Best Blogging Platforms

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Whether you’re blogging as a hobby or starting a blog for your business, the benefits of blogging are endless. It’s an excellent way to drive traffic to your website, build authority, and express yourself. We’ve managed hundreds of blogs over the last decade using just about every combination of blogging tools known to man. Based on our experiences, Wix is the best blogging platform because it’s incredibly easy to use. It comes with nearly a thousand professionally designed templates, a fully functional mobile app, and a robust free plan you can use to get started.

The Best Blogging Platform for Most

If you’ve never built a website before, Wix is the way to go. You can get your blog up and running in less than an hour using the ADI tool. Simply answer a few questions and the software automatically handles the technical steps for you. From there, all you need to do is customize your blog, add in your photos, and start blogging.

If you’re on a tight budget or not quite ready to invest, Wix offers a free-forever plan you can use to test out the waters before spending a penny.

The 5 Best Blogging Platform Options to Consider:

1. Wix – Best blogging platform for most
2. WordPress with Bluehost – Best for building a brand
3. Strikingly – Best blogging platform for creatives
4. Squarespace – Best complement to your online store
5. Blogger – Best free blogging platform

When It Makes Sense to Invest Into a Blogging Platform

Anyone looking to publish content on the web needs a blogging platform. Without one, you have nowhere to publish your content.

However, depending on your situation and the purpose of your blog, the investment won’t be anything more than time and a few dollars every month.

Alternatively, you can start a blog for free if it’s something you just want to do for fun or to express yourself. Free is also an excellent option if you want to test the waters before spending any money. With that said, free platforms aren’t great if you’re trying to make money with your blog because they’re less professional and extremely limited.

At the end of the day, blogging helps you establish your voice online—whether you’re blogging for your business or for personal use. And your blogging platform is the basis for everything you do moving forward.

Even if you’ve never written a blog post or built a website before, investing in a blogging platform is the first step to breaking ground on your new blog.

It’s never too early (or too late) to get started.

#1 – Wix — The Best Blogging Platform for Most

Wix is fantastic for you if you’re looking to build your first website and stake your claim in the world of blogging. 

Wix has made a name for itself as being super simple to use. And, if you have ever tried to build a website in the past and failed, you know how frustrating it can be for a beginner or a not too tech-savvy person. 

Wix is a fun platform to use. It has a simple drag-and-drop editor that instantly turns you into a master of design. The interface allows you to make quick and simple changes to enhance your readers’ experience in a few clicks.  

The best part is that you don’t have to know how to code to get a designer-quality website. You just point and click, drag and drop. Creating a professional website takes as little as five minutes with their artificial design intelligence tool—it does all the heavy lifting, like adding pages, menus, and pre-built layouts to your site in a few clicks.

From there, you can add a blog to your new website and start writing away. Yup, it really is that easy.

Building a blog is about being creative and having fun, especially if you’re not looking to build a business around your blog at the start (but you can later on if you want). Getting your voice heard and making adjustments to your website should be easy and enjoyable. 

With Wix, you have a ton of creative options and templates to choose from to get started. Then, you can make that template your own with your creative genius. 

On top of that, it’s easy to:

• Create new posts
• Edit post content
• Manage your comments
• Share your posts on social media

You can also use the Wix mobile app to manage everything on the go, as well. 

Wix offers a free-forever plan which is perfect if your blog is a passion project. However, the free plan comes with a Wix subdomain, which isn’t ideal for business users. To connect a custom domain name, you’ll have to upgrade to a paid plan.

Paid plans start at $14 per month and include everything you need to get your new blog up and running. So, you don’t have to worry about buying a bunch of separate tools or services and connecting them all together.

Sign up to start building your new blog for free today!

#2 – WordPress with Bluehost — The Perfect Blogging Platform for Building a Brand

It’s no secret WordPress that is popular. It’s trusted by thousands of business owners and for good reason—it’s great at building massive brands. That’s why the largest companies in the world manage their sites with WordPress. 

If you know from the start that you are building a business around your blog, it makes sense to put in the time to learn this software. But, if you’re building a blog to write for on the weekends to let off some steam, it’s overkill to use WordPress (keep reading and see other options on this list more suitable for your needs). 

With that being said, at its core, WordPress is the blogging tool for content creators. Even with all of the extra features, benefits, and flexible use cases today, it’s still the most popular option for bloggers. 

We use WordPress here to power the blog you’re reading right now.

WordPress.org (what we recommend and use on a daily basis) is 100% free to use because it’s an open-source solution.

It’s also self-hosted, which means you have to purchase web hosting and a domain name before you can install WordPress and start using it. It sounds complicated since there’s an extra step involved, but it’s a lot easier than you think.

To get started, head over to Bluehost.com. It’s is our #1 recommendation for WordPress web hosting services because it’s affordable, beginner-friendly, and trusted by the creators of WordPress.

