Blogging. The thing your friend does that you could do better. The hobby of the century. Your key to boss-less freedom and your cat’s one shot at fame. So do your homework with this list and start a blog the whole world, and your mom, will love.
Readers email us every day asking “where should I start my blog?” For years we’ve directed people to this post.
Now, this guide has now been updated to include the best place to host a blog as well as the best blog platforms of 2023.
And, if you’re ready to blog like pro bloggers, check our guide on how to setup self-hosted WordPress.
Table of Contents:
- Best web hosts for WordPress
- List of every blog platform EVER
- Best places for earning money
- And our choice for the best free blogging platform is…
Introduction: What Are The Best Blogging Platforms? (by the Numbers)
It’s 2020 and WordPress.org is where we find the majority of the web’s most profitable and successful blogs.
WordPress.org is used by over 50% of the top 100 blogs, over 30% of the entire internet.
Despite what most beginners (like myself 10 years ago) typically think, WordPress.org is free, you just have to get a domain name and web hosting plan to use it.
The alternative is WordPress.com, however on WordPress.com you pay for additional features, can’t use plugins and can’t even advertise, which becomes a major bummer as your blogging grows up.
WordPress.com and free blog sites in general become like living in your parents basement — it’s fun for a couple weeks but then you want to move out.
Best Web Hosting for WordPress
When you choose to go WordPress.org you have to grab some web hosting and a domain before you can actually logoin and blog.
Here are the best (and easiest) web hosts where you can install WordPress.org (without any coding required).
Note: As actual customers, we’ve been able to work out slightly better discounts with our top 5 listed below. However all work great!
BlueHost is offers modern web hosting made for WordPress. It’s been solid for years and is downright good looking, or is it their models? Founded in 2003 by Matt Heaton in Provo Utah and hosting over 2 million websites around the world, Bluehost now hosts the most WordPress websites of anyone. Like Bluehost? Watch our step-by-step beginner video guide to install WordPress at Bluehost and learn how to get 66% off (the best discount of 2020) at Bluehost. Browse Bluehost Discounts »
Watch as DearTraveler and I setup a Bluehost blog from scratch for you!
GoDaddy is the web’s largest domain registrar. Founded by Bob Parsons with over 17 million customers today, they are perfect for someone who wants a quick, inexpensive, yet professional and modern looking website or blog solution for their business. GoDaddy also just updated their entire WordPress dashboard to be faster, include 50+ free demo sites you can use in almost any niche, and much more affordable now with their $1 GoDaddy hosting coupon throw in (it’s hard to find, so I’ll just give you the coupon link right here). Browse GoDaddy Discounts »
The longest standing and in many minds the best web host in the business powering this blog ever since we started on WordPress. Based in Austin Texas (guarded by a friendly alligator) but founded in 2002 by Brent Oxley in his Florida dorm room, HostGator now hosts over 10,000,000 websites, pioneered tools us bloggers go crazy about today like Managed WordPress and cPanel 3, and is generally just made up of all around nice folks. Cheapest Price to Setup WordPress: famous 1cent hosting offer for 1mo (try coffeemoney coupon), or $3/mo for 12mo plan. Dear Blogger Update: Lowest price possible 1 year of hosting is now $2.64/month with our coupon BIGBONUS. Browse HostGator Discounts »
Free domain name, free email, free ad credits and free website builder, what’s not to love about iPage? At first glance they seem like a cheaper version of HostGator, probably because it’s the third member of the EIG family, including HostGator and BlueHost! Founded by Thomas Gorny in 1998 and became a full-fledged web hosting company in 2009. Free domain and domain privacy and free SSL to help your site stay secure from the get-go. Favors green technology and may be run partially or entirely by wind power. Live chat features and all the fixings of one of the best web hosts out there. Try it out and let us know what you think. 1.75/mo for 12mo plan. Browse iPage Discounts »
Founded in college 2004 by friends, SiteGround hosts more than 1 million domains and stands as a more boutique provider of high-quality WordPress hosting. However they’ve recently upgraded all their technology to reduce prices and provide us with a SiteGround version of cPanel called “Site Tools” which keeps your entire site at SiteGround servers for a much faster experience for your audience (seriously, it’s fast!). Recommended widely on social media as an alternative to the best blog hosting sites. Surely Siteground is one of the best hosting companies though as they also maintain a relationship with WordPress. Cheapest Price to Setup WordPress: $3.95/mo for 12mo plan. Check out our new guide on how to transfer hosting to SiteGround. Browse SiteGround Discounts »
Over 16 million websites hosted but we are at least 50% sure it’s a scam. Their site has looked better and better over the years. But where we signed up, they said this: To suffice you all with equally high quality services, your website will not be available for 1 hour every day. When? Set the time here. If you feel you’re ready to go PRO, upgrade to Hostinger Premium Web Hosting. Cheapest Price to Setup WordPress: $0/mo which is great, however your site looks like this https://dearblogger.000webhostapp.com/
Also sponsored by WordPress, which is nice, but the whole 8.95/mo thing for the 12mo plan pretty much says it all.
