Mac Blog Software Review on Ecto and MarsEdit

!±8± Mac Blog Software Review on Ecto and MarsEdit

If you are managing several blogs at the same time and the number of posts increases, there comes a time when you need a dedicated blogging software on your computer. As I got a new MacBook Air recently, I searched for Mac blog software on the net. This article is a short review of two major programs I tested on my Mac computer.

1. Ecto

This software seems to be the most popular one as I found many sites mentioning the software. The price of the most recent version 3 is .95. Installation with downloadable zip file is fast and easy.

Ecto, as can be expected, can handle various blogging platforms like blogger, WordPress and self-hosted blogs. Though I read several positive reviews about the software, my test of the software ended after using the software for 10 minutes. There were two serious problems with the program, at least with me.

First, when I added a new account for one of my self-hosted WordPress blogs and downloaded existing posts, I clicked the posts in the program and the post did not show all the texts in the original post. As I do not have all the original text of published posts, I was not able to update or add new contents to the posts.

Second, there was more serious problem that the first one in the interface of the software. After downloading existing posts from my blog, I clicked one of the post and tried to check if the post was a draft or a published post. However, there was no side pane or windows that showed a status of a post.

Not knowing if a post I am working on is a draft or a published post is quite frustrating and just unacceptable. Maybe the information on the post status of Ecto is somewhere inside menu that I missed but even if that is true, it still leaves much to be desired in terms of user-friendly interface.

Now the first problem could be a glitch in my own blog but the second one with the difficulty in finding out the status of your posts is something you cannot live with as a blogger. I simply deleted Ecto from Mac Mac.

2. MarsEdit

MarsEdit also shows up frequently in reviews of Mac blog software and receives good user ratings. The price of the recent version 3 is .95 on the developer website and .99, which is weird, on the new App Store that allows you to buy software directly on Mac computers.

Two problems I had with Ecto was not found in MarsEdit. All the posts I imported from the same blog that had a problem with Ecto worked nice in MarsEdit. I was able to see all the contents of published or draft posts.

As for the status of a post like draft or published, you can assign a column to the list window of MarsEdit and see if any post is something you already published or in a draft status. If you double click a post in the list for editing mode, you have a side pane that shows the status of the post.

In a nutshell, I tested two major Mac blog software and checked if they perform two most important functions of blogging software, which are importing your blog's contents without missing any texts and showing the status of any individual post like published or draft.

MarsEdit passed the test and found a place at the dock of my MacBook air. Ecto did not make it and was ditched into the waste box.

By the way, as different bloggers have different tastes, you may find something better in Ecto that compensates its weakness in the areas I mentioned. So don't trust my words without reservation. Try the trial version of each software for yourself to be sure.