Skip to main content

9 Best Free Blogging Sites to Start an Awesome Blog

I think you are planning to start a blog, that's why you are here, right? Don't worry, in this article I will help you to choose the best free blogging site for you.

Do you know? Nowadays blogging is the most trusted and perfect way to earn money online. Bloggers like Neil Patel and Harsh Agarwal are earning thousands of dollars from their blog.

Whether you want to make money or want to express your passion, a blog is a good choice for you. Selecting the best blogging platform for creating a blog is a crucial step in your journey because some site's don’t have necessary features to drive traffic to your blog, these blogging sites will minimize your ranking in search engines like Google.

9 Best free Blogging sites

A free blogging site is enough?

This might be one of the most confusing questions for a beginner. The answer is simple, yeah! It's more than enough. I'm not simply saying, here is the proof, Do you know harsh Agarwal? He is a popular blogger from India, he started his blogging journey from a free Blogspot account and later migrated to WordPress. Now he makes more than $200K from his blogs. Sounds great, isn't it?

A free blogging platform is the best option for a newbie because blogging is not easy as you think. You may lose interest as it gets hard, there are many things to create a money making blog, you should have basic knowledge about things like SEO, keywords, backlinks etc. Otherwise your blogging career will be a disaster.

It's true that 'experience makes an expert' and a free platform is the best place where you can get the Perfect experience.

You can't become a successful blogger overnight, it needs time and patience. Always try to concentrate on a particular niche, which will make it easier to get good ranking in search engines. Here's the list of most profitable niches to make a blog.Definitely, these free blogging platforms have different  pros as well as cons

Why free blogging site?

  • It's free, you don't need to spend any dollars, these sites will provide a subdomain and hosting which is completely free and highly secure
  • Easy and basic technical skills are required, as we know it's simple to get begins with sites like blogger and WordPress.com. They are easy to use and No setup required
  • Most of the platforms provide large storage space to save the post. Creating an article and adding media files are very easy on your blog

Why not free blogging sites?

  • Lack plugins, for many bloggers availability of different plugins are the major reasons to use WordPress.org. The plugins make blogging easy and it also has an important role in creating an SEO Optimized content. Comparing to self-hosted sites free blogging platforms lacks plugins.
  • You will be given free subdomains, but it looks ugly, for example, just think about a Web address like myblog.wordpress.com or myblog.blogspot.com instead of myblog.com, its look so bad, right? It also creates a negative impact on visitors because visitors may think you are not serious about your blog. But there is an option to add custom domain, but you will have to pay for that, there are many websites like GoDaddy or BigRock which will provide domain names. Try to buy it as early as possible because the age and number of backlinks to the domain have a significant role in the ranking of the blog.

9 Most Popular Free blogging sites

Here are the best free blogging platforms we’ll be discussing in this article. The list is completely from the professionals and they are not in any order.

9. Livejournal

livejournal.com

Livejournal is an entirely different platform, it's a combination social network and blogging. Livejournal is free and you can utilize almost every feature without paying anything, but they also provide premium plan for those who want to expand their online presence. You can also interact with other users and participate in polls to build your network.They don't have different plugins and features to stand out from the modern blogging services.

8. Ghost

ghost.org

If you are searching for an alternative to WordPress you will definitely end up with Ghost. It's a pure blogging platform with so many features. Even many bloggers are converting their blog from WordPress to Ghost. While most of the above site's are concentrated on website building Ghost give more importance to their blogging service. You will get a different experience that's the main motivation behind switching from WordPress to Ghost. However, Less number of feedback from the real users and fewer number of plugins are the main cons of this new free blogging site.

7. Weebly

Weebly.com

Weebly is more than just a free blogging site, they are a powerful website builder with drag and drop tools. Anyone can build a huge online presence with their awesome features and well optimized templates. Weebly was developed by David, Dan and Chris to help their friends to grow their online business. Now, every day 40 million Weebly websites are visited by 325 million unique visitors world widely.

They provide a wide range of premium plans and services to their customers. To ensure the satisfaction of customers they have a highly rated mobile application available in all popular App stores.

The problem while website backup is one of the main reasons for many customers to quit Weebly. You can backup all content into a zip file, but you cannot upload it back to the site. So when you lost your blog you have to start from zero.

6. Squarespace

Squarespace.com

Squarespace is one of the fastest growing free blogging site's which allows the small business owners to promote their online business and to create online stores. They are available both in free as well as paid version.

