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Best Free Blogging Sites – For Starting a Blog Today

Blog posts from WordPress hiked to about 30 posts per second. Many other blog posts are out there, with hundreds of posts gushing out every second from different blog sites.

You would also love to start your own blog, an outstanding one, where you can share your stories and articles, but you can’t decide on the right blogging platform to use?

I’ve put together some of the best blogging sites where you can share our updates and your stories with the whole world. Asides the fact that they are the best, they also come free!

I’ll try as much as possible to direct you to specific platforms that will best suit your intended blog type. It’s now left to you to decide the best out of these amazing top 10 that will best suit your blogging escapade.

  1. WordPress
  2. Medium
  3. Joomla
  4. Mix
  5. Weebly
  6. Blogger
  7. Tumblr
  8. Ghost
  9. Jimdo
  10. Squarespace

1. WordPress (www.wordpress.org)

Of course, Word Press comes on top of my list. It is the greatest blogging site ever. It is a free blogging site, on which you can build up the site environment yourself to the best of your satisfaction. The hosting is free, but if you are considering a long-term plan, you would have to opt in for a relatively cheap and standard hosting subscription.

Bluehost is a very cheap hosting plan, which also provides amazing features including a free domain name, 100MB email storage space, 50GB of disk space, and an unmetered bandwidth for each account.

Bluehost costs about $3 per month on the basic plan. It is the cheapest sensible WordPress hosting you can possibly come across.

I opted for this nice plan via a recommendation by a friend when I started my first travel blog business. I can tell you boldly I’ve never had any regrets. I had total control over how my site looked and functioned, as well as the credit generated from your blog site.

The only challenge I faced was the setting up aspect. I eventually needed to read more articled on setting up a blog site and had to consult some certain designers for perfect themes to compliment the purpose of the site.

WordPress.com is different from WordPress.org

Please, take note that there’s another WordPress blog site, WordPress.com, which is a simpler platform, majorly suitable for personal blogging. It is very easy to set up and customize. But there is limitation t how far you can customize your site, and it doesn’t come with a free domain name as the former does.

You do not have control over the monetary credit generated from your blog in any way. The only credit you would probably get from your blog is maybe people’s appreciation of your write-up.

2. Medium (www.medium.com)

This blog is a multipurpose platform that is best suited for people who are just seeking an audience with a common interest, without the interest of owning their personal site.

A community of people of similar interest

Medium was launched in 2012, and then it grew to a community of bloggers, journalists, and experts. Different topics are discussed by diverse users as long as they have their account registered on www.medium.com

Medium is exposed to a very large audience of about 60 million readers per month unlike most of the other free blogging sites. The number keeps increasing every year, as their credibility for attracting more audience increases consistently.

The simplicity and friendliness to users are quite commendable, but everything you put up on the site remains the site’s property.

An existing community of online audience is already available to digest your blog posts. Hence, you would only have to concentrate on writing up your post, instead of being bothered on how you would reach your audience.

Unlike the WordPress site, you do not get to have your own “space” within the site; neither can you run your own ads to make money.

Your audiences basically are owned by Medium. And, the features available on the interface are limited in terms of growing a brand or design.

3. Joomla (www.joomla.org)

Joomla is a similar blog site to Word Press also. It serves better the development of a simple personal blog, which is host supported and has to have a custom domain.

It needs hosting, and you have to buy a domain name for it. I would again recommend Bluehost as it is always reliable, cheap, and most importantly, in this case, comes with a free domain name.

Joomla provides a flexible interface that can be used for more a multifaceted website, including the blogging functionality. There are many application extensions and templates available to customize the functionality of the interface to best suit the intended purpose.

Flexible interface

The live text preview makes it very much easy to use, as you can almost feel as if you are using a Microsoft word software when typing. You have the liberty of adding emoticons to your texts, as well as changing the fonts, colors and text sizes.

The editor tab is also neatly tabbed, with different tabs to switch categories, locations, keywords, dates, descriptions, and so on.

4. Wix (www.wix.com)

Wix is a free blog site developer that can be totally managed intuitively and very easily. It’s meant for regular people who want some normal website functionality that comes with a blog. It is quite accessible to beginners and longtime users, with little or no stress at all.

Very easy to set up

Hosting is provided free of charge on Wix, alongside some premium themes and templates. All you need so is just to set up the layout and design how your site would look like.

This, you can decide in two ways, that is;

  • Filling a questionnaire
  • Using a WYSIWYG editor

Questionnaire

The first method is creating your site based on a questionnaire, where you fill in answers to questions about your desired blog specifications.

WYSIWYG editor

The second is developing the site using a WYSIWYG editor. You’ll just have to find a nice theme and some complimentary templates while editing in a live preview mode.

Additional widgets, menus, forms and so on can be put to compliment the site. When deemed ready, you can then decide to publish your site. Blog posting can then be initiated thereafter.

Note that you can return to edit the site interface when you feel the need to.

5. Weebly (www.weebly.com)

Weebly is very much like Wix. It is well suited for people that require regular website functionality, alongside their blogging site. You can sell your products, as well showcase your portfolio, while using your site for blogging purposes at the same time.

