Which blogging site is the best

The same happens with photo galleries, slideshows, and any other multimedia element. Weebly provides sidebars, media boxes, forms, ad spaces , social media icons, newsletter subscription, and many more. Moreover, the platform comes with built-in analytics and lets you use your own customized domain for which you need to pay. Medium is a multipurpose platform tackling diverse topics, where anyone with an account can write.

But the downside is that all your content is on Medium. Read this post for more on the differences between WordPress and Medium. This is another WordPress-like blogging platform. While the Ghost software can be downloaded for free , you need paid hosting for fuel. DigitalOcean is a great service that supports Ghost: it is cheap and comes with a bunch of nice features to get you started.

To create a post in Ghost is easy once you set up your website. The editor is simple and minimalist, and it offers a live preview of your text on the right side of the screen. Near the editor screen, there is a sidebar with settings, where you can choose your preferences. It works just like the other hosted platforms: you need to create an account first in order to use it.

After you create it which is simple , you have to pick one of the default themes and you can start writing your thoughts down. Blogger delivers a bunch of themes to choose from, each providing different skins, advanced color filtering, and various minimalist gadgets aka widgets. But nothing too fancy or any advanced design customization.

In general, Blogger has simple appearance options, so the focus stays more on the writing part. A nice part about this site is that it comes with ad spaces that you can place within your content pieces. Tumblr is one of the original free blogging sites on the web. Unlike the rest of the platforms that are mostly created for publishing purposes, this one here is more oriented to multimedia or social media-like content.

Just like a regular blogging platform, it provides multiple post formats for different types of content. It is simplistic, offers basic customization options and, like I said earlier, has more of a social media vibe.

Despite not being built for business, it does let you display ads on your page, use affiliate links, and integrate your blog with Google Analytics. Joomla is similar to WordPress. Just like WordPress, the software is free but needs hosting and a domain. As in the WordPress case, we recommend Bluehost because it is both very cheap and reliable and it includes a free domain. In general, Joomla has a flexible interface that can be used not only for blogs but also for more complex websites you can choose from a variety of templates and extensions to add custom functionality.

Cons There is no free account, but they do have a day money back guarantee. Ecommerce features are restricted to higher plans only. Limited number of apps and extensions. Pros No setup required. Easy to use and manage. Cons Limited options to extend your own site. You cannot use custom themes and plugins for customizing your blog. You cannot run advertisements on your blog. Instead, WordPress. You do not own your blog, and WordPress.

Pricing The basic WordPress. Blogger Blogger is a free blogging service by Google. All you need is a Google account to start a free blog on Blogger. Pros Blogger is free. Design options are limited, with fewer templates available. Third party templates for Blogger are often low quality. Blogger does not receive frequent updates or new features. Google can suspend your blog at any time, or even cancel the Blogger service altogether.

They have a history of abandoning projects without warning, such as Feedburner. Tumblr Tumblr is a little different than other blogging platforms. You can also connect a premium custom domain name. It is very easy to set up and use. It has an integrated social media component. As a microblogging tool, Tumblr makes it easy to quickly blog videos, GIFs, images, and audio formats. Cons Tumblr comes with a limited set of features that you cannot extend as your blog grows.

Backing up your Tumblr blog or importing it to other platforms is difficult see our guide on how to move from Tumblr to WordPress. Pricing Tumblr is free to use. Medium Launched in , Medium has grown into a community of writers, bloggers, journalists, and experts.

Pros Medium is easy to use, with no setup required and no coding skills needed. It allows you to reach an existing online community of people of similar interests.

You can focus solely on writing, instead of designing a website. Cons Features are very limited in terms of design or building a brand. Medium owns your audience, so losing your blog means losing all your followers. You cannot use your own domain name. You cannot run your own ads to make money. Pricing Medium is free to use. Squarespace Squarespace is a website building service that allows you to create beautiful websites using easy drag and drop tools.

Started in , Squarespace currently powers millions of websites online. It has beautiful professionally designed templates. Cons Squarespace is limited to the features built into their proprietary platform. Integrations are limited to a select few services and tools. Pricing Squarespace has different pricing plans for websites and online stores.

Ghost Ghost is a minimalist blogging platform with features entirely focused on writing blog posts. Pros Focused on blogging and writing. Clean, clutter-free, and intuitive user interface. No setup required for the hosted version. Cons Not easy to customize with apps.

The simplified user interface means options are very limited. Not enough themes to change appearance of your site. Complicated setup if you install it yourself. They also have a blog feature along with free blog templates that you can add to your website.

Pros Fully hosted website and blogging platform. Seamless integration with Square payment platform. Cons Free plan has limited features and bandwidth. It also includes Weebly branding. Paid subscription are expensive compared to top blogging websites. Pricing They have a limited free version that comes with Weebly branding and ads. Thank you for all of the information. It seems like there is so much to learn! Great tips! Thank you for this information. It is really informative and helpful. Do you have any tips for this problem?

I have to start a new blog, again. Great post! I got value.. This article was extremely helpful. Also, thank you for the hyperlinks for extra information. Launched by the co-creator of Twitter and attracting more than million readers worldwide, many thought leaders and prestigious publications such as The Economist regularly post content on the platform.