Founded in 2003 as a developer friendly web hosting company A2 is another web hosting provider worth checking out! Offer a knowledge base for beginner guides and a turbo boost. Also you can upgrade to the full gamut of web hosting service types, including VPS, Dedicated, Shared, Cloud and Reseller. Cheapest Price to Setup WordPress:
Begin faster and with a lighter impact on the environment places GreenGeeks on everyone’s top 10 list as their seek to find the best WordPress host. They host over 300k websites for over 35k customers and pride themselves in fast fast fast: fastest app load times, fastest in browser load times, and fastest load load times worldwide. So if you crave fast, this could be your new home, you speed demon you.Cheapest Price to Setup WordPress: $5.95/mo for 12/mo plan
All shared plans included cPanel, WordPress optimized services and Weebly website builder if you’d rather wait on your dreams to build that wordpress website. We really enjoyed the orange template with pictures of old fashioned windmills as we went through the sign up process, just reminiscent of that first time we churned butter as when all we had for web hosting was a barn full of cows. Cheapest Price to Setup WordPress: $5.92/mo for 12/mo plan.
If you get stuck picking a web host, a personal recommendation is always strong, and for that we give you HostGator. However always do you own homework and enough research that you feel satisfied moving forward as you launch your blog.
Where to Host My Blog? Final Criteria
All of the above best blog hosting sites are perfectly good places to start a blog. However if you’re on the fence we don’t want you to rest on your laurels and not decide!
Here are some tiebreaker statistics and criteria to look at. You should see if your blog host of choice has these! The list can help you pick the best blog host for you:
- Bandwidth: Should be unlimited!
- Page limit: Should be unlimited!
- Storage: Should be unlimited/unmetered!
- Adwords credits: Should exist
- 99.9% uptime guarantee: If they don’t mention it, run for the hills
- Free website builder: Should exist
- Free transfer: Should exist to the new host
- 24/7/365 support: Should exist clearly labelled
- No contract: Should be a ✓
- Money back guarantee: Should be a ✓
Run your blog hosting providers through this grueling checklist and if they don’t score 100% on the list, then there are better hosts out there. In short, don’t settle, this stuff is important!
Blogger’s List: What is The Best Blogging Platform?
WordPress.org
Browse at WordPress.org
About:
An experience so compelling that Katy Perry decided “This Is How We Do” it (with her own WordPress website) with the elegance of NYTimes, Sony, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Snoop Dogg and more. WordPress requires no coding knowledge and is free software – it’s the domain name and hosting you pay about-as-much-as-a-cup-of-coffee-per-month for. It gives you a website like the world’s best and teaches you all about websites, too. For countless bloggers who do this for a living, WordPress.org is the best place to blog, and it continues to be the largest blogging community on the web. Watch our YouTube tutorial here to learn how to make a WordPress blog.
Stats:
- Recommended for: Blogging and websites
- Founded: May 27th, 2003
- Founder: Matt Mullenweg of Automattic
- Total users: 60 million, 19% of the internet and 1 in 5 websites as of December 2013
- Total employees: 151
- Pros: Elegance and ease
- Cons: You need to get a domain name and web hosting first
- Costs: Your domain name and hosting can be bought together for about $3-6 per month. I recommend HostGator for this, but other places are more than willing to charge you more 😉
- My verdict: The best place to blog if you’re serious about it. Good for all types of review websites, fashion blogs, single page websites, business websites, mommy blogs, company sites, eCommerce sites and more.