Every feature is owned by the Squarespace team even they provide website analytics, hence errors or troubleshooting are comparatively less which gives tension free blogging. Their other advantage is customer support, they give 24/7 customer support via chats, email and well-maintained forums with answer to your valuable questions. Squarespace also includes services like blogging services, hosting services, web site builder etc.

As we all know mobile-friendly has a major impact in better search engine ranking, here they will automatically change your desktop view to responsive mobile template.

Pricing and fewer plugins are the major drawbacks of Squarespace. Since every feature is owned by Squarespace there is lack of plugins. While expanding the website the pricing is also comparatively high when compared to similar blogging platform.

5. Wix

Wix.com

Wix is a cloud-based website builder with easy drop and drag tools. The simplicity and low cost attract more people,  as of 2014 Wix.com had more than 50 million registered users and thousands of peoples registering each day to promote their online business. You don't need a website designer everyone can build a website using Wix.com

The free blogging site needs to upgrade to the premium version to utilize features like e-commerce, adding custom domain, extra storage facilities, etc. Even though hundreds of stylish templates are available you cannot change it but you can customize to different styles.

Wix is not the best blogging platform when it comes to making money from it, They are freemium platform, which means they are making their earning through premium plans. So, if you want to remove their advertisement from your account you should pay.

4. Medium

Medium.com

As we know twitter has a range of 140 characters when it comes to publishing a post. To overcome this limitation Twitter co-founder Evan Williams developed Medium which allows you to longer posts or documents and now they have more than 60 million unique visitors.

If your vision is to make money, Medium is not a good idea for you. But you will get more time to make good contents because you don't need to waste any time to design the blogging platform.

Medium provides a neat and better place for writing, which enables you to write good content. You can easily track the status like how many people read the post, location of the visitor, etc. Unlike other blogging services, you only need a Twitter, Facebook or email address to sign up with medium.com

3. Tumblr

Tumblr.com

Tumblr is a microblogging and social networking website which allow users to publish multimedia and other contents. Tumblr isn’t right for every blogging niche, but for some niches it can drive huge traffic. Blogs which are concentrated on pictures, videos, infographics etc. are most suitable for this free blogging site.

By using mobile application, it's very simple to post from anywhere. With Tumblr you can select a theme and customize it completely according to your taste. Recently Yahoo purchased them, now this free blogging site has over 349.3 million blogs and more than 149.3 billion posts in total.

Though there is some limitation to Tumblr as well, they perform badly for longer posts, even the templates are designed for shorter posts and to make blogging easier no plugins are available.
Here is the List of few blog types suitable for Tumblr

     1. Photography Blogs
     2. Blogs based on videos
     3. Blogs with short post
     4. Linkblogs

Some features of Tumblr.com
  • Easy to insert images from the Web, after pasting the URL of the picture to the post area, the actual image will appear
  • Users can subscribe to your blog to get new updates, it will increase the traffic
  • You can convert your post to audio post
  • You can add custom domain to your blog
  • So many attractive themes
  • You can customize themes to make your own theme

2. Blogger

Blogger.com

Blogger is the oldest and widely used free blogging site and undoubtedly the best available option for a beginner. The search engine giant Google owns the platform, I think which is enough to understand the power of blogger.

Using Blogspot is simple as using a social media website, you don't need any knowledge about the platform. The simple tools allow you to create posts without any problem. You only need a Google account to start a blog on Blogspot. You can utilize many Google services such as Adsense, Google Analytics, Google console etc. without any risk. It's possible to migrate from Blogger to WordPress if you want to extend your site.

After creating an account, you will be given a free subdomain with blogspot.com, if you don't want the free subdomain you can simply replace it with a custom domain

Benefits:
  • Easy to use admin panel, even a first-time blogger can create and publish blog posts easily
  • It's in the cloud, so you don't need to worry about getting hacked
  • For a starter blogger is the best option to make money, you can monetize your blog with different program like Adsense, Amazon affiliate etc.
Limitation:
  • After the introduction, very few features and upgrades are added to the Blogspot which means Google is giving less importance to their blogging platform
  • Lack of extensive template library, but you can upload different custom template. Here's the list of Top 10 Blogger templates to improve SEO and design of your blog
  • Google can delete your account anytime if you violate their terms and conditions, even a fashion blogger has lost his 20-year-old blog without any notifications
  • Lesser number of plugins and widgets and Media files like PDF, word doc, etc. can't be uploaded to your blog

1. WordPress.com

Wordpress.com

WordPress is a free and open-source content management system based on PHP and MySQL, they have a free blogging site (WordPress.com) as well as a self-hosted blogging platform (WordPress.org), Most of the professional bloggers are using self-hosted WordPress.org for their blogs and websites.

