Every blog needs a foundation. Blogging platforms (sites, content management systems, software – some people refer to it differently) provide that base and a framework that you can use for starting a blog. There are a number of solutions, but only some are worth considering.
This guide provides a detailed overview (with pros, cons, and reviews) of the best blogging sites, to help you decide where to start a blog nowadays:
I’ve tested each blogging website that I could find online to save you some time. Below, you will see a selection of the best blog platforms used by popular blogs (and bloggers) that I also use and recommend.
The best open-source platform built for bogging.Read more | Install WordPress.org | |
Wix.com 4.9 The best blog website builder for beginners.Read more | Visit Wix.com | |
The best free blogging platform for online publishing.Read more | Visit WordPress.com |
With the help of this information, you will be able to find the best blogging site for your needs and create your own blog.
If you want to skip an introduction and start installing WordPress:
At this stage, you’ll need to determine the blog management tool you want to use. Here are some important criteria to assess the available options:
Below, you’ll find some of the most popular free blogging sites and alternative options (with short descriptions, pros, and cons) available for new bloggers. With the help of this information, you will be able to find the best option for yourself.
Tip 1: One of the best and most popular blogging platforms is self-hosted content management system (CMS) WordPress.org. It’s recommended by 90 percent of blogging experts we’ve surveyed. For beginners, WordPress.org is the clear winner because:
- you don’t have to have coding experience to handle most of the tasks related to creating and maintaining your blog.
- updates can be done within the WordPress dashboard with the click of a button.
- there is plenty of support for anything you need help with including customization, design, functionality, and maintenance.
Tip 2: To set up your own WordPress.org blog you will need a web hosting space and a domain name. For new bloggers, we recommend Bluehost, company that powers over 2 million websites worldwide.
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The above option is our recommended way to setup your new blog. To convince you that you are making the right decision, let us describe all the available option below in more details.
When it comes to starting your blog you have the following types of platforms:
With all that information in mind let’s look closer at the most popular blogging solutions.
What do The New Yorker, Boing Boing, the Chicago Bulls, BBC America, Beyonce, Vogue, The Rolling Stones, and thousands of other websites have in common? They all made their official blogs with WordPress.org. Launched in 2003, it doesn’t need any introduction except the long list of sites using it today and the fact that it powers around 25% of blogs on the web. Just don’t confuse this open-source CMS and hosted blogging software WordPress.com.
WordPress.org is one of the most popular choices when it comes to managing your blog site. It has a learning curve and it will take some time to learn it, but that is the cost of having a professional blog website. Having said that, there is one thing that you won’t get with some of the free blog platforms, and that is 100% ownership of your blog and content. In the long run, it will probably be the biggest benefit than with free hosted solutions.
Pros
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Pricing
WordPress.org software is totally free, so there will be no additional costs on that side. Yes, all upgrades are also free. But you will need to choose a domain name (roughly $15 per year) and web hosting provider (roughly $5 to $15 per month depending on the company).
For the sake of WordPress being the easiest platform in the content management system world, we are going to focus on showing you how to create blog sites using the self-hosted version of WordPress. As an example, we will show you how to launch a blog with Bluehost for as low as $2.75 per month and you will receive a FREE domain name as well. All of the steps are followed up with adequate screenshots that will give you further understanding of what you need to do.
Click on this link and you will go to the “Exclusive Offer” page reserved for our fans. Once you get there click on “Get Started Now”.
If this is your first hosting account ever, you should start with the basic plan, because you will need time to determine your needs and options. The basic plan has everything any beginner needs to set up a new blog websites. Consider other plans later when your blog takes off and your needs become greater.
Your domain name will play a vital role in the future development of your blog and this is why it is important to take your time and figure out a good domain name. Once you’ve done that, enter the name in the “new domain” column and choose your Top-Level Domain.
You will instantly be notified by BlueHost if the name you’ve chosen is available, and if not you will get similar suggestions.