GUIDED WORDPRESS BLOG TUTORIAL: In this video we make a WordPress blog from scratch and learn how to setup self-hosted WordPress using a domain and hosting from HostGator, which is how I’ve done it since the start. It’s perfect for beginner bloggers with no previous experience looking to build a blog, add features (basics and some more modern stuff too), then launch! I help new bloggers every evening (NYC time) in the comments so let me know any questions or issues if you use it! – Greg
Note: This blog recommends and uses HostGator for domain and hosting – the only basic items needed to use WordPress. Our first plan was the Hatchling Plan. If you sign up with our links or coupons (try BigBonus for roughly 50% off) we earn a small credit at no cost to you. This helps keep the blog running and free for everyone, so thanks very much!
WordPress.com
Browse at WordPress.com
About:
WordPress.com is a free blog-hosting site with roughly half the features of .org. The general idea here is less maintenance for you, but less control of the blog. Get a .wordpress domain name like “dearblogger.wordpress.com” or pay to use your own domain name. Need a niche? WordPress.com sees 100,000 posts published each day so you’ll surely find like-minded thinkers. Not a full company website but a loyal companion for one. Write posts, try a free theme, set up social media buttons and learn blogging at WordPress.com.
DISCOVER: Why Blogs Fail to Get Traffic
Stats:
- Recommended for: Mass community blogging
- Released: November 21, 2005
- Founder: Matt Mullenweg of Automattic
- Total users: 56 million blogs
- Pros: Ease to use with little you can mess up.
- Cons: Less customization and a bit fussy with adding certain features.
- Costs: Free, you can pay WordPress.com to get a domain name without the “.wordpress” addition.
- My verdict: A lovely intro to blogging that about 1 year in takes us all to a crossroads: stay put, or transfer to WordPress.org.
Blogger
Browse at Blogger.com
About:
Blogger is Google’s free blog-hosting site. More popular at the turn of the millenium, Blogger still offers a great service but the designs are a bit elementary. Login and publish your first post for free with only a Gmail account. Try Adsense “monetization”, design a new layout and even edit your first piece of code.
SEE ALSO: 10 Things to Do After You Launch a Blog
Stats:
- Recommended for: Blogging
- Founded: August 2013, 1999
- Notable events: Bought by Google in February, 2003
- Founder: Evan Williams of Pyra Labs
- Total users:
- Pros: Publish anywhere, huge community, images, video, edit HTML/CSS, template designer, track traffic stats in Blogger, Adsense at no charge
- Cons: While Blogger is where many writers (including Dear Blogger) started publishing, it’s designs appear a bit childish today. Google owns your blog – they axed Reader – so acknowledge a bit less control upfront.
- Costs: Pay $10/year for a domain name without the “.blogspot” extension – otherwise totally free.
- Future predictions: May merge with Google+.
- My verdict: Everything blogging should be and more – Blogger was the sandbox for names now headlining in tech. The only real negative comes from outgrowing Blogger, at which point many (like myself) transfer to WordPress. Less popular today – even Google’s PR Mogul Matt Cutts runs a WordPress site.
Tumblr
Browse at Tumblr.com
Introduction to Tumblr:
At a time when WordPress and Blogger were neck-and-neck for new users, Tumblr showed up as the 3rd guy to the party. They received lots of sign-ups from users wanting a totally refreshing take on blogging, and have grown ever since. Tumblr was recently bought by Yahoo, who has interesting plans for the whole blog advertising thing.
Stats:
- Founded: February 2007
- Founder: David Karp
- Total users: 152 million
- Pros: Ease of use and ability to share your friends’ work through re-blogging.
- Cons: Less customization, just a shade less professional and not ideal for conducting business.
- Costs: Free, pay Tumblr to get your own domain name without the “.tumblr” addition
- My verdict: Great for photography and other forms of art. Super-simplistic designs and a whimsical vibe make Tubmlr a great choice for any new blogger.