However, you also surrender a certain degree of autonomy. But, crucially, your posts should adhere to all relevant laws and not pose any potential harm. Should your blog be taken down, there is little you could do about it. When searching for the best blogging sites, we test and evaluate website builders against a variety of criteria, including price; number of features; functionality; interface; ease of use; user support; and security.

However, there is no substitute for doing your own customized research. The popularity of blogging, both for businesses and individuals, means that there is now an abundance of online resources that could help you find the best free blogging site for your niche. But the most effective way to find the right solution for you could simply be trial and error. Finding the right blogging platform for you will ultimately depend on what you most value in an online platform.

Whether this is design customization or robust customer service, you should be able to find a free blogging site to suit your needs. If you want to find out more about WordPress, make sure to read our range of content looking at the CMS, including our pick of the best website builders for WordPress , how to build a website with WordPress , the biggest WordPress mistakes to avoid making, and our comparison of WordPress vs Wix vs Squarespace.

Katy is a freelance journalist and editor with more than 10 years' experience writing about tech and finance. The blogging process is as intuitive and easy-to-use as folks described—but there were also some other additions that surprised me. There are many SEO features you can use, from alt tags for your images and internal links to SEO titles and descriptions that are different from your post title and nofollow tags for external links.

Just make sure that you update your SEO settings for every post—this is what gets presented in search results and is critical for ranking organically. We also like the ability to use live chat to interact with your readers in the Wix app. Most Wix blogs tended to look great across mobile, tablet, and desktop—something our users said helped them draw in readers. There are a few downsides to Wix — but even from our panel of users, it seemed their major complaints boiled down to a couple points.

Occasionally Wix will feature stand-out blogs that use their platform, and that can lead to new opportunities as was the case with one of our users. Wix offers the best blogging platform for the vast majority of readers coming to this article i.

Our own hands-on research verified that. We could create a great looking blog with zero experience with Wix in literal minutes. Imagine what you could do with more time. And if you really want to take the guesswork out of designing your website, you can even let Wix take care of it for you by answering a few questions and letting their advanced AI take care of the rest.

Bottom line: We highly recommend Wix to beginner bloggers who want to easily build a great looking blog. And with tools like its ecommerce functionality and Wix email marketing, you can grow and shape your website to optimize for things like profit and audience growth.

Total Score: 4. The reason? WordPress is open source. Developers can go in and create widgets, plugins, and other tools to customize WordPress blogs—so you can create any kind of blog you want. Their experience is echoed by many of our other users. That said, there is a bit of a learning curve. Another echoed that sentiment. One user was also able to promote items for third parties in order to generate even more revenue.

They were also able to leverage plugins to help them build their audience—and generate revenue growth. At first blush, the blog dashboard for WordPress seems more complex than most. The platform introduced their Gutenberg editor recently, which can make the editing process much simpler. They lay out everything you might need to publish a blog in a fairly intuitive, easy-to-grasp way.

The layout is easy to manage, and finding font settings and image inserts is a snap. No matter what you want to build or how big you get, the platform will grow with you so long as you choose the right plugins. One plugin we do recommend you get is the Yoast SEO plugin. This is an incredibly popular WordPress plugin that helps you set up your posts to be as SEO-friendly as possible with a few guided steps.

And if you really want, you can start changing the code yourself. Since WordPress is open-source, that means you can do whatever you want with it. It gave me an easy interface to post my blogs, as well as everything I needed or wanted in my blog: a subscription box, an author area; just the look I wanted and the flexibility to change things as needed. The quick answer: Go with Bluehost. They even recommend using Bluehost as a hosting option.

Our own panel of users used this exact combination of WordPress with Bluehost to create their own websites.

And I really prefer the portal at Bluehost compared to the old place plus the service is better for me. They also have a stellar customer support team available by chat, email, or phone if any issues come up.

They work together seamlessly, the pricing structure is incredibly affordable, and you also get things like domain registration for free. Another flaw that one of our surveyed users mentioned is that WordPress lacks comprehensive customer support. When I checked, I found that WordPress support amounted to a support forum. After posting a test question on there, it took about two hours before I got a reply back. Along with scoring very highly across all criteria, WordPress with Bluehost is a great place to start if you really want to build a blog that will grow with you no matter how big you get.

WordPress and Bluehost can do that. Bottom line: Building a WordPress website takes more time than a Wix website. However, the tradeoff is your website is much more customizable and powerful. And Bluehost makes it easy to host your WordPress site. The first thing I notice whenever I go onto a Squarespace blog is how gorgeous it typically looks. Photography and graphic designs seem to leap off the screen. The blog owners themselves seem to always be artistically-minded like illustrators, photographers, graphic designers, home decor experts, and more.

Our panel was no exception. They were made up of a website design expert who teaches readers how to make stunning sites, a gardening influencer who frequently showcases mouth watering photos of his homegrown vegetables, and an interior designer who likes to flex their room designs off in gallery posts.

The trio rated Squarespace very highly across the board.