If you are looking for the best platform to start establishing your blog where you share all your thoughts, expertise, and knowledge, you’ve landed on the right article. As we are going to list all the best blogging platforms to create your own blog website on your own terms. We’ve conducted and compared all these blogging platforms to give you better insights and make it easier for you to choose your preferred platform.
Building a great blog starts with choosing the right platform, and there are only a handful truly worth considering. Blogging has reached its peak in today’s web world, not only as a platform to share your thoughts and opinions but also as means of profit.
If you want to learn how to start a blog, some of the best blogging platforms like WordPress and Medium have enabled budding writers to document their views and opinions in front of a huge audience. Over the years, other blogging platforms have grown to offer state-of-the-art content management systems (CMS).
These blogging platforms have enabled users to decide on their web hosting and set up blogs with minimal technical knowledge, all on a codeless interface. If you want to create a successful blog where you also make a living out of it, read our guide on the best blogging platforms to evaluate your decisions properly and make the right choice.
How to Assess the Best Blogging Platforms?
Before we dive deep into our collection of the best blogging platforms to create a successful blog website ad make a profit out of it, it is important that we evaluate the main criteria on how to assess and choose the right blogging platform for you.
As a beginner, you’ll want a blogging platform for beginners, one that’s easy to set up, has a low learning curve, and doesn’t require any coding skills. You must make sure that your goals align with the possibilities and features that each blogging platform presents. Let’s take a tour of some of the most essential features you will need to create your blog.
Content Editor
The content editor is a crucial aspect for every content creator because as you are creating your blog you need a platform that offers an impeccable editor interface that allows you to easily write your content and create your pages with utmost flexibility. On this note, we strongly recommend you choose a platform that best suits your technical knowledge and that provides a low learning curve to get a hold of the most important and basic features.
Out of all the features your blogging platform offers, it is best recommended you select one that aligns with your skills, for example, you would want to search for a drag and drop editor that also has an autosave feature to make sure everything you create is saved automatically in case of misfortune events. This is why content editor was a crucial when choosing the best blogging platforms to include in our article.
SEO Optimization and Tools
This goes without saying that search engine optimization is a must for every blogging platform you decide to establish your blog web page. To get on that first page, you ideally want a platform with built-in tools to help you optimize your content. In order to rank higher on search engines, these best blogging platforms must-have tools that ensure you get visibility on all the popular search engines and that your content is made available for a larger audience. If the platform does not provide SEO built-in tools, you can opt for SEO plugins that add the same functionality.
Design Capabilities
A pivotal aspect of your website is also the design, making sure that your blog looks impeccable and always on the loop with the latest design trends to entice users and create an engaging environment for a better user experience. Themes and templates allow you to customize a blog quickly and easily. When on the search for a blogging platform, these should be top of your list of priorities, as pre-designed templates can save you time and energy as well as serve as a starting point for your website design.
There are a few things to consider when it comes to themes and templates, like their price, their features, whether or not the platform offers free and premium ones, or is the repository of blog-specific themes and templates capable of handling your needs and requests. These are just a few aspects you should consider when opting for the best blogging platform.
The best Blogging Platforms in 2021
This needs no introduction as WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems covering a large portion of the web that began first as a blogging platform only to expand its reach and functionality of creating some of the most powerful and popular online stores or business establishments.
You should not confuse WordPress.org and WordPress.com, if you do so, we have created a comprehensive comparison guide between the two platforms and the main differences between the two.
WordPress is an open-source and free blogging platform that helps you create and establish highly functional and capable blogs and websites, all using the power of Gutenberg blocks and the intuitive content editor which lets you create your content and publish it without needing any technical knowledge whatsoever.
One of the best traits of WordPress is most definitely its large repository of themes and plugins that allows you to extend your site’s functionality to the fullest as well as reach design milestones and create stunning blogs to appeal to your engaging readers. WordPress is by far one of the best blogging platforms to establish your online presence.
PROS OF WORDPRESS
- WordPress gives you control over every aspect of your website
- You can add all the functionality you need to your blog by integrating forms, popups, newsletters, forums, online stores, online classes, memberships, and more. This allows you to profit from your blog.
- Thousands of possibilities to add functionality and design styles with over 55.000 + plugins over 47.000+ themes (paid+free)
- Best of WordPress is the design system, which allows you to customize and style your website down to every detail, all of that without needing extensive knowledge of HTML or CSS.