We are almost there! Once you have your domain name and web hosting connected, it’s time to set up WordPress. Go to your Bluehost cPanel account, find the ‘My Sites’ section and click Install WordPress. That’s the famous one-click set-up offered by Bluehost that makes blog creation a breeze.
Congratulations! You’ve successfully installed WordPress CMS and you can start your blogging journey.
Founded in 2006, Wix has become a wildly popular web builder for people who revel in a ton of design options—without breaking the bank. In 2012, Wix switched from Adobe Flash to HTML5, a successful move that gained them, at the time, 25 million users. Their business model is freemium and I can immediately see some people rolling their eyes. However, is that a sign of “oh, no, not again” or the judgment is too early? You be the judge.
With the Free plan, you will cover all the basics and be able to have your first free blog website. However, upgrading to Connect Domain enables you to use your own domain. We recommend upgrading to Combo because you also will be freed of their native advertisements. Adding to the confusion is the fact that Wix calls all paid plans – Premium plans. So, when the company says a feature is included in a Premium plan, you can’t be sure which plan they’re talking about.
Wix offers blog builder solution with an easy start for bloggers. With Wix, you can write, edit and manage your blog posts from your desktop or on the go!
Pros
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Pricing
If you spent some amount of time on the internet in the last decade then you’ve probably heard the name WordPress. Launched in 2005, WordPress.com (which should not be confused with similar WordPress.org) is a popular freemium blog hosting site. There are over 50 million users on this platform, or at least that many people tried to use it. It’s hard to say how many people are actively using this platform, but it’s definitely a popular choice. But is it all hype?
There are very few things that aren’t in favor of this blogging provider. Handling is easy for everyone and made with blogging for beginners touch. Unlike its fraternal twin WordPress.org, this is a free blog hosting sites service, so you don’t have to worry about downloading and installing software. However, when it comes to hosted solutions, you don’t always have a 100% control over your blog.
Pros
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Pricing
WordPress.com is essentially one of the best free blog sites on the web, but it has some limitations. The free plan gives you a blog that is restricted to yourname.wordpress.com domain with only 3GB of space, and it may show some ads.
If you need a blog with a custom domain they offer a premium plan for $99/year and business plan for $299/year and it will give you unlimited space, e-commerce, and other advanced things.
Depending on your needs, a free plan may seem like a good start and playground, but keep in mind all the restrictions.
Founded in 2004, Squarespace is a convenient all-in-one web builder, hosting provider and platform for bloggers. With fabulous, responsive designs, Squarespace became known as the hippest of the web builders. However, advanced functionality has put the company squarely in the mainstream. If you check out Squarespace websites, you’ll see just how great they look. But are they easy to build and maintain?
Pros
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Pricing
After the initial 14-day trial period, if you decide to stay with Squarespace, you’ll be able to choose between four plans. All prices reflect billing on an annual basis:
The story of Weebly is kind of an interesting one, and similar to other popular online projects like Facebook. According to Wikipedia, this content management system began its journey as a student project back in 2006, which quickly outgrew the boundaries of the College of Information Sciences and Technology at the Pennsylvania State University.
Today, Weebly counts more than 40 million websites, including number of best blogs. It can thank the numbers to its beginner-friendly builder that allows everyone to make a personal or business website in less than a few hours. After choosing one from about fifty themes, users get to edit text blocks, add sliders, galleries, videos, and much more. Adding new pages, navigation menus, and choosing color schemes is as easy as selecting elements in the builder.
Because of all that, Weebly is an excellent choice for a beginner who wants to start a free blog, but you should understand that it isn’t as flexible as WordPress. Sooner or later, you might get stuck at one step where Weebly simply couldn’t create what you had in mind.
Pros
Cons
Pricing
You can start using Weebly for free, which will be enough for small personal blog sites. But if you decide to upgrade plans, Weebly offers plans from $5-25 per month. As you might have guessed, the more you pay, the more you get.
