The best blogging platforms that go with it. I’ll review and compare each blogging platform in detail to help you find the best solution for your needs. The reason WordPress is so popular is because of how flexible and scalable it is. It’s an open-source content management system (CMS) that gives you complete control over every single aspect of your blog.
In addition to its flexibility, there are other reasons to choose WordPress. For example, it is the best choice when it comes to search engine optimization (SEO) as it has numerous SEO features. Since you’re writing for an existing website, you don’t have to build your own website from scratch, making this an easy option.. Medium also has a huge existing community of readers, making your posts more visible right from the start.
The downside, of course, is that you won’t have full ownership or be able to monetize your traffic the same way you would if you published on your own website. That doesn’t mean you can’t make money. The Medium Partner Program allows authors to get paid for their articles based on how much engagement they generate.. If you can create a post with lots of viral potential, there’s no reason why you can’t make a good income from it.
Top free blogging platforms
Like WordPress, the Ghost core application is available free of charge under an open-source license. The company also offers a premium platform for people who want a managed hosting service and the best experience possible. Tumblr is a popular microblogging platform with built-in social networking features. It’s completely free and perfect for hobbyists.
Using Tumblr with a Tumblr subdomain is completely free. Weebly is a powerful, free website builder and e-commerce blogging platform owned by Square’s payment solution. Blogger is completely free to use. If you want to connect your own custom domain, you’ll need to purchase one separately.
This includes which platforms I recommend for specific circumstances. If you’re still not sure, it’s worth checking out these. You can use them for entire websites or more complicated projects such as e-commerce stores or niche websites such as job boards (this is possible with the self-hosted version of WordPress). We use the self-hosted version of WordPress as it gives us complete ownership and control over our content.
Best self-hosted blogging platforms
There is an incredible community around WordPress. That means we can extend functionality with WordPress plugins and choose from a wide range of themes. With most platforms, if you want to do something that only a few people ask about, it’s probably never going to happen. But with WordPress (self-hosted), someone has probably already created a plugin for it.
You always lose some traffic when you migrate to another platform. For example, if you use Medium’s built-in audience for traffic, you won’t get that anymore. While you can reuse your content on Medium, it’s recommended that you only do so with content that you don’t want to place on Google. When it comes to free platforms, you get what you pay for.
Or rather, what you don’t pay for. But is it really worth taking the risk that comes with free blogging platforms? Every website needs to be saved somewhere. They are stored on large computers that are connected directly to the Internet and are usually referred to as web servers. You must buy one from a domain registrar.
We recommend Namecheap, but many domain registration companies can be used. They are usually included in your welcome email. Or if you’re not sure, you can ask the support team of the platform or host you’re using. Do you want to skip reading and get straight to my first selection? The best blogging platform for most people is WordPress with Hostinger hosting.
Originally developed as a blogging platform, WordPress currently supports more than 43% of all websites on the Internet, which is a testament to its popularity. It offers a great balance between ease of use and more powerful features. Since you’re paying for a full service, you can let WordPress’s technical team handle all the details, such as. B. domain name maintenance, website security, and web hosting services — it’s an all-in-one package. There are thousands of free WordPress themes on the Internet, which offer flexibility in fonts and plenty of options for a custom look.
They also offer specialized customer support, Google Analytics is easy to activate, and credit card payments can be accepted using an available plugin. While there is a free tier, it is only suitable for non-commercial blogs as it places WordPress ads on your blog, the option to monetize it but offers the option to monetize it. If you ask an old blogger which platform they used to start their blog, they’ll probably answer that it was Blogger. More than two decades later, Google’s blogging offering still offers several advantages over the competition, including the fact that you already have a Blogger account because of your existing Google account..
Blogger is one of the easiest blogging platforms out there, and you even get a selection of templates that can be further customized. With all of this, is there any reason not to use Blogger? Now that you only get basic blogging tools with Blogger, as your blog grows, it will eventually outgrow Blogger. Plus, transitioning from Blogger to another platform can be a bit difficult, though not impossible. Overall though, bloggers lack the tools and flexibility of competing platforms like WordPress, but it’s relatively simple and easy for users to set up and use.