According to Wikipedia, As of January 2015, more than 23.3% of the top 10 million websites use WordPress. Easiness and SEO advantages are the main reason for the popularity of this blogging site. If you have a plan to earn more, go with WordPress.com, it's easy to migrate from a free account to a self-hosted WordPress.

If you migrate to the premium version you will get many plugins and features to write a perfect article. For example, Yoast is a powerful plugin which makes it easy to write a better search engine optimized article.

Pros:
  • No worry, you do not have to worry about your account because they will give better security and protection for your account
  • They provide storage space up to 3 GB after that you should upgrade to a premium plan to use their service
Cons:
  • You do not own your blog and they can shut down your account anytime if you violate their terms of service
  • Less opportunity to make money, this free blogging platform does not support many advertising programs, you can apply for their advertising program if you have a high traffic blog where you have to share revenue with them
  • You cannot use any free or paid plugins, but there are a lot of built-in plugins
  • Limited number of themes, WordPress.com users cannot upload a custom theme but can use the free theme's which are limited in number and design

0. Blog.com ( Bonus )

Blog.com

As its name indicate, blog.com is a perfect site for blogging. Like any other free blogging site, blog.com also provides features like adding a custom domain, high storage space, themes, etc. Blog.com have free as well as premium plans. To avoid ads from your site, you'll have to pay them.

How to choose the best free blogging platform:

You cannot test all the given platform to select the best blogging platform for you. If you have basic blogging knowledge and want to earn money, then there is no free blogging site better than WordPress.org. Otherwise, if you don't know anything about blogging and don't want to spend any dollars, then Blogger, WordPress, Tumblr, etc. will be the better choice. If you're confused between Blogspot and WordPress, Here is the detailed comparison between Blogger vs WordPress

What other site are you using to build blogs?I'd love to know more about it in the comments.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

101 Free Blog Directories To Submit Your Blog

Getting good exposure to your blog is very difficult at the beginning, this may cause cracks on your interests. Blog directories are the best way to get decent traffic to your blog. Here I'm going to give you a list of free blog directories to submit your blog. What is blog directory?      Blog directory is a website which categorises the blogs under different categories, these are not search engine so people cannot search the blog but they can find your blog in corresponding category, popularity of these directories helps to increase the traffic to your blog. You can categorize your blog according to the niche of the blog. Blog directories not only helps in improving traffic but also provides good backlinks, these backlinks helps your blog to get ranked in search engines.read my 30 amazing tactics to get more traffic on blogger Blog directories provides different methods to submit your blogs. Free submission :-  There is no charge for submission and listen

How to Add Facebook Popup Like Box to Blogger Blogs

Facebook has released many widgets for Blogger and Facebook popup like box is one of them. A good fan base is the best source of huge traffic and the social media interaction improves the search engine optimization of your blog. Using this one time Facebook popup like box your readers can reach your page easily and this will earn you more like's to your fan page. Without readers your article is a big zero, regardless of the quality of the article, Facebook can increase your blog article readership. Compare to WordPress Blogger have fewer widgets but Facebook like box is a part of social media widget collection and proper use of these widgets can contribute a large difference. If your website gets any penalty from Google, there is a huge possibility to drop in search engine rankings and decrease in organic traffic. So for successful online marketing, a backup plan is necessary to maintain visitors and Facebook is the perfect choice for it. Why you should choose Faceboo

How to add Google Plus Commenting System on Blogger

Just like Facebook comment box Google also provides Google Plus commenting system to blogger blogs. Nowadays social media's have more impact than newspapers, the number of social media users are huge and increasing day by day. So, if you want to get rid of the oldest and ugly blogger comment box, I strongly recommend you to use Google plus commenting system in your blog. Why Google Plus commenting system Google+ is a popular social network which has millions of active users worldwide, we can use this popularity to get higher exposure to our blog. Integrating Google+ comment box is very easy and it has more features compared to default comment box More comments , good and keyword rich comments are always good in terms of SEO, if someone posts a reply from Google+, it will show below your blog post which means comments from Google+ will automatically display on your blog Less spam , blog spamming is one of the biggest problems for a blogger. You can reduce spam comments