When it comes to popular free blogging sites, one of the first providers that will pop into most people’s minds is Blogger. Founded in 1999, it is one of the oldest blogging platforms still active. In 2003, it was acquired by Google and that change is still shifting the way users are working with Blogger.
Blogger site is relatively easy to use. It is completely free and you can somewhat monetize it through ads. Customization options are limited.
It’s been present online for over 15 years, so many bloggers are familiar with it or already have tried it. If you want just a hobby blog, Blogger could be enough for you. If you want your blog to be taken seriously, we would not recommend it.
Pros
Cons
Pricing
Blogger is a free blog platform and you will automatically get a “yourname.blogspot.com” name for your blog. If you decide to move away from that, you will have to buy your own domain (roughly $15 per year) with one of the domain registrar companies and point it to your blog with Blogger Settings.
The Medium is exactly what its title says. It is a new medium that has its backbone in the blogging world, but over time evolved into a publishing platform. It was made by the company that brought us Blogger and it was made by the co-founders of Twitter, Evan Williams, and Biz Stone. Launched in 2012, it is trying to take the best out of many platforms that are heavy on subscribe and follow activities, like Twitter or Pinterest, and find a balance between individual publishing and publishing by organizations. Visually, it’s clean, attractive, and modern.
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If you are an old user, pricing and hosting should not concern you at all. The Medium used to be free and there were no hosting packages since everything was taken care of by Medium servers. That is still true, but now you have a price attached to it. For $5/mo, you can become a member and with that, you will be able to read exclusive stories from top writers and experts, listen to audio versions of popular stories and reward the writers you love.
When it comes to premium blog software (not free) TypePad is one of the oldest members of that club. Launched in 2003, it was one of the most popular blogging sites that hosted various celebrity blogs like Paris Hilton or Wil Wheaton. In the meantime, other blogging websites emerged and took away its share in the blogosphere. However, after 15 or so years later, it’s still alive, kicking and doing well. TypePad is something to think of.
Pros
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Pricing
TypePad is not a free blog maker service. You can pay for it with your credit card or via PayPal. If you don’t want to jump into a new contractual obligation, you can try their 14-day free trial, but you will still need to fill out billing information. You can choose to pay monthly or yearly, where you can get a certain discount for the yearly option. After your 14-day free trial, you will be automatically subscribed to the services at your subscribed rate. You may cancel your subscription at any time during your free trial to avoid being charged in case you don’t want to host your blog there. If you decide to stay, there are four different packages:
Tumblr, or better to say, “Tumbler,” is a media-rich blogging platform. Founded in 2007 as a social network and a microblog site, it was acquired by Yahoo in 2013. It has famous active users like Taylor Swift, Grace Helbig, and Tyler Oakley. However, when it comes to text-based content, you will have a serious lack of tools. It is a great start if you are a beginner and/or have an artistic side.
Pros
Cons
Pricing
The Tumblr platform is free. The free setup comes with yourname.tumblr.com extension. If you want, you can buy and use your own domain. Here is the guide on how to set up your own domain on Tumblr.
As an option, you can buy premium themes from $9 to $49, but they are not a necessity. Plugins are free, but unfortunately, besides basic things, there are not too many plugins.
If you have been using Evernote, this platform might be the right choice for your new blog. The entire idea behind this content management system is integrating Evernote with a blog publishing tool.
Postach allows you to use themes in order to choose a design of your free blog, and for those who know their way around HTML, custom designs are an option as well. Still, the main focus is the integration with Evernote, so I suggest Postach only to those who can’t live without Evernote. But if you’re about to start a new blog and you are not using Evernote on an everyday basis, I strongly suggest turning your way around to the self-hosted WordPress.
Pros
Cons
Pricing
Postach comes with a free trial, after which you can choose a plan that goes from $5 to $25 per month.
Although WordPress is the most popular blogging platform out there, not everyone likes it. John O’Nolan, who was working on the WordPress user interface, realized that WordPress is overly complicated for running a simple blog back in 2012. What he wanted was a more straightforward platform that will serve bloggers only, without the necessity of extending the site into something more than a free blog.
