The best free blogging platforms gives you something that social media can’t: the ability to take control of your identity, your message and your personal brand.
Because let’s be realistic: when you share your work on Instagram, Twitter, YouTube or TikTok, it’s the platform’s algorithm that decides when, where and even if your followers get to see your posts. Build your own blog, though, and you’ll have total control over how your work is presented, and in what order it appears.
There are two reasons why most people don’t set up a blog: it seems too complicated and they worry about the cost. So in this article, we’ve gathered together the best free blogging platforms, all of which are pretty easy to use.
Many of them allow you to use ready-made templates, so you won’t need any web design or coding skills. If you’re very new to blogging, though, you may want to read our guide to how to start a blog first. Conversely, if you’re a web designer, we’ve included more advanced free blogging platforms that will allow you to customise things to your heart’s content.
So read on to discover the best free blogging platforms available now. If you decide you want more than a blog, though, then check out our best website builder guide to help you build an all-singing, all-dancing website. We’ll start with quick links to our top 3, or you can just jump straight to our full guide.
Quick links: top 3 best free blogging platforms
The best free blogging platforms in full
(Image credit: Future)
01. Wix
The best free blogging platform for beginners
Reasons to buy
+ Wide range of templates+ Scalable over time
Reasons to avoid
– Free site includes ads – Limited storage on free plan
Want to get your blog online quickly and easily? Lack web design skills and experience? Then Wix is the best free blogging platform we can recommend. You can build a blog (or indeed any other kind of website) using simple drag and drop. There are lots of good templates, and you get 500MB of online storage and 1GB of bandwidth, all on the free account.
The drawback with the free account is that you’ll have an ad for Wix on your site and a Wix domain name. To remove those and unlock other features like an online store and Google Analytics, there are paid-for plans that are very reasonably priced. What many people do is start with the free plan and then upgrade once you get going and want to make your blog look more professional.
(Image credit: Future)
02. Weebly
The best blogging platform for beginners looking for an easy option
Reasons to buy
+ Easier to use than Wix+ Nice responsive themes
Reasons to avoid
– Not as feature-rich as Wix– Not as customisable as Wix
Nervous beginner? Then you’ll be pleased to hear that Weebly is super-easy: even easier than Wix (which takes some doing).
The two platforms are actually pretty similar: Weebly is also based on a drag-and-drop system, which lets you quickly create a website using a template. The main difference is that Weebly doesn’t have as many customisation features as Wix; but the flipside is that this makes the interface easier to master.
Like with Wix, the free plan includes a Weebly ad but comes with hosting included, so you really won’t have to spend a penny. You also get access to customisable layouts, several free themes, and all the social sharing features you need. Again, you can upgrade to a paid plan to remove ads and get more customisation options.
(Image credit: Future)
03. Substack
A free blogging platform designed for sending newsletters
Reasons to buy
+ Easy to use+ Potential to earn money
Reasons to avoid
– Basic layout options
You’ve probably heard about Substack as a way of preparing and sending email newsletters. But it actually works perfectly well as a blog platform too. In fact, many users treat it like one and Substack actually describes itself as “the home of great blogging”, so we thought it was important to include it on this list.
Substack offers a free account that comes with web space included. Your newsletters get archived here, so anyone can read them and subscribe for further updates. And you can treat this space just as you would a blog.
If you want a beautiful looking blog, though, don’t turn to Substack, as its main focus is on making your posts look good in emails. Substack does, though, provide a basic CMS with text formatting tools and the ability to embed images, video and other web content.
Substack is free as long as you make your posts/emails free for everyone to read. Once you build an audience, though, you may want to start charging paid subscriptions, at which point, Substack will take a cut. It’s entirely up to you, though.
(Image credit: Future)
04. WordPress.org
The best blogging platform for fine control
Reasons to buy
+ Huge community+ Very customisable
Reasons to avoid
– Steep learning curve– Site building takes time
With the options we’ve mentioned so far, you only get limited control over how your blog looks and operates. If you want maximum control, the best free blogging platform for you will be WordPress.org. (Importantly, this is not to be confused with WordPress.com – a very different beast, which appears next on our list).
Launched in 2003, WordPress.org now powers around a third of the world’s websites. It’s open-source site-building software, which is totally free to use. Any ads that appear on your blog will be ones that you’ve put there and make money for you, not the platform. You will, however, still need to pay for web hosting and a domain name to get your blog online.