SquareSpace
Browse at SquareSpace.com
About:
All over television with beautiful and encouraging ads, SquareSpace offers a nice solution for the business owner in need of a web presence. Get online quickly with a free trial, setup a cool design and start attracting clients – that’s the motto. If a more complex blogging platform were snowboarding, SquareSpace would be skiing, in the pie wedge stance 🙂
Stats:
- Recommended for: Individual and business blogs and websites
- Founded: January 2004
- Founder: Anthony Casalena
- Total users: ?
- Pros: Elegant designs setup with a couple of clicks.
- Cons: Less customization – you’ll pay for things that may come free at a place like WordPress, cannot count blog posts, not a good software for accessing and managing blog posts.
- Costs: 14-day free trial with plans from $8 and up afterwards
- My verdict: Less hands-on than WordPress but arguably better advertising and accessibility – Squarespace gets your business site up quickly. A good quick solution.
Google+
Browse at Plus.Google.com
About:
If you need a guide on how to use Google Plus we’ve got you covered, because we’ve been trying to dominate it for a year now. Fun features like the badge make getting followers easier. Google Plus brings you instant community + audience – two things any blogger wants more of. Make sure to share publicly if you want to build any sort of following.
RELEVANT: How to Make a Niche Review Site that Earns $1000/Month
Stats:
- Recommended for: Social networking (“social layer”)
- Released: June 28, 2011
- Founder: Google Developers
- Total users: 540 million per month
- Pros: Google circles, photography (1.5 billion uploaded each week), “hangout” feature, multi-language, authorship, can increase a publisher’s search rankings, Gmail integration, chat, mobile chat, mobile publishing,
- Cons: None, start using it today.
- Costs: Free
- My verdict: Absolutely necessary for anyone who wants to be considered an expert in any field. Fun. Challenging. If you’re curious, I’ve also written on how to master Google Plus over at Social Media Explorer.
Wix
Browse at Wix.com
About:
Wix is a cloub-based web development platform whose brand name stresses originality, simplicity and above all, free. For this reason the platform is popular among musicians, photographers, entrepreneurs and other small business owners who want a quick-fix website on a very low budget. The catch with Wix is the premium features, which of course cost money, which you’ll almost definitely need as you expand your website. The main difference here between a Wix and a WordPress is with Wix you enter for free and pay more as you go, and with WordPress you enter for a cost (domain name and hosting) and afterwards all resources are free.
Stats:
- Recommended for: Quick fix small-business budget websites
- Released: 2006
- Founder: Avishai Abrahami
- Total users: 57 million
- Pros: Drag and drop website builder which uses HTML5, little to no coding knowledge necessary, free to get a basic website online, text editor and free fonts, free templates, mobile friendly, login through Facebook or Google + accounts, and more.
- Cons: Charges for many features one would expect to be free. Difficult to transfer away from.
- Costs: Premium version of the software and additions, domain names, hosting capability. Unclear exactly how much you might spend but it has been reported to often cost several hundred dollars per year.
- My verdict: Obviously a very successful company with a wide marketing budget and clean look. But I’d never recommend Wix. There is just no situation I can bring to mind in which I would recommend Wix because of their pricing structure and decreasing market share among respected online brands.
Quora
Browse at Quora.com
- Recommended for: Question and answer based websites
- Released: June 21st, 2010
- Founder: ?
- Total users: 500,000 reported in 2011, more now.
- Pros: Collaborative feel and separate blogging platform recently released.
- Cons: Less costumization.
- Costs: Free
- Interesting facts: 30% of Quora users hail from India. Founded by two former Facebook employees.
- My verdict: If you’re passionate about a topic but don’t have the time to maintain a blog, submitting questions and answers to Quora discussions is a great compromise.
✩ ♨ Alternative Communities ♨ ✩
Medium
Browse at Medium.com
- Founded: 2012
- Founder: Evan Williams (Twitter, Blogger) and Biz Stone (Twitter)
- Total users: ?
- Pros: Story telling feel, goal to improve content quality
- Cons: Still low usership
- Costs: Free
- My verdict: Probably won’t reach the development status of WordPress.org but definitely chomping at the heels of Blogger, Tumblr and even Twitter as it borrows several of their services, like topic searches and nostalgic photo shares from the founders themselves.
Kirby
Browse at Getkirby.com
About:
Kirby is a file‑based CMS. Which claims to be easy to setup, easy to use and flexible as hell. Of course that’s often in the eyes of the beholder. However at a first glance it appears Kirby’s methods are simple, as long as you’re a person who likes organizing files like Documents, Downloads, Music etc on your computer you might find it your CMS du jour.
