Imperfect

mataroa versus bear

I recently read Steve's Pagecord looks very appealing, which being reminded of David's Pagecord - a blogging platform. Like Steve, I have been thinking about starting a separate blog myself. It's about time I learned more about the Mataroa blog platform, relative to that which inspired it and which I use: Bear Blog. What better way to compare and contrast them than in public with others that may want to use either service?

As far as visuals go, I suggest visiting Greg's Mataroa Review and Bear Blog Review, if only to compare the internal screenshots for both services. Each platform's website also has extensive documentation which you can explore at your own pace.

Disclaimers:

Similarities

If all you need is a blog where you can publish posts, both of them work just fine. Each open-source, privacy-respecting platform has both free and paid plans that you can do light or extensive blogging with. They show no ads, offer minimalistic appearances by default, and require upgrading to paid plans for custom domains and other features.

Mataroa's priced cheaper than most hosted blog platforms at a frugal $9/year. You can opt for the free Mataroa plan if you don't need a custom domain, monthly auto-experts via email, or partial CO₂ removal funding via Stripe Climate.

Bear's upgrade options include $5/month, $49/year, or a lifetime plan for a one-time payment of $189. You can opt for the free Bear plan if you don't need any features shown in the Upgrade page (free blogs can apply to opt-in to the Discover feed).

What Mataroa lacks compared to Bear Blog

Mataroa doesn't have themes, opting for auto-detected light and dark modes. While limiting, this can reduce writing friction for how little time you will spend designing your blog's appearance. Opt for Bear Blog if you want visual customization options like custom blog colors, fonts, or more.

Mataroa doesn't have the search engine optimization (SEO) bells and whistles that Bear Blog has. A good amount of prospective small and indie web bloggers might not mind that, but it's important to know upfront. Opt for Bear Blog if you want to define post attributes besides title, publication date, and content.

Mataroa has no native discovery mechanism compared to Bear's discovery feed. The latter comes in Trending and Most recent flavors.

Mataroa works great for plain text or Markdown with images. If you need content or element types beyond those, use Bear Blog. On that note, header/footer element code and Javascript in post content appears exclusive to paid Bear Blog plans.

According to Streets of Chance's ⭐ My experiences using Minimalistic Blogs Mataroa Blog vs Bear Blog, Mataroa doesn't have tags, customizable navbars, nor post filters. You can compensate for those features using workarounds like manual pages (see this table of contents), multiple blogs for different purposes, or otherwise.

What Bear Blog lacks compared to Mataroa

Unlike Bear Blog, Mataroa makes email signup optional. However, email is the only available method to recover your account after forgetting your password. Bear Blog offers users to contact them in case of reset troubles, but it doesn't appear the same applies to Mataroa.

Mataroa offers image hosting at limited capacities described on their Images Guide — Mataroa. Bear Blog offers "media and file hosting" but only for paid plans.

Mataroa sends daily email newsletters to subscribers at a fixed time. These are sent as plaintext messages with images as links. I'm not aware of any subscriber limit for said newsletter. Bear Blog offers newsletters but only for paid plans, recommending separate services for 150+ subscribers.

Mataroa has native comments as explained in their Comments Guide. The Bear Blog docs' Comments page explains why comments aren't natively included, but also shows one of many third-party solutions in action.

Tech-savvy bloggers can take advantage of Mataroa's API or self-host it unlike Bear Blog. Helpful self-hosting resources include Mataroa's Deployment and Server Playbook pages, as well as this Reddit thread: Any tutorials for setting up a mataroa instance?.

While Bear Blog supports CSV exports, Mataroa supports exports of multiple different types: Markdown, .epub book, print, and static site generators (namely, Zola and Hugo).

Mataroa's analytics graphs drill down into every post and page (including your RSS endpoint) over the last 24 days. Bear's free plan analytics show graphs for the blog overall, but only for 1 week. Bear's upgraded analytics add more functionality compared to Mataroa, as seen in this In-depth analytics example.

Incomplete comparisons

Mataroa supports importing (multiple) text or Markdown files as unpublished drafts. I don't know if Bear Blog offers this as part of their paid plan media and file uploads.

Should you move from Mataroa to another provider, Mataroa can redirect your subdomain to a new address. I don't know if Bear Blog has this capability.

Upgrading via Bear Blog allows you to remove the "Powered by Bear" footer branding from your blogs if you want to. I don't know Mataroa's stance on their "Powered by mataroa.blog." branding.

My thoughts

To me, Bear Blog wins on customizability, SEO, and discoverability. Pick it to maximize your visual design freedom, website organization, and community vibes (relative to Mataroa). Upgrade or use third-party tools to unlock more features or extensibility for your blog.

In my eyes, Mataroa wins on its larger feature set offered for free or way cheaper than Bear Blog. Pick it for a minimal experience with free, native support typical blog features like images, newsletters, comments, and more (unlike Bear Blog's free plan).

If you're looking for a new blog platform to use, which of the above better suits your fancy?

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