Pros
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Pricing
Since it is an open-source platform, Ghost is entirely free to use. Still, if you decide to upgrade your blogging experience, Ghost will charge from $29 to $199 per month.
For $29 per month, you get a blog that can be viewed by up to 100,000 people, 2 staff users (admins), and up to 1,000 members (people who are subscribed to your blog). For $79, you can extend those numbers to 500,000 views, 5 staff users, and 5,000 members. If that’s not enough, for $199 per month, you get up to 1 million views, 15 admins, and up to 15,000 members with promised 99,9% uptime (meaning, your blog will practically never be down).
Since the self-hosted version of WordPress is definitely the most popular one (which is powering more than 30% of the entire world wide web), it is hard not to compare it to other content management systems.
I already dedicated entire articles to these comparisons, so instead of repeating myself one more time, I decided to leave you links where you can compare WordPress to Blogger, Tumblr, Wix, and Squarespace.
While those other platforms are good enough for every new blogger to make a blog, I always recommend to start the right way from the very beginning. If you choose the self-hosted version of WordPress, you will be able to learn from the very start and expand your blog into the entire business if you decide so.
If you have previously started your blog somewhere other than WordPress, and now you decided to move to WordPress, you don’t have to worry. It has implemented “Import tool” that lets you upload content from other blogs into the new one.
Within the WordPress Dashboard under the Tools section, you will find the following options on the Import list:
Keep in mind that there are other import options available through different WordPress plugins. You can try searching the official WordPress plugins repository for the right importer tool.
This section provides a list of the top 10 blogging websites (with reviews and ratings) available on the web today.
WordPress is the most widely used self-hosted content management system (CMS), recommended for blogging.
WordPress.com is the most famous blog hosted platform and one of the fastest way to create a free blog.
Ghost is a fully open source, hackable platform for building and running a modern online publication.
Blogger is one of the oldest and reliable blogging platforms on the web. It is owned by Google and developed for beginners.
Typepad is the reliable, flexible blogging platform that puts the publisher in control.
Tumblr is media oriented free blogging platform with a wide variety of themes that is very popular among younger population.
Medium is a free, open platform for people to read, write and share posts easily online. It is a blogging platform but it’s also a place to read articles on the Internet.
Movable Type excels as a fully integrated, scalable, proven social publishing platform upon which to build highly interactive websites, blogs and social networks.
Svbtle is a writing and reading network designed from the ground up to work the same way your brain does. It helps you think.
We’ve compiled a list of platforms that can serve as viable candidates for your blog creation. Using the listed features and customer feedback as your guides, you’ll be able to select the right tools with greater confidence.
Thanks for your post, I’m probably going to go with WordPress.org
Thanks for your post, I’m probably going to go with WordPress.org
Good choice Glen! Let me know if you need any help with setting up your blog.
Hi guys! As someone who first started with Blogger, I have to say that I agree with you guys about WordPress.org.
Thanks Aartilall!
Great tips! Thank you for this information. It is really informative and helpful.
Thanks Ann! Let me know if you need any help with any of these blog sites.
Thanks for suggesting these great blog sites.
You’re very welcome Farhan!
Thanks for suggesting great blog sites.
The cost of starting a blog is not as huge as I had thought and so I’ll try to create one on the self-hosted platform so I can get a hang of the process in a couple of weeks.
Hi Emma! It’s not that expensive at all. You can even get a better deal with Bluehost if you follow my instructions on installing WordPress with them.
Let me know if you have any questions. All the best!
I’m new to blogging and your article is really helpful. Thanks for your post.
Thanks Titus! Let us know if you have any questions or need some help.
Hi there,
Thanks for sharing this information. These blogging sites do a great job; however, you must bring a quality one from a reputed site.
Good info for beginners!
Thanks Deepak! Appreciate your support.
Thanks for suggesting great blog sites. Wp.org is the best CMS out there today!