Stats:
- Recommended for: Developers looking for a simple blog solution
- Released: 2009
- Founder: Bastian Allgeier GmbH
- Total users: 1000-50000
- Pros: You can upload files and folders to the “Kirby web interface” to put your website up. No need for cPanel or setup Wizard. Has the feel of a default WordPress.org theme. Used by Harvard, Phillips, New York Times and more.
- Cons: Some of us enjoy cPanel and setup Wizard.
- Costs: need server space
- My verdict: Looks cool! Excited to see where Kirby goes. A software that works well and is used by huge brands always has an exciting future.
Postagon
Browse at Postagon.com
About:
Postagon is a simple and clean blogging platform. Just the essentials include to make your words stand out.
Stats:
- Recommended for: Bloggers looking for a free alternative to WordPress
- Released: June 2013
- Founder: Thomas Marban
- Total users: 1000-50000
- Pros: Clean design on all devices, visual and Markdown editor, drag & drop photo uploads, use your own domain name, Google Analytics, very search engine friendly, no ads on your blog
- Cons: Unclear the community size
- Costs: Free!
- My verdict: So Postagon has a demo blog linked on their homepage to show us what it looks like. While it’s pretty to look at, there’s not much “minimalist” about it, as the site claims to be. This blog is just different looking. It has lots of features you can get anywhere. Just arranged differently. So my take is they are using the “minimalist” vibe to differentiate themselves. Is this to say that all the other platforms are too complicated?
Jekyll
Browse at Jekyllrb.com
About:
Jekyll transforms your text from plain text editors to websites and blog pages. It’s not a CMS – no updates, comment moderation or dashboard stuff – just your content.
Stats:
- Recommended for: Developers looking to create a simple blog
- Released: October 9th, 2016
- Founder: Tom Preston-Werner, Nick Quaranto, Parker Moore
- Total users: 1000-50000
- Pros: Hosted and supported by GitHub so a potential way to get free hosting
- Cons: Lots of developer screenshots, you’ll need to be familiar with Sublime Text or another text editor for coders
- Costs: ??
- My verdict: Looks like fun for a developer interested in playing around with new gadgets. I predict the software to be useful in adding to the existing WordPress environment. Or perhaps they add to Tumblr, or even Google.
Contentful
Browse at Contentful.com
About:
Contentful is a developer friendly way of managing content built around APIs and SDKs. In other words, it’s not a web browser focused CMS! Kind of cool!
Stats:
- Recommended for: Developers looking to bring more content into apps and sites
- Released: ?
- Founder: Sascha Koneitzke
- Total users: 1000-50000
- Pros: Use by major brands like Nike and Urban Outfitters and has power apps used in major media events like the SuperBowl
- Cons: Lots of developer screenshots. Seems to be best suited for enterprise clients, not bloggers
- Costs: Very expensive
- My verdict: Obviously a very powerful way of displayed content. If developer APIs and SKDs is your thing, head to contentful and checkout their careers page! Their team looks like an awesome bunch.
Anchor
Browse at Anchorcms.com
About:
Anchor is a lightweight CMS with drag and drop options and super simplified themes. They beat out the 5-minute install (?) with a 2-minute install (?!). Not sure who’s counting these minutes. That’s about all we know for now.
Stats:
- Recommended for: Developers looking to make a simple blog or do some highly simple blogging
- Released: Sometime after the Big Bang
- Founder: ?
- Total users: 1000-50000
- Pros:Hosted and supported by GitHub so a potential way to get free hosting
- Cons: Lots of developer screenshots
- Costs: Free
- My verdict: Seems to bring in some awesome new technologies like Markdown and i18n for the simple-minded developer. Added them to the cocktail party of highly talented firms. I’m very excited to see where this one goes!
Silvrback
Browse at Silvrback.com
About:
Silvrback gets its name from the male “silverback” Gorilla. It seeks to provide a potent, minimalist writing experience that’s easy to use and distraction-free – for a modest price.
They value the craft of writing and a writer’s right to what they create. In their own words “to us, this project is not some corporate after thought – it’s personal”.