WordPress is the ultimate platform for building a business around your blog. It’s extraordinarily reliable, its plugins allow you to add any functionality to your site in a few clicks, and the security measures come baked into the service.

Let’s say, for some reason, you can’t find a plugin to meet your needs. You have options. 

The platform is built on PHP and can be customized to do anything your site needs, including having a developer create a specialized plugin for your business. 

WordPress gives you unlimited space to add content. So if you love long-form content, have at it. You also have the freedom to add other authors to your content, which promotes other business collaborations and guest posts for business blogs. 

If you are ready to build a blog that is branded and customized to your creative vision, the combination of WordPress and Bluehost will keep you growing and building revenue for years to come.

#3 – Strikingly — The Best for Creatives

Strikingly is another platform great for building an iron-clad brand following… or just having fun in your spare time. 

Artists, designers, and digital media creators love the simplicity of building blogs and other web pages with Strikingly. It’s turnkey easy but still spits out jaw-dropping beauty.   

Use the template-based editor to create a stunning website in under an hour, with no coding necessary. You get several clean, stylish templates to start working from and then easy control over swapping out images, adding text boxes and buttons, and placement of everything on the page.

Strikingly also hosts your website as part of using their platform. This is a massive value for more reasons than one:

• Getting hosting and a blogging platform in one fell swoop is a gift, as it lessens the steps needed to get set up and doesn’t require you to spend on that separately. 
• Second, you won’t have to fiddle with backend servers, learn which host will be best for your blog, and other details about techy stuff you don’t want to be bothered with. This gives you the freedom to just focus on creating content or displaying your creative work. 

And that’s exactly what most creatives want from a platform like this; the ability to create something beautiful and do it fast. You can build a site in under 30 minutes. 

Strikingly also offers built-in ecommerce capability, allowing you to add a store, connect payment processing, and begin generating revenue lightning fast.

It’s important to point out that, like most free website builders, your free Strikingly blog has a strikingly.com subdomain. To get rid of that subdomain, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.

These plans include:

• Limited — $8 per month
• Pro — $16 per month
• VIP — $49 per month

Whether you are trying to build super fans of your blog or sell your art or projects to visitors, Strikingly will keep you creative throughout your entire blogging and brand-building journey.

#4 – Squarespace — The Best Complement to Your Online Store

Like many of the popular website builders out there, Squarespace has roots in blogging.

Started as a blog hosting service in 2004, Squarespace has since blossomed into one of the best all-purpose website builders out there. You can create a personal home on the web as easily as you can stake your company’s flag on the internet.

That makes Squarespace particularly great for making a blog that works in tandem with an online store. Through this platform, it’s a cinch to sell your products and services to blog readers without them having to leave your blog post.

It’s already a simple way to build your website. Squarespace’s visual drag-and-drop editor makes it easy to create beautiful, vibrant pages and set up an appealing online store.

Once you have your online store set up with product pages (which can offer physical items, digital products, or services), you can use Product Blocks to embed them anywhere in your blog posts. It’s that simple.

There are also plenty of customization options, both in regard to the placement of the product block as well as the block itself.

You can have products appear in a separate column alongside an uninterrupted blog post or use the product block as a break between paragraphs in the post.

In the block itself you can choose to show options like:

• Product images
• Product name
• Price
• Product description
• Add to cart button (the text of which can be customized)

Like with many of these platforms, there’s a free plan you can try out to get your feet wet with Squarespace. It’s actually quite capable on its own—you can set up a blog and an online store (with limited products)—but you’ll be limited in many ways.

Paying for a Squarespace Commerce plan is well worth it if you’re serious about selling through your blog. The Business plan, which runs you $18/month when paying annually, offers the full array of features you’ll need to sell products and services without any frustration.

Give Squarespace a try today and see how well it can help you create a beautiful, shoppable blog.

#5 – Blogger — The Best Free Blogging Platform

Blogger is a pioneer in the blogging space. Most old-school bloggers started using this platform 20+ years ago when it launched in 1999. 

But what is great about Blogger is it’s still relevant for anyone looking to start a blog. It’s a free platform that eliminates any risk for beginners to get started and begin creating content right away. 

You get all the general features of a blogging platform—add images, links to move between other posts you’ve written, and more. But it is still a very minimal blogging platform, so it’s easy for you to navigate and create. 

Some of the best features are the ability to make money with your content with Google AdSense and get analytics about the traffic that visits your posts with Google Analytics. So, you literally can start a free blog and make money with it and increase the revenue based on the insights you find. 

You also have access to custom website templates and can customize your blog with no coding involved. If you want to start blogging for free and earn some extra cash with Google AdSense, Blogger is an excellent choice to consider.

Methodology For Choosing The Best Blogging Platform

What’s the best blogging platform for you? It depends on various factors.

So, let’s walk through each of those factors in greater detail so you can make the best decision based on your needs.

Are You Building a Brand or Blogging for Fun?