- Advanced SEO out of the box with the help of plugins and search engine optimization
- You can easily add Google Analytics to your WordPress website thus giving you access to invaluable insights and data to compile your marketing goals, grow your traffic, and increase your mailing list.
- With WordPress, you can easily add dynamic content and create dynamic web pages to make the entire process a lot easier. You can embed dynamic content like videos, social media feeds, Google Adsense, graphs, charts, and more without any technical know-how.
- WordPress has a highly intuitive and user-friendly interface
CONS OF WORDPRESS
- Managing your own website with WordPress comes with a learning curve.
- You will still need to take care of some technical issues like website security.
PRICE OF WORDPRESS
In essence, WordPress is an open-source project, meaning that the software is free, but there are still some expenses that come at a price of a highly successful blog website. You will need to pay for hosting (that usually comes at the lowest price of $7.99 per year) and domain registration (that comes at a price of $14.99 per year). You will need hosting and domain for any type of WordPress website.
Aside from hosting and domain, you will also need to pay for premium WordPress themes and plugins, but the WordPress repository provides bountiful amazing and free WordPress themes as well as free WordPress plugins.
Overall, WordPress is one of the best blogging platforms for every content creator as the majority of the well-known bloggers on the internet use WordPress as their content management system because it’s user-friendly and comes with all the functionality that you’ll need to create a successful blog.
Wix is a highly popular hosted platform to establish websites. Wix is one of the best blogging platforms that give you total freedom to create, design, and develop your own content.
You can establish and craft your own high-quality website. Wix is one of the more established website builder companies founded in 2006 and now counts more than 110 million users. Wix’s drag-and-drop editor makes it easy to create a professional website – without having to know a line of code.
Beginner-friendly and scalable, Wix is suitable for anything from personal online portfolios to small business websites. You can select from their outstanding collection of pre-made website templates to begin crafting your site and have it established in no time. Wix is the best blogging platform for when you are looking for a solution that’s easy to manage because it does all the hard work for you.
PROS OF WIX
- It’s feature-rich, with awesome SEO tools and hundreds of apps
- Wix provides you with pre-designed templates that you can use to get started on your website.
- You choose from over 800 professionally designed and fully customizable templates.
- Wix’s drag-and-drop building tools make its editor extremely easy to use, even for beginners with no tech experience. This makes it easy for everyone to create their own website without having to deal with complicated
- Gives you tons of flexibility and creative freedom to build and craft any type of website you wish utilizing all the powerful and advanced tools at your disposal. You can also easily customize all the templates and have them designed as per your taste.
- Anyone can create a beautiful website with Wix, even if you have no tech experience
- Provides excellent customer support
CONS OF WIX
- One drawback is that you can’t switch your template once you’ve published your site without starting again from scratch.
- The Wix editor can be a bit overwhelming until you get the hang of it.
- The free account is limited and shows Wix branding and ads on your site.
PRICE OF WIX
We continue our collection with another outstanding and the best blogging platform that also presents itself as a complete website creation tool aimed to help even the most novice users create the website of their dreams.
Squarespace position itself as THE website builder for blogs, portfolio sites, and online stores. They provide 100+ website templates made for blogging, and they each represent a unique and beautiful design aesthetic. These templates are fully customizable and come responsive-ready, meaning they will adapt to every screen device with ease.
Squarespace has expanded its reach and functionality, offering a wide variety of niche-oriented tools and features, the platform can now be used to host an online store, run email marketing campaigns and even help you create video ads. Squarespace is one of the best blogging platforms as it provides a very easy approach to start your website. Squarespace includes a solid blogging suite, quite perfect for beginners.
PROS OF SQUARESPACE
- Squarespace is the perfect platform for beginners as it employs a very simple and straightforward approach to start blogging and offers a handful of blogging suite tools for every occasion
- Squarespace provides over 100 pre-designed templates that are optimized for tablets and mobiles as well as highly customizable
- Squarespace is great for blogging as they have feature-rich commenting-feature, multi-author functionality, AMP support, and more.
- Squarespace allows you to create up to 1000 pages giving you the flexibility to run and manage complex blogging sites as well
- They provide an excellent support system, you can reach them either using their live chat functionality on their website and you will get an answer properly structured
- You can create really stylish summary blocks of your blog and drop them into any page of your website, filter any page or post, and more
- You can use categories and tags to organize your content properly
It separately offers - domain names with SSL/HTTPS and eCommerce stores.