Stats:
- Recommended for: Writers and bloggers
- Released: 2013
- Founder: ?
- Total users: 1000-50000
- Pros: Cool new site, could have a thriving community of bloggers. They have a community page which we like!
- Cons: Have to pay after the free trial. Font’s on the homepage look a bit outdated.
- Costs: 14 day free trial, then $34.99/year
- My verdict: Looks like a cool startup with a small, tight-knit team of smart folks. Hope for the best for them!
TinyPress
Browse at TinyPress.co
About:
TinyPress allows you create and manage a blog on Github via Github pages. Github pages are simple static websites [and/or blogs] for you and your projects, freely hosted and published through Github. TinyPress features a clean, clutter-free interface to create a page (if you don’t have one already), edit, delete and create new posts.
- Recommended for: Writers and bloggers with a developer sense
- Released: ?
- Founder: Dain Miller
- Total users: 1000-50000
- Pros: They have an awesome vision which is to be the world’s most innovative open source writing company! Read more on their blog.
- Cons: May not reach people as quickly as a WordPress, Blogger or Tumlbr but that seems fine with them.
- Costs: free
- My verdict: Looks like a cool startup with a small, tight-knit team of smart folks. Hope for the best for them!
Hubpages
Browse at HubPages.com
About:
Hubpages started as an article network, the kind of place where you were rewarded for publishing lots of articles on any one topic like cooking, travel or home-improvement. Today, it boasts millions of informative articles and guides. However, a by-product of mass publishing is slightly lesser quality. You may find articles at Hubpages you’d wonder why anyone would ever publish. Or, you may find the best home for your blogging and writing needs.
Stats:
- Recommended for: Social networking (“social layer”)
- Launched: August 6th, 2006
- Founder: Paul Edmondson
- Total users: 74,000
- Pros: Not going out of business soon.
- Cons: Less ownership of your work.
- Costs: Free
- My verdict: A solid place to start writing and learn from other experts. Tightly-knit. Fun for everyone involved.
Joomla
Browse at Joomla.com
About:
Joomla is an advanced CMS used by developers to publish some of the websites we visits each day. Written in PHP, it uses many of the same structures as a WordPress site does. For whatever reason, developers have flocked elsewhere, but Joomla remains one of the web’s oldest and savviest places to run a blog or website.
Stats:
- Recommended for: Content Management, Web Content
- Released: August 17th, 2005
- Founders: The Joomla Project
- Total users: 35 million downloads
- Pros: over 6000 free extensions, estimated as the second most used content management system (CMS) after WordPress
- Cons: Smaller community, help out articles you find may be out of date.
- Costs: ?
- My verdict: Only really for a Joomla developer or website manager. Not an easy access point for a beginner.
Live Journal
Browse at LiveJournal.com
- Recommended for: Blogging, journaling, writing a diary
- Founded: April 15th, 1999
- Founder: Brad Fitzpatrick
- Total users: 39.6 million accounts, 1.7 million active accounts
- Pros: friend others to read their entries and leave comments, avatars, user info pages, to-do lists
- Cons: moved design to Russia in 2009, basic plan users see advertisements
- Premium features: express lane for quicker load times, call from your phone to a LiveJoural number and post voice recording to your journal
- Costs: Premium version, not sure of the costs here. Anyone know?
- My verdict: In mother Russia, blog write on you.
Typepad
Browse at Typepad.com
- Founded October 2003:
- Founder: Say Media
- Total users: ?
- Pros: Ease of use
- Cons: Less costumization
- Costs: Free
- My verdict: Just love the news? If so, know that ABC, BBC, CBS, MSNBC and more use Typepad to maintain blogs.
Weebly
Browse at Weebly.com
- Founded: 2006
- Founder: David Rusenko
- Total users: hosts 15 million websites
- Pros: Drag and drop feature so easy a monkey could use it.
- Cons: Less control for the user
- Costs: ?
- My verdict: I’ve heard a lot of positive reviews here. For a company owner who needs a website but despises tech, it’s Weebly or Squarespace, and both are sound choices.