WordPress.org is incredibly powerful, but there’s quite a big learning curve to it if you have no web experience. The software takes time to understand and getting the best results usually requires learning at least some web design skills. Our article on how to make a website will help get you started, but you’ll also need to acquaint yourself with WordPress’s extensive documentation (our guide to the best WordPress tutorials can help).
For anyone wanting a great range of customisation and usability, though, WordPress.org is the gold standard. Check out our guides to the best free WordPress themes and best WordPress plugins.
(Image credit: Future)
05. WordPress.com
Free blogging platform for hobbyists and enthusiasts
Reasons to buy
+ Totally free+ Easy to use
Reasons to avoid
– Limited features– Third-party ads
WordPress.org (number 4 on our list) and WordPress.com are two quite different. The former, which we’ve just looked at, offers a powerful web design platform but has a big learning curve and means you have to pay for hosting and a domain name. WordPress.com is an all-in-one solution, which includes hosting and a domain, and is much easier to use.
For those reasons, WordPress.com is a better choice if you’re a beginner or hobbyist who doesn’t want to spend a lot of time reading documentation. With the free plan you get free hosting, 3GB of space and a branded domain name ending in .wordpress.com.
The main downside is that you don’t get much ability to customise your site’s look and feel, and your blog will feature third-party ads you have no control over. You won’t be able to add ecommerce features or place your own ads either.
(Image credit: Future)
06. Joomla
The best blogging platform for coders
Reasons to buy
+ Open source + Good customisation features
Reasons to avoid
– Not as popular as WordPress– Steep learning curve
Joomla is quite a lot like WordPress.org (number 4 on our list) in that it’s free and open-source software for website building, but you’ll need to pay for a domain name and hosting (although there is a way around this, which we’ll come to in a moment).
Joomla has hundreds of templates to use and customise, and lots of extensions for adding extra features and getting your blog looking just the way you want it. It doesn’t have as many themes and add-ons as WordPress.org, but if you’re able to code, you might prefer Joomla, especially if you want a larger, more complex site. If you foresee your blog growing into something bigger that you could potentially make money from, this is probably a more scalable solution.
Don’t want to pay for hosting? Since 2015 Joomla has teamed up with SiteGround to offer a great solution. The launch.joomla.org service offers you the basic standard publishing features of Joomla, with free hosting.
This isn’t much use to anyone who wants an advanced, expandable website from the get-go, but if you want to get started with Joomla it’s a great option, as any blog you develop here can be upgraded later into a full-fledged self-hosted Joomla project without any limitations on extendibility.
(Image credit: Future)
07. Site123
The best free blogging platform for 24/7 support
Reasons to buy
+ Excellent customer support+ Simple and clean templates
Reasons to avoid
– Only good for personal blogs– Limited free storage
Site123 says it’s ‘by far the easiest free website builder’ and it’s plain to see why. Getting your blog up and running is incredibly straightforward, and if you need some help along the way, there’s a 24/7 live chat feature to help out. You get a selection of ready-made styles and layouts and handy prompts along the way to help you build your blogging website.
The results can look a little basic when compared with more advanced platforms. And like with many of the best free blogging platforms, Site123 will place its own ads on your site. But if all you need is a simple blog with comments, post scheduling and social media integration, you’ll find exactly that here.
(Image credit: Future)
08. Hubpages
Share blog posts with the Hubpages community
Reasons to buy
+ Start blogging instantly+ Creative focus
Reasons to avoid
– Can’t customise look– Don’t get a website
Hubpages is a slightly different way to build a blog without writing code. It’s a blogging network with plenty of sections to choose from, including Arts and Design, and it aims to help bloggers connect to a wide audience, share their posts with the community, and even earn some money from advertising and affiliates.
You’re tied into the platform’s own system and you don’t get any control over how your blog looks and feels. On the plus side, this makes getting started fairly quick and easy. If your priority is to express yourself through words rather than design, it’s well worth investigating.
(Image credit: Future)
09. Contentful
A way to future-proof your blog content
Reasons to buy
+ Separates content from design + Future-proof
Reasons to avoid
– Not great for complex sites – No good for beginners
If you want to ensure your blog keeps up with design trends without having to go back and redesign all your old posts, Contentful is one of the best free blogging platforms to consider. That’s because unique ‘API-first’ approach keeps content separate from design.