CONS OF SQUARESPACE
- There is no auto-save option, meaning you are exposed to losing content if you forget to manually save it or in misfortune event
- The proprietary platform is limited in features
- If you want to update an existing blog post, you can’t work on a draft version and publish it when you’re ready.
PRICE OF SQUARESPACE
Squarespace is a premium blogging platform that offers different pricing plans, each presenting different features. Their Personal plan starts at $11 per month which is a good solution if you are not looking to create an online store. For the Business plan, pricing starts at $26/month.
For each plan that you pay for the year in advance, you save up to 25 or 30% discount. Only new domain names can be registered through Squarespace. Existing ones need to be pointed to your Squarespace website from a different registrar.
HubSpot is an excellent marketing tool that has also developed its blogging platform to allow its users to create and establish their online presence, and it’s ideal for both developers and marketers. This is because HubSpot’s CMS has the tools, technologies, and workflows that developers need to build a CRM-powered blog and that marketers need to manage it.
This blogging platform is built upon HubSpot’s marketing and CRM tools, this way you can use a single platform to collect leads, get more subscribers, send newsletters, and a lot more. Create and edit blog posts, landing pages, site pages, and emails with ease, whether you choose from one of our pre-built templates or start from scratch.
You can create fully responsive blog pages that are optimized for every device using HubSpot, hence our inclusion on our best blogging platforms collection.. Once you are ready to publish your website, you can use the social media integration feature to promote it and share across the largest social networks.
PROS OF HUBSPOT CMS
- HubSpot’s CMS is a powerful tool and yet quite easy and simple to use
- You can begin designing your website using the pre-made templates and customize them to match your style.
- Using HubSpot’s blog editor and built-in SEO tools, you can quickly create search engine optimized blog posts with CTAs, forms, and other interactive elements. You can even run A/B testing on your content as well as create multi-lingual versions of your blog
- Using the social media integration feature you can connect your blog to social networks and automatically share new blog posts on your social media accounts.
- Easy-to-use drag and drop website builder with no coding skills required.
- You get a free SSL certificate that’s included when you publish your website with CMS Hub
- You can get performance analysis for your content to understand what topics your readers are more drawn to and what content is resonating with your audience.
CONS OF HUBSPOT CMS
- HubSpot CMS does not provide a free version
- If you are a novice, knowing that this blogging platform is designed to be an all-in-one platform together, it can be overwhelming to grasp and take full advantage of this robust platform
- The migration process from another blogging platform might be lengthy
PRICE OF HUBSPOT CMS
Medium is one of the most popular blogging platforms, but unlike other platforms we’ve chosen for this article, Medium is easily one of the most polarizing platforms out there. Medium is the best place to grow your niche audience.
You can also find some of the most thought-provoking and controversial content that’s rich and powerful. What makes Medium stand out is the built-in community of readers, meaning you don’t have to build that one from scratch.
People can browse a vast library of publications and topics, find your blog, and subscribe to it with a single click. Medium started in 2012 and now is known for a big community of experts, journalists, bloggers, and writers. While you don’t have much control over things, the average Medium site looks and feels like a clean, well-designed magazine website
PROS OF MEDIUM
- A user can only focus on writing instead of designing
- With Medium, you already have a built-in community of readers
- Medium offers a paid subscription for its readers in exchange for clutter-free and quality content. Hence, if you want serious readers for your platform, then Medium is one of the most suitable platforms
- Medium provides a simple and clean interface with lots of white spaces and you can easily set up an account and begin blogging right away
- Medium offers a membership program through which writers can easily monetize their blogs based on the visits and reading time.
- Users don’t need to worry about the formatting of content as it automatically formats the content before it goes live.
- It is easy to use and does not require any coding skills.
- You can easily share your published content on other platforms.
CONS OF MEDIUM
- Bloggers have limited control over the design of their blog
- A personal domain name cannot be acquired
- You can’t run your own ads to make money from your blog
PRICE OF MEDIUM
Weebly is a well-known website builder platform owned by Square’s payment platform. With Weebly, you can start designing and building your website as they provide website-building tools for business websites and eCommerce stores.