Drupal
Browse at Drupal.org
- Recommended for: Blogging, Content Management, Web Applications
- Founded: January 2001
- Founder: Dries Buytaert
- Total users: 1 million users and 30K developers
- Pros: 22,900 free add-ons, free and premium themes via the Drupal Theme Garden
- Cons: Quite involved, not ideal for beginners
- Costs: ?
- My verdict: Fun for developers and bloggers with a real interest in building code.
Squidoo
Browse at Squidoo.com
- Founded: 2005
- Founder: Seth Godin
- Total users: 1.5 million
- Pros: Lenses and points systems to level up are only part of the fun.
- Cons: Like Hubpages, you might not feel an ownership of your work.
- Costs: Free
- My verdict: A classy place to meet others before you get more serious about blogging.
✩ ♨ New Releases ♨ ✩
Postach.io
Browse at Postach.io
- Recommended for: On-the-go bloggers, note-taking
- Founded: 2013
- Founder: Evernote
- Total users: 20,000
- Pros: Supports popular comment plugin Disqus, lighter feel, easy to use.
- Cons: Less costumization
- Costs: Free
- My verdict: Too soon to form a verdict here!
Facebook Notes
Browse at Facebook.com/notes
- Recommended for: Social media integrated blogging
- Founded: 2013
- Founder: Facebook Developers
- Total users: Well, 1.1 billion already on Facebook…
- Pros: Simple to share images, links and quotes – useful if you’ve got a large, Facebook-centric audience already.
- Cons: Limited design and that blue Facebook-y feel we all should just escape every now and then.
- Costs: Free
- My verdict: Not much different from a Facebook page – I predict this to be a feature Facebook tries, directs advertisers to, then slowly wanders away from.
Svbtle
Browse at Svbtle.com
- Founded: 2013
- Founder: Dustin Curtis
- Total users: ?
- Pros: New, different; aren’t we all?
- Cons: Must apply for a membership and no commenting feature as of yet.
- Costs: Free
- My verdict: They are a “network of great people who want to make it easier for people to share and discover new ideas”. Excited to see where Svbtle goes in the next few months.
Sett
Browse at Sett.com
- Founded: Early 2013
- Founder: Tynan (a blogger) and Todd Iceton
- Total users: 1,000 – 10,000
- Pros: Generally bent on community, top navigation bar like Blogger, has a word-matching system that matches similar posts and will recommend users to your posts the moment they sign-up, private discussions, one click subscription system
- Cons: Premium service that allows for more image hosting (does this mean normal users are limited?)
- Costs: Free with premium service offered
- My verdict: I’ve always believed it’s the readers who really grow a blog, not so much the blogger him/herself. 80/20. So I’m excited here. Will they win the battle for 3rd place? Either way, the web is always better with more variety, more options, more places to blog.
Ghost
Browse at Ghost.org
- Founded: Early 2013
- Founder: Ghost Foundation
- Total users: 10,000 – 50,000
- Pros: Open-source so once you download it you own it, organized at run by volunteers and non-profits
- Cons: Any service that charges based on the amount of views you get is a villain in my book or could become one. Don’t limit us, thanks.
- Costs: Free with premium service offered
- My verdict: Got to respect their lofty ideas. But, I suspect they are trying to KO WordPress and possibly backed by BlueHost based on their web design, so I oppose 🙂
Posthaven
Browse as Posthaven.com
- Founded: Early 2013
- Founder: Ghost Foundation
- Total users: 10,000 – 50,000
- Pros: Post by email. Oh and “they’ll never get acquired, never shut down” as long as you pay them.
- Cons: “Simple, easy blogs for $5 a month, forever.”
- Costs: 5 bucks
- My verdict: They’re a group of engineers who want to build blogs for us. Love this idea and wish them the best. But as a company you just can’t get ahead in an open environment like blogging by trying to control things, at least not upfront. Their technology might be great and “durable” but most of us will never know, because their marketing is a zero and their homepage design is really weak.
Posterous
Browse at Posterous.com
Unfortunately this site has been deprecated, or slowly removed with no further updates.
✩ ♨ Almost Extinct ♨ ✩
Blog.com
Browse at Blog.com
- Recommended for: Blogging
- Founded: 2004
- Founders: ?
- Total users: 2 million
- Pros: Free themes, multi-author blogging, social media widgets, video
- Cons: Less customization
- Premium features: Your own domain name, advertising network
- Costs: ?