This means that if you decide to give your blog a visual update, the new look will be instantly applied to all your old content. So if, a few years down the line, you decide you want a completely different design, it’ll be very easy to do so.
(Image credit: Future)
10. Jekyll
The best free blogging platform for developers
Reasons to buy
+ Good for prototyping+ Free hosting on GitHub pages
Reasons to avoid
– No user-friendly interface– No good for beginners
If you’re an experienced coder, Jekyll may well be the best free blogging platform for your needs. It’s been made with web developers clearly in mind. Give it some text files with optional markdown and it’ll turn them into a static site that you can host anywhere you like.
Jekyll is the engine behind GitHub Pages, which means you can host your blog there for free. Making your blog with Jekyll avoids the need to work with technicalities such as databases, upgrades and so on, so there are fewer things to go wrong, and you can build something from scratch rather than having to rely on templates.
(Image credit: Future)
11. Tumblr
Yes, it’s still going strong!
Reasons to buy
+ Good for short posts+ Fun to use
Reasons to avoid
– Not a professional look– Difficult to monetise
First launched in 2007, Tumblr may be showing its age now. But it’s still one of the best free blogging options around for pure, unadultered fun. There’s a surprising number of people still using the platform, and it offers some great social features, including the ability for users to follow your posts.
It’s very straightforward to customise a Tumblr theme to create your own look. And while there aren’t a lot of layout options, it’s a solid choice for long-form blogs or image-based posts. There’s also the benefit that you can upload from anywhere thanks to Tumblr’s mobile apps.
(Image credit: Future)
12. Blogger
An easy choice for simple blogs
Reasons to buy
+ Indexed by Google+ Integrated with Google Analytics+ Good for simple blogs
Reasons to avoid
– Limited features
Like Tumblr, Blogger was one of the pioneers in the field of free blogging platforms. And like Tumblr, it’s still going strong today. All you need is a Google ID, and you can sign in and make a quick, easy blog, with plenty of themes to choose from. You shouldn’t expect that blog to look particularly great, and the custom URL won’t make you look particular sophisticated or up-to-date in the eyes of web-savvy visitors. But if you just want a simple blog, it’s easy to use, and it’s free.
(Image credit: Future)
13. Medium
The best free blogging platform for longform articles
Reasons to buy
+ No set up required+ Respected by professionals
Reasons to avoid
– You don’t get a website– Can’t customise the look of posts
If you want to write longform articles and publish them, and you don’t necessarily care about having a branded blog, Medium is one of the best free blogging platforms to consider. It was created by Twitter’s founders as a platform for lengthy articles, and it’s a polished, streamlined experience. Visually, there won’t be anything distinct about your posts, compared with those of other Medium users. But if it’s purely the content of the articles that matters, then this offers a great alternative to messing about designing a customised blog.
(Image credit: Future)
14. SilverStripe
Niche blogging platform for experienced developers
Reasons to buy
+ Open source+ Strong security
Reasons to avoid
– Small community of users– Better for experienced developers
For experienced developers looking for strong security and advanced features, SilverStripe is one of the best free blogging platforms to consider. It’s a free, open-source CMS that’s easy to use once it’s set up, but you’ll need web skills to get that far. Key tools include a web-based administration panel, a WYSIWYG website editor, rich-text editing, quick embedding of videos, and a drag-and-drop, tree-based navigation structure. Note that you’ll also have to pay for your own domain name and hosting.
Which free blogging platform is best?
The best free blogging platform for you will largely depend on what you’re looking for. If you want to get up and running quickly, and don’t have any web design experience, we recommend Wix, as it makes it very easy to build a website and offers over 500 customisable templates. However, if your priority is having fine control over the look and feel of your site, and you’re willing to spend time learning how the system works, we recommend WordPress.org. Finally, if you’re an experienced coder, then you’ll find either Joomla or SilverStripe gives you the sophisticated tools you need to build an advanced site to your exact needs.
Which free blogging platform is best for making money?
If you want to make money from your blog, then most free blogging platforms are going to make that difficult. Put simply, in return for providing you with a free blog, they will incorporate their own ads into your site, and you won’t get the money for any click-throughs; they will.
The big exception is WordPress.org. Because this is open source software, you will have total control over what happens on your blog, and that includes deciding to feature your own ads, for which the money will go straight to you. However, be aware that WordPress.org does have a big learning curve to use, and you will have to pay for hosting and a domain name separately.
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