Showcase your stuff while blogging

Just like Wix, you can also use a WYSIWYG editor to customize your interface by dragging your desired widgets and content blocks to where you desire on the interface. This drag and drop elements make it very easy to design your blog site to the best of your satisfaction

Slideshows, short video clips, galleries can also be put on the interface. Spaces for sidebars, social media icons, ad-spaces, and many other peripherals are provided.

Weebly allows you to use your own customized domain name, which you must have bought. The platform also comes with inbuilt analytics.  Whereas, on the free plan, you are provided with a free subdomain, 500Mb storage space, five custom pages, and advertisement spaces.

6.Blogger (www.blogger.com)

This is a blog site that is best suited for the kind of people that wouldn’t mind making money from their blog posts, but they could care less about owning their own website.

Freelancing

Blogger is best described as a hosted personal blog site, rather than a professional one. Its mode of operation is majorly like other hosted sites. You would have to create an account first before you can go ahead to create your site and start posting.

You can then proceed to modify your interface after creating an account. You would have to pick one of the numerous simple default themes. The themes come with different skin colors with complimentary widgets.

Blogger has a simple interface appearance, with major emphasis on the writing aspect. There are also spaces for paid advertisements. You can read more on how to make money with blogging

Although the popularity has gone down in recent years, Blogger is one of the best free blogging sites of all time.it has an added advantage of Google’s reliability and secure platform.

7. Tumblr (www.tumblr.com)

Tumblr is yet another free blog site for people who not really interested in having a normal website but are more interested in a brief and media-dominated content blogging.

Pictures, slideshows, videos, social media blogging

It provides optional formats for diverse content types. Tumblr is majorly for personal blogging, and not so suitable for an income intended blog site. They are majorly for publishing purposes.

Tumblr is majorly configured for social media-like and multimedia contents. It has a simple and basic customization setup options. It has a social media integrated component, which includes sharing tools, following other blogs and re-blogging.

Affiliate links, Google Analytics and every other form of advertisement are not allowed on this blog site. They are mostly well suited for publishing blog, where the contents are made up of only brief and media content

The interface is very much easy navigate. You only need to sign up and then you are set to start your blogging voyage.

8. Ghost (www.ghost.org)

Ghost is another commendable free blog site that operates very much like the WordPress, but simpler. You also need to rent a hosting space just like WordPress. Ghost is more concerned with the writing and blogging aspect. It has absolutely nothing to do with your host or domain name.

Just write, don’t care about the rest

Hosting on Ghost can be done on different blog hosting platforms. But it is advisable to choose one that is cheap, most suited for the particular blog type, and with the essential features that would complement the blog site.

Once the site is set up, it is quite easy to start posting. The live text preview and the simple editor tools make the blog site easier and more interesting to use. Next to the editor screen, you there is a settings bar where you can choose your desired preference.

The pros include a clutter-free and intuitive user interface. The Ghost code is written in JavaScript; hence it is very fast and quick to respond.

However, there are not enough themes to modify the site interface. It is also very difficult to customize the interface with an application extension

9. Jimdo (www.jimdo.com)

Jimdo is a free blogging site which is very easy to set up. In fact, it’s free version is the most recommendable free blog site. This is due to its simplicity to use, as well as its complexity when it comes to functionality.

Simple to set up and complex in functionality

You can quickly create a blog site by going through a questionnaire where you’ll be asked to check some basic features you would love to have on your blog site. Your blog sites will be automatically created based on the questionnaire answered.

You would have to buy a domain name, as Jimdo will not provide you with one.  And you would eventually have to put up with the custom ads placed on your site by Jimdo until you upgrade over time (which definitely comes with a fee).

The created site can then be edited via a live editing page. You can edit, adjust or replace your site logo, edit your footer, make a limited desired adjustment to the content elements. In conclusion, the entirety of your blog is designed by you.

10. Squarespace (www.squarespace.com)

Lastly, the Squarespace is the best blog site that is most suitable for small businesses to create an online awareness to a wide variety of online audience. It is a simple and straightforward blog site for not so tech-savvy bloggers.

Business blog

It has a pleasant interface, with professionally constructed templates. Its drop and drag tools make it easy to edit and modify.

However, Squarespace is limited to its inbuilt features, i.e., the features built into their propriety platform. Also, the number of pages allowed on your blog is limited to twenty (20) numbers, with just 2 contributors. Certain application extensions and tools cannot be integrated into the blog site.

In summary, the blog site is just meant for publication of a business to the online world. There’s little one can do to modify the user interface to the greatest satisfaction.

My Assertion

I personally would advise any blogger out there who is still confused as to which platform to use to choose WordPress. It outperforms every other platform, and it is quite affordable and easy to use. It is very flexible, and could almost perform exactly what other blog sites would do.

I do hope this article helped you make that final decision for your next blog. Please do well to start your blogging adventure as soon as you can.

Once, you’ve scaled the heights of choosing your desired blog site, the tasks that lie ahead of you are stated expressively in my article, how to start a travel blog

To know more about starting a blogging career, you can read my step by step article on how to start a travel blog. Although the article is better themed towards the travel blog dimension, the analysis of the crucial steps to take would really be of great assistance to any aspiring blogger out there

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