Niche-specific blogging platforms
Whether you’re looking for a blogging platform to start a personal blog or build a professional website, you’ve surely come across Wix — one of the biggest providers in today’s site-building landscape. Wix is simple but not simple, and offers features specifically tailored to newbies to the blogging game. It’s really that easy to choose a template from their wide selection and customize it.. The downside, however, is that once you’ve chosen a template, you can’t change it without starting your website from scratch, which can be annoying at best. What’s even better is that Wix allows you to display your blog template in desktop and mobile formats before you even commit to it.
Wix offers its blogging tools for those who want to promote themselves or a brand, grow their fan base, or even make some money. With Wix, you can create your blog for free (provided you’ve set up your domain name and don’t mind having Wix branding on your blog), drive traffic to your blog with Wix’s advanced SEO tools like the AMP %26 scheme, and have a personalized SEO plan to increase your visibility on search engines. Wix also has a scheduling feature that lets you write your blog posts when it’s most convenient for you and then schedule them to go live at an optimal time. While there’s a comprehensive quick start guide on the Jekyll website, it barely offers the simplicity of some competing blogging platforms that can do all of this via a web interface.
The benefits that Jekyll offers, however, are its advanced features, which include options to paginate posts, numerous plugins, excerpts rendering, templates, and community-managed themes. It also supports blog migration from other platforms. While some blogging platforms encourage their users to evolve and blur the line between a blog and a full-fledged website, Tumblr is on the other end of things. Nonetheless, it must be doing something right, as it claims over an incredible 551 million different blogs.
The main benefit of using Tumblr is its simplicity and ease of use — and it doesn’t cost anything. However, it’s far from ideal for more ambitious blogs, as all content remains in the Tumblr ecosystem and there’s no way to monetize it directly. To be fair, you can add ads about companies like Google Adsense, Yahoo, Bing, contextual ads, and info links, or link your Tumblr blog to your online store, company website, or YouTube channel. However, you can’t do it directly via Tumblr.. Typepad is a fully developed blogging platform specifically designed for professional bloggers.
It offers tons of flexibility, including the ability to publish via email, a web browser, or a smartphone. It also easily integrates with Google Analytics and has its own affiliate plan. Typepad supports design customization with a theme builder for a custom look and the option to create your own custom template or modify a theme using custom CSS. It’s also fully hosted and offers great customer support.
Mirza Bahic is a freelance tech journalist and blogger from Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. Over the past four years, Mirza has ghostwritten for a number of tech start-ups across a range of industries, including cloud, retail, and B2B technology. Google could start to think of your blog as an authority, but if there’s no way to “transfer” the SEO work you’ve done to your new platform, your hard work would be wasted. If you’re still having trouble choosing a blogging platform, I suggest visiting the providers’ websites and reading their blog.
WordPress is also a very popular platform, so there are thousands of resources available online to help you set up and use your blog. Most blogging platforms have plugins or add-ons that automatically do some search engine optimization for you, such as. B. creating a site map. While not as popular as it used to be, Blogger is still a popular blogging platform, particularly among hobbyists. Unlike other drag-and-drop website builders and blogging platforms, you get built-in membership and subscription tools right out of the box—even at the lowest price range.
However, to connect with like-minded people around the world and share your views and ideas with them, you’ll likely need a blog, and to set up a blog, you’ll need a blogging platform. Hosted blogging platforms are generally cheaper than hosting a blog yourself, depending on which hosting provider you choose. WordPress (hosted with DreamHost) is the best blogging platform for beginners and experienced bloggers. Medium is a popular FREE blogging platform that primarily emphasizes the quality of the content.
The premium blogging platforms give you a lot more control and design flexibility, so you can build an entire website and brand around your blog. We reached out to popular third-party review websites, including G2, Capterra, and Trustpilot, to find out what real users of these blogging platforms thought of them. If you’re looking for a low-maintenance place to share stories with the world or champion a cause, traditional blogging platforms are perfect.. Medium isn’t like the other blogging platforms on this list — and it’s certainly not for everyone.