Are you looking for the best blogging platforms or figuring out which platform you should start with in 2023?
Hands down, we’ve got you covered.
For me, building a blog is probably one of the best decisions of my life. It keeps you motivated to learn something new every day and share your knowledge, and at the same time, you can make money.
But picking the right platform for your blog is extremely important to establish yourself as a successful blogger.
As there are lots of blogging platforms available, it may be a daunting task for someone who’s new to the blogging industry.
But in this post, we will share a detailed breakdown of the best free and paid blogging platforms so that you can choose a blogging platform without any confusion and launch your dream blog right away.
Table of Contents
What is a Blogging Platform?
A blogging platform is a Content Management System that allows individuals or organizations to create, manage, and publish digital content on the web without requiring in-depth technical knowledge.
Content may vary from plain text to images, audio, video, graphs, tables, infographics, and so on.
CMSs also allow you to analyze traffic using analytics tools and increase your blog reach using marketing tools like newsletters and email campaigns.
Popular CMS platforms include WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and many others. Each CMS has its strengths and focuses, catering to different types of users and websites, ranging from simple blogs to complex e-commerce sites and enterprise-level applications.
How to Choose a Blogging Platform?
There are several platforms available where you can easily start your blogging journey and start publishing your content within 15 minutes even without paying a single penny.
But you need to choose the platform that meets all your needs and works like a charm for you.
So how do you choose the best blogging platform for you?
The first and foremost thing is what kind of content you want to share.
What is the purpose of starting a blog?
How tech-friendly are you?
Apart from these points here are some key factors which you should consider while choosing a blogging platform for you.
Text Editor: Blogging is all about documenting your knowledge, thoughts, and views and sharing the same with the target audience.
So there must be a user-friendly in-built text editor with appropriate formatting options that allows you to write and publish your posts without having much technical knowledge.
Media Compatibility: Plain text can be boring sometimes and it may result in a lack of user engagement.
So your blogging platform must have compatibility with the media files like images, videos, etc. without affecting your blog performance.
Customization: The next crucial thing is the customization you should consider for sure. From selecting a beautiful theme to creating menus, and placing widgets, everything should be hassle-free.
Easy Setup: Staring a blog should not be complicated, if the interface is not user-friendly, you will end up wasting your valuable time.
A blogging platform should be easy to use so that any non-tech-savvy person can also start their blog hassle-free.
Scalability: As your blog content and traffic increase, it should be capable of handling all these without losing performance.
User Management: CMSs offer user roles and permissions, allowing multiple users to collaborate on the website while controlling their access levels.
Version Control: Many CMSs have versioning capabilities, enabling users to track and revert to previous versions of content, which is helpful when multiple contributors are working on the same content.
SEO and Search: Some CMSs come with built-in SEO (Search Engine Optimization) features to help improve a website’s visibility in search engines.
Comments: We all love comments, right? To keep accountability for your blog posts how are they, commenting is the best option. So consider this element also when choosing a blogging platform.
There are various blogging platforms available. While keeping the above factors in your mind, let’s go into details of our hand-picked best blogging platforms.
Best Free Blogging Platforms (2023)
Here are our top 3 picks for free blogging platforms of 2023.
1. Blogger (Simplicity)
Blogger is the old-time most popular blogging platform from Google.
If you are looking for a free blogging platform, Blogger is the default choice and probably the best among all.
Setup
Creating a blog on Blogger is as simple as creating any standard online account.
Simply Signup with your Google account, and enter your blog title and address.
Select a theme and you’re all set to go.
By default, you will have a blogspot.com domain address.
Here’s what the Blogger dashboard looks like;
Features
- Completely free for a lifetime
- Custom domain
- Easy setup in just 2 minutes
- In-built text editor with media files compatibility
- Easy customization with Layout and Theme
- Easy traffic analysis
- Turn your passion into profit with Google AdSense
- Comments
Who should go for Blogger?
It is the best free blogging platform for beginners who want to start their blogging journey quickly and hassle-free.
2. WordPress.com (Improved Learning Curve)
It is a commercially hosted version of WordPress, the most popular open-source blogging platform developed by Automatic Company.
It was founded in 2005 to cover a larger audience.