Weebly is a powerful and one of the best blogging platforms that also provides blog features along with free blog templates that you can add to your website. Weebly offers several easy-to-use features that can be leveraged to make a highly customized blog easily. You get all the tools you need to create a website of your choice and grow your business.
is another popular blogging platform for bloggers that want everything they need to launch a blog in one place here including website building tools, templates, as well as hosting. More specifically, Weebly is best suited for creating blogs with lots of content but more basic functionality.
PROS OF WEEBLY
- Weebly is affordable and easy to use
- Fully hosted website and blogging platform
- Seamless integration with Square payment platform
- You can create more complex layouts by adding elements like forms and image galleries as well
- All Weebly templates are also mobile-optimized, which means you won’t have to do any additional editing or rearranging for mobile
- It offers capable SEO functionalities to make sure that the website is discoverable by search engines
- You can design and customize your website with no particular coding knowledge
CONS OF WEEBLY
- The free plan has limited features and bandwidth, also including Weebly branding
- Third-party integration is limited to a few numbers.
- While Weebly offers more functionality than most website builders, it does lack flexibility when compared to WordPress or another CMS.
PRICE OF WEEBLY
Craft CMS is a blogging platform designed for developers, designers, and web professionals. Craft is a robust website builder that allows for a great blogging experience and content creation process. This blogging platform provides an excellent and user-friendly interface to help you create, design, and publish your website with utmost ease and flexibility.
With Craft, you can compile successful marketing campaigns and connect to marketing tools like Salesforce, Mailchimp, Hubspot, and countless more. With Craft’s personalized content modeling, powerful templating, and option to edit your source code, you can completely control the appearance and functionality of your site — if you have the necessary experience.
An important feature to your blog website is also the flexibility to set up custom fields, which Craft provides you to set up custom fields based on your content’s needs.
PROS OF CRAFT CMS
- Craft CMS also offers an image editor, collaboration tools, and a localization feature that can translate your content to specific languages.
- With Craft CMS you can also manage multiple blogs from a single installation
- Provides a simple and user-focused experience for building and creating your website
- All of your custom field types are managed centrally in Craft. You can organize them into groups, and use them wherever you’d like
- To analyze your content’s performance, you can integrate Craft CMS’ dashboard with Google Analytics.
- You can use categories and tags to keep your content organized and for managing different taxonomies
CONS OF CRAFT CMS
- Can get expensive fast, especially if needing advanced eCommerce features
- No starter templates
- Offers basic SEO features
PRICE OF CRAFT CMS
Contently is a robust and one of the best blogging platforms that’s for enterprise companies with large budgets but few internal editorial resources. With Contently you can create outstanding blogs and share your content with your readers. The blogging platform also provides you with insights and analytics to keep track of your organic traffic and always be on the loop with everything on your blog.
Before publishing your content, Contently’s smart content review tools will ensure your content is aligned with your brand, optimized for search, and legally compliant. Contently provides you with Cross-functional content calendars, campaign centers, and in-platform strategy tools that align teams and create better content. You can connect your blog with all your favorite marketing tools and craft personalized content to appeal to your audience.
PROS OF CONTENTLY
- A rich suite of integrations allow you to engage your audience across your CMS, social channels, and CRM
- Contently allows you to manage your entire content creation process in one place
- Provides you with the Analytics Suite that offers insights on how every aspect of your content is going
- You can create and visualize your editorial strategy with their customizable production calendar tool
- Nice and easy space for an online writing portfolio
- Smart tool to review your content before publishing
- Contently enables you to compare your content’s performance against industry benchmarks
CONS OF CONTENTLY
- It’s very expensive for small businesses and individuals
PRICE OF CONTENTLY
Contently is most suited for large companies. Their pricing plan starts at $999 per month for the Specialist Package, offering advanced marketing strategy optimization, content creation, as well as for analytics. They also have the Standard package that starts from $499 per month.
Final Thoughts
We’ve put all our cards to the table and have resented the best blogging platforms for beginners as well as for those with a professional background in the field. We have laid down and compared the best blogging platforms and their best as well as worst features of each, making it easier for our readers to make the decision that fits them best. While the platform you ultimately choose is going to be determined by your unique needs, you’ll definitely be able to find what you’re looking for using our list above and methodology to guide you.
We would argue that the best blogging platform that offers tons of flexibility and freedom to create any type of blog website is WordPress, as you can search and explore through their theme selection, or add functionality easily via WordPress plugins. Wix, Squarespace, as well as Medium, are all great candidates as well that you can choose as an alternative to WordPress.