You’re absolutely right Pao – WordPress is the best! With self-hosted version (WP.org) you have total control of your site and it’s content, so you can optimize it for search engines or monetize it in any way you want, etc.
Many free blogging platforms include a clause in their terms of service that state that they can immediately delete your entire site without warning if you violate their terms of service…
Take a look at our Learn WordPress section – it can help you level up your WordPress skills!
Very helpful article for me. I started my blog on a WordPress.com and it is a very good platform.
I’ve been thinking about switching to WordPress for a while now, I heard a lot of praise about it – especially about all the SEO things I can do with it.
So that’s how the name blog arrived – web log! Niiice. Such an instructive article. Love the way you’ve listed things, along with pros and cons. Including the cost layout. Great read and I seriously mean it.
A very good collection of free and paid blogs.
I had to read every single thing because I want to start blogging too and want to be sure I make the right choices so I don’t get to regret anything along the line. I’ve made some valid notes and I’m very sure this will help a great deal.
Thank you for your article. WordPress.org is the best CMS out there today!
I used to think that WordPress.org and WordPress.com were the same. When I wanted to start a blog on WordPress.com I got disappointed with the price of getting my own domain with them.
Great article! Thanks for sharing this info about free posting platforms.
You just made this whole thing simple and clear for me. The cost of starting a blog is not as huge as I had thought and so I’ll try to create one on the self-hosted platform so I can get a hang of the process in a couple of weeks.
I’ll choose WordPress.org anytime. It’s the best platform to run a successful blog.
Thanks for the information, very clear and in simple..
Nice list and guidance about blogging, worth reading it.
These blogs sites are very useful.
I personally prefer WordPress for myself. By the way, nice article.
Nice post. Thanks for sharing…
Thanks for sharing Ogi! Many have written about the various blogging platforms but this is by far the best and the way you have explained it’s so straightforward easy to understand.
I’m really happy to see your article.
Nice post. Thanks for sharing…
Hi
Thanks for the nice article. Actually, this post is really helpful for the newcomer in the world of blogging. Keep Rocking!!!
Thanks for sharing your article.
Really helpful article for me. Thanks!
Self-hosted WP.org gives you 100% ownership of your content! Totally agree with you guys.
Great article.
I have to say I agree with you guys about WordPress.org.
So easy to use and very SEO friendly!
Thanks for the great article.
Really helpful. I just started mine. Leave a comment and let me know what you guys think.
WOW! This article is really helpful for me to build up a site.
I started with wordpress.com in 2016 but I switched to self-hosted couple of months after (I went with Bluehost) and I’m very happy with my choice!
We are glad that you’re enjoying Bluehost since it is our recommended hosting provider!
Great article. Very nice work and thanks for the information.
Hi , very good article
thanks for sharing, keep up the good work.
It’s crazy to think that WordPress was launched 15 years ago, and it’s still the best solution out there!
They’ve done a tremendous work on making a WordPress the best content management system.
WordPress.org Pros: Everything Cons: None :)) That video you mentioned, setting up a WordPress blog with BlueHost, was really helpful!
PS: I still have the dilemma on Tumblr or Tumbler!
Glad that you liked the video! Please come back Shane to our blog for more blogging news.
As someone who first started with Blogger, I have to say I agree with you guys about WordPress.org
As someone who first started with Blogger, I have to say I agree with you guys about WordPress.org
So easy to use and very SEO friendly!
Welcome to the club of WordPress lovers!
You outdid yourself with this one! Really neatly explained and it only takes eleven steps ? Also, I agree with Mike, Wp.org above all!
Glad you like the post Connor. Thanks!
I remember the time when it took me months to write a web app that had just the basic functions of WordPress just to appear online.
New generations don’t know how lucky they are to have such a powerful tool at their disposal. Their only restriction is their imagination! How cool is that? ?
We totally agree with you Phil! Thanks for reading our post!
Thanks for suggesting great blog sites. Wp.org is the best CMS out there today!
Thanks Mike! WordPress.org is for sure one of the best self-hosted content management systems.