When you are starting a blog, you want to burst on the scene with captivating content that explores your creativity and helps readers. Understanding what your end result will be begins with knowing if you’re building a brand or blogging for yourself. 

Starting a blog to actually make money is a lot different than starting one as a personal diary, certainly. There’s nothing wrong with either route, but the one you choose plays a massive role in which blogging platform you should choose.

Building your brand will require considerably more effort than just blogging to speak your mind on a topic you’re passionate about. The platform you decide to use matters depending on your goal. 

If you are looking to build a brand and make money blogging with your site, you should either:

1. Use Wix‘s drag-and-drop builder, or
2. Use WordPress with Bluehost hosting

The problem many beginners face is simply building the look and feel of their blog at the outset. Why spend hours learning how to customize your blog before you even write your first post unless it’s completely necessary? Don’t just follow the masses because everyone says it’s the best platform. 

For example, the standard for blogging is WordPress. Yes, it powers 34% of the websites online and offers an endless amount of resources to do virtually anything you can imagine. But the learning curve is steep and can cause confusion for a beginner.

You need to really dive deep into how comfortable you are with using WordPress, which can also require you to seek additional coding help, depending on what you want your blog to do. 

Blogging for yourself, on the other hand, requires just finding a simpler solution. You could still use Wix in this case, because it’s beginner-friendly and offers an array of templates to get up and running quickly. Strikingly, though, is low-key on features but allows you to start sharing your thoughts in less than an hour. 

What Type of Writer Are You?

This is a very important topic to explore. When you’re blogging for fun or as an extension of your website, ease of use, the writing/publishing experience, and your writing style are the most important factors to consider. 

You want the experience to be enjoyable. When you get started, you need to know how much writing real estate you have. Some simple platforms only allow you a certain amount of characters, strangling your creativity if you are more of a long-form blog writer. 

It comes down, often, to a simple difference in what kind of posts you’re writing.

For example, instructional posts are much more detailed and require a segue into why you decided to write the post, whereas listicles can be much shorter in terms of word count and more direct.

The platform matters a lot regarding your favored form of writing. Will it be image or media-heavy? Will your platform limit how you can format your posts? Can you organize your content the way you want to? 

For beginners, these are crucial ideas you must consider as there are many platforms that have different rules on how you can create content. 

Some platforms, like Strikingly and Blogger, are extremely basic and minimal in terms of how you can customize your articles and the layout of your content feed.

Another little thing to consider is whether you want your byline on content. Do you want to be the listed author or do you need a pen name or to be completely anonymous?

Sometimes you don’t want your blog to come back and burn you if you have strong opinions about a topic. If you want to be a free spirit with no consequence to your daily lifestyle, an anonymous or pen name feature might be the way to go for you. But if you’re building a brand, you’re likely going to want your name at the top of each post.

Let your creative light burn bright—just know what kind of writer you want to be before you select your platform. 

Customization Without Coding

There are millions of blogs created every day. If you want your blog to glow with your personality, having the ability to customize your website will hold the highest value for you.

Customizing your blog means adding the color scheme you prefer, posting email collection forms exactly where you want them to be, and adding your branding and call to action buttons precisely in the areas that maximize your visitor engagement and possible revenue collection, just to name a few features. 

More robust platforms allow you to add business tools, like the ability to take payments for products, and even analyze how much time a visitor stayed on a certain page and where they clicked. 

During our extensive research, it was communicated extensively by beginners and advanced users that not being able to customize their blog and website how they wanted was a top reason for moving to a new platform. 

Not only does it extinguish your creative flow, but it also traps you into looking like everyone else. No one likes feeling trapped. 

But, with great flexibility comes more complexity. Getting granular with customization may require you to know or learn some coding. 

Many website builders offer you the freedom to do anything you want by dragging and dropping elements into your blog. That way, a customized site is within easy reach. 

Consequently, though, you will spend more time designing and learning how to maneuver around the interface to get things just right. Sometimes, what seems simple enough can be harder to accomplish in a drag-and-drop visual builder than by injecting code.

Having a blog that looks the same as everyone else is the kiss of death. Users want to be engaged and stimulated at every turn. Imagine what it will be like, jumping off the average assembly line of blogs to stand out, leading to growing readership and more upbeat visitors who are excited to visit your blog. 

As a beginner, you don’t have to code or be a graphic designer. There are simple platforms that make customizing your blog a snap. But, there are also more robust CMS platforms that have themes and templates that can be customized further—giving you a one-of-a-kind website that screams individuality. 

It all depends on your goals. Either way, you never have to be just like everyone else again.

Summary

What’s the best blogging platform?

It depends on what you’re looking for. Wix and WordPress are our top overall recommendations, but they are not for everyone. 

The easiest way to find the best blogging platform for you is by trying different options. Use the methodology that we outline in this guide to help you evaluate prospective platforms.

And whether you’re a solo blogger writing for fun, trying to monetize your blog, or managing a large-scale publication business, there’s an option for everyone on our list.