You can create a free blog for a lifetime with a .wordpress.com domain address.
Nonetheless, WordPress has 3 paid plans also, Personal, Premium, and Business.
Setup
You can set up a blog on WordPress.com in a few easy steps.
Just signup with your Google account, and choose your website type and niche.
Name your blog and launch.
Here’s what the WordPress.com dashboard looks like;
Features
- Classic WordPress Editor
- Outstanding Customization including Menus, Widgets, and Plenty of free themes
- Jetpack Essential Features
- Community Support
- Traffic analysis
- Likes and Sharing buttons
- Earn Money through referrals
Who should go for WordPress.com?
It is the best free blogging platform for beginners who are keen to better learning curve and are not yet ready for spending their money on domain and Web hosting.
3. Medium (Avid Readers and Writers)
Medium is an extraordinary platform to find compelling ideas, knowledge, and perspectives.
It’s a better home for writers, journalists, and experts.
It has over 120 million curious readers.
The best thing about Medium is its simplicity, being free from ads, and connecting you to the avid readers, so that you can emphasize more on what matters.
Setup
Simply signup with your Google account in one step and you can start publishing your stories.
Here’s what the Medium dashboard looks like;
Hit the link to check out BloggingBeats Medium stories.
Features
- Vast knowledge available for every genre
- Write your own stories or import them instantly
- Start a Series
- Easy Stats
- Add tags to explain what your story is about
- Earn by Partner Program
Who should go for Medium?
It is the best free blogging platform for intensive reading and writing.
The Best Blogging Platform (Paid)
Here are our top 3 picks for paid blogging platforms of 2023.
1. WordPress.org (Voice of Bloggers)
WordPress is an open-source blogging platform that started in 2003 to create beautiful blogs and websites.
It is the world’s most popular platform to start a blog, over 35% of the web uses WordPress.
People who have less tech experience can use it “out of the box”, and more tech-savvy individuals can customize it in exceptional ways.
Set up
WordPress is a self-hosted platform which means you have full control over your blog or website.
To set up a blog on self-hosted WordPress you need to 2 things primarily.
1. Domain Name
2. Web Hosting
Here’s the self-hosted WordPress dashboard
Features
- Fully Customizable Designs
- SEO Friendly
- Responsive Mobile Sites
- High Performance
- High Security
- Powerful Media Management
- Easy and Accessible
- Fantastic community support
- Thousands of free and paid plugins
Who should go for WordPress.org?
It is the best blogging platform for every blogger who wants complete control over their blog.
For the folks who are just starting their blogging journey, we would strongly recommend Hostinger because it is the most affordable web hosting solution and offers one-click WordPress installation and outstanding customer support.
Hostinger shared hosting plans start at just $1.99/mo. Furthermore, you can use our exclusive Hostinger discount code “BBSHARED10” to avail 10% extra discount on your purchase.
2. Joomla! (Flexible and Powerful)
Joomla is also an open-source content management system (CMS) for creating and publishing great web content.
It is a flexible system, easy to customize and extend.
Around 2 million websites are active on Joomla.
Whenever people discuss the best CMS, Joomla is one of them for sure.
Features:
- Make a simple blog or, a complex business website, Joomla has got it all
- Joomla is free forever.
- More than 8,000 extensions are available to extend your website functionality.
- Easy and powerful user management
- Create menus and menu items as required
- It offers over 70 languages.
- Out-of-the-box SEO
- Boost up your website with caching.
- Supported by the huge community
Here’s the Joomla dashboard
Who should go for Joomla?
It is the best platform for those who are looking for building beautiful websites and powerful applications.
3. Drupal (Scalable Platform)
Drupal is another leading open-source content management system that is used to make websites and applications for everyday use.
Drupal stands out with great features like easy content authoring, reliable performance, and excellent security.
It’s also a great option for creating integrated digital frameworks.
Drupal can easily communicate with external services and other applications in your infrastructure.
There is no other content management software that is so much powerful and scalable.
Features:
- Extremely flexible
- Coded for faster performance, even with a large amount of content
- Very scalable
- Modules to increase its functionality and versatility
- Sophisticated user roles and permissions
Here’s the Drupal dashboard
Who should go for Drupal?
It is the best platform for those who are looking for building websites supposed to grow exponentially.