- My verdict: You’d hope a domain name as strong as blog.com would produce a winner…
Zoomshare
Browse at ZoomShare.com
- Founded: ?
- Founder: ?
- Total users: < 50K
- Pros: Still has a community
- Cons: Shifting 100% of users to paid version
- Costs: “As of May 22, 2013 our free website service has been discontinued. If you would like to convert to the paid service click here and upgrade for the low cost of $6.95 a month.”
- My verdict: Not enough information to form a verdict.
Xanga
Browse at Xanga.com
- Founded: ?
- Founder: ?
- Total users: < 50K
- Pros: Resembles WordPress
- Cons: Unclear timeframe of new software releases
- Costs: ?
- My verdict: Not enough information to form a verdict.
The Best Blog Hosting Sites for Making Money on a Blog
So given how bloggers like to make money blogging, it should come as no surprise that we look for a great web host which can help us earn that money.
Here are our Top 3 blog hosting sites for making blog income:
HostGator
The How & Why: HostGator offers $100 Google Adwords Credit and Bing Credit. Using this feature, you can place your services towards the top of Google and insert your own clever sales copy. Once some clicks an ad you make, they land on your blog or website, and can choose to buy your service, product, eBook, you name it. For sure this isn’t easy, but $100 goes a long way! HostGator’s Baby plan allows you to host unlimited sites – create a site for the Italian restaurant down the street and you pay virtually nothing to host it, and collect the web design fees! In addition, you can become a professional SEO with HostGator’s guidance. Lastly, the affiliate program at HostGator pays up to $125 for referring family and friends! You’ll be in the company of a WordPress legend, Syed Balkhi from WPBeginner, a powerhouse pro-blogger who writes many of the plugins our WordPress community lives off of today.
BlueHost
The How & Why: BlueHost offers most of the same free tools as HostGator! You must spend $25 first to claim the $100 Adwords credit, and the affiliate commission is reduced to $60, but they offer second to none support to help you blog earnings grow. You can’t deny those who’ve used BlueHost and joined the ranks of best bloggers in the world, like Pat Flynn. If you’ve chosen BlueHost to be the best blog hosting site for you, you’ll find many others earning beside to the high skies beside you!
GoDaddy
Of course, you any hosting company you choose and become the best blog hosting site for making money with a blog, you just have to believe in it’s service hard enough to represent it on your own blog. Believe in where you blog, let your unique style shine, and you’ve got nothing to lose!
Lastly, the Best Free Blogging Platform Is?
This one is tough, but it really boils down to two giants: Blogger and WordPress.com
Blogger
Blogger is where I initially created by first profitable blog, honestcollege.com. It’s gotten easier to migrate blogging to wordpress, and you get that comfy feeling you’re using a Google product so you might already rank in Google or earn more on Adsense. Blogger also let bloggers edit the core HTML templates before WordPress.com ever did, which was a huge bonus once you wanted to tweak your template design. Additionally, big names like Georgia Lou Studios just released to her email list that she’ll stop making WordPress themes and focus only on Blogger themes. That’s a great sign for everyone in the Blogger and .blogspot community. For us, Blogger may always be the best free blog site on the planet.
WordPress.com
WordPress.com is the prodigal son of WordPress as a whole and the company Automattic. Holding this baby like position, WordPress.com receives a ton of support and new additions each week. Perhaps most impressive is their internal blog post feature to the whole wp.com community, which though hard to attain, can result in a ton of free traffic to your blog. With plugins at wp.com on the rise, you certainly can rank a wp.com blog in Google and gather lots of organic traffic. The warning we must heed is watch your budget. It’s possible to go into wp.com thinking you’ll spend $0 then somehow end up spending $100s/mo to manage the blog as you’ve paid incrementally for addons.
The End?
Hardly. But drum roll, now it’s your turn. How’s the blog search process treating you? Did we miss any gems of information you’ve found? If you’ve got anything to add, feel free to drop it in the comments right below.
Lastly, this post took me months to research and make. So if you know a friend who could benefit, why not send this to them via email, Twitter, or Facebook? Would absolutely appreciate it. I’ll let you borrow our work if it means a quick share 🙂
Thanks and Cheers!
Greg