$125 and US$199 (commercial). Blog Hosting service is available starting from US$9.95/month. Fare amount of fancy looking templates and script available, but I can’t see no reason it can’t be done with some other PHP based free Blog software.

• UserLand [http://www.userland.com]

UserLand provide two Blog software at the moment. UserLand Radio is best appropriate for single-author Blogging while on the other hand UserLand Manila is great for group or team Blogging (multi-user). The license fee for UserLand Radio is US$39.95/year and UserLand Manila’s fee is US$1099/year. Every UserLand Radio license comes with 40MB of storage space. UserLand Manila users can choose a hosted service of US $99/year. So far the software looks nice, but the outrageous price makes it least favorite choice for Blogger. There are enough good software available in the market with just quarter of this price and do fairly the same work.

Summary: Now that you have seen a overview of the Best so called paid Blogging System/Utilities or Software, ask yourself is it worth for you. Cause for newbie Bloggers or general Bloggers it’s nothing more than waste. Since we all know there are plenty of good open source software available out there, all you have to do is download, install, configure to feet your needs. So in my sense those “big four” is just a Big Bang for you, if you are not a high roller, or a business Blogger.