The Best CMS (WordPress Vs Joomla Vs Drupal) Simplified
Whenever it comes to finding the best Content Management System among these three, it seems a tough job always.
All three platforms (WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal) are dominating the CMS world for a very long time.
So here I have attempted to compare these three platforms along with their similarities.
First of all let’s find out what are the similarities between WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal
Similarities
1. All three platforms are open-source and free to use. You can customize them as per requirement.
2. All of them use PHP in the front end and MySql in the back end.
3. Each platform provides fantastic Community support.
4. Every platform provides plenty of free and premium Themes, Templates for one-click customization.
5. All three have a huge list of plugins or extensions or modules to extend functionality with ease.
Now let’s compare these content management systems.
Introduction: Drupal is the oldest platform introduced in 2001, WordPress was launched in 2003 followed by Joomla which was released in 2005.
Market Share: According to the W3techs survey 63.1% of websites that are based on CMS use WordPress, while the second most popular platform Joomla is used by 4.8% of websites, and 3% use Drupal.
Ease of use: All three platforms can be installed in 1-click within a few minutes, as most of the web hosting providers offer one-click installation.
Having said that, WordPress is the most user-friendly platform.
Drupal is a more developer focussed platform with massive scalability. Using Drupal needs more technical knowledge compared to WordPress and Joomla.
Plugin/Extension/Modules: WordPress has over 54000 plugins, while Joomla has more than 7800 extensions, and Drupal has over 44000 modules to extend and customize your website functionality.
Designing: WordPress has a massive collection of 4500+ free themes with more than 9500+ premium themes.
Comparatively Joomla and Drupal have a lesser number of themes.
Security: Drupal excels at security parameters while WordPress and Joomla are also secure if handled carefully.
SEO: WordPress excels at the SEO level, one of the reasons for the best blogging platform.
FAQs
Go through these most commonly asked questions around blogging platforms to make a wiser decision.
Yes, you can. Blogger is the best free blogging platform with a custom domain for beginners.
Yes, you can earn even with free blogging platforms. Google’s Blogger is the old and best free blogging platform to make money online Google AdSense.
CMS stands for Content Management System which facilitates you to create and publish your content with ease. Examples: WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, etc.
WordPress.com is a free platform, the commercial version of WordPress was introduced to cover a larger audience. WordPress.org is the self-hosted version of WordPress which means you have to take care of everything like domain name and web hosting.
These days, 1-click installation is available on almost every web hosting provider. So, being a blogger you don’t need to think about the installation process, just focus on creating and publishing valuable content consistently and see yourself growing like anything.
Also Read:
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Final Thoughts on Blogging Platforms
So, in this post, we have curated the best blogging platforms (free and paid) and explained what are blogging platforms and how to choose one for you.
Whether you are a beginner or want to switch to another blogging platform, these are the best platforms you can choose from without thinking twice.
Looking for a free blogging platform?
For a quick hassle-free start go with Blogger, for a better learning curve and customization choose WordPress.com, and Medium is the best blogging platform for avid readers and writers.
Looking for a paid blogging platform?
For starting a standard blog and small website just go for self-hosted WordPress, to develop a more powerful website select Joomla, and Drupal is the best blogging platform for better scalability.
Finally, comment below which platform are you using currently? Have you ever used any of these? Do you want to add more options to the list?
Hey Amit
Amazing list of blogging platforms buddy.
Personally I have only used Blogspot blogger and WordPress.org out of those lists
And I think self hosted wordpress is the absolute best content management system out there for blogging because the flexibility and customisation freedom like self hosted wordpress is unmatchable if we compare other blogging platforms.
And experts also advice to start with a self hosted wordpress specifically for blogging.
Great article buddy.
Really enjoyed this article 😊
Regards
Tarun Kashyap
Definitely, Blogger remains the number one starting point for many bloggers including me. I used blogger in the early days of my blogging journey but now I have switched to WordPress.org. This is simply the best platform for any blogger as it gives a lot of freedom and customization options and control.
you have covered everything in this article. Good Job. Keep up the good work.
Awesome Amit Sir,
I really loved Blogger & Medium for the best free CMS platform, and we can also generate revenue from them without doing affiliate.