If you want to launch a blog, you can do it for free with a very decent option. Free doesn’t mean these platforms are poor or that you need to understand coding. In fact, many of our free blogging website choices are as good as some paid-for platforms.
So if you want to know how to start a blog, these services will get you started. We’ve road-tested them all, and received feedback from other creatives who use them, too. Look out for links to the full reviews to find out more.
When choosing between them, things to consider include ease of use, design flexibility, and the ability to ‘upgrade’ to a paid site when needed. As a general rule, the easiest platforms tend to be more restrictive in terms of how you want your blog to look. If you want design flexibility, you’ll need to be willing to flex your technical and/or coding skills to make it work. Finally, if you’d rather create a more general site, see our guide to the best website builder.
Top 3: Best free blogging websites
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The best free blog websites for creatives
The best free blog website overall
The best free blog website platform overall.
Reasons to buy
Wide range of templates
+Scalable over time
Reasons to avoid
Free site includes ads
–Limited storage on free plan
Need to launch a blog quickly and easily? Then Wix is probably the best free blogging platform for you. This popular blogging platform lets you build a blog (or indeed any other kind of website) using simple drag and drop.
When we reviewed it, we found getting started and using the interface to be incredibly straightforward. We were also quite impressed with the range of templates, and the fact that you get 500MB of online storage and 1GB of bandwidth, all for free.
For these reasons, Wix attracts a lot of artists and designers, even if it isn’t aimed at them specifically. Note, though, that the free account is quite limited. You’ll also have an ad for Wix on your site and a Wix domain name. You’ll have to pay to remove those and unlock features like an online store and Google Analytics, but the paid-for plans are reasonably priced. We’d suggest starting with the free plan and then upgrading once you begin to attract visitors and want to make things look more professional.
Read our full Wix review for more details.
The best simple free blog website
The best free blog website for simplicity.
Reasons to buy
Easier to use than Wix
+Nice responsive themes
Reasons to avoid
Not as feature-rich as Wix
–Not as customisable as Wix
If you’re a little intimidated by the process of building a blog, Weebly is worth a look. When we tested it out for our review, we found it even easier to use than Wix (number one on our list).
The two platforms have a lot in common. They’re both based on a drag-and-drop system, which lets you quickly create a website using a template. In our experience of testing the software, we found the main difference is that Weebly doesn’t offer as many customisation options as Wix. But the positive side of that is that the interface is less cluttered and easier to use – perfect for a free blogging platform.
As with Wix, the free plan means a Weebly ad on your site and a branded domain name. You also get access to customisable layouts, several free themes, and social sharing features. With a paid plan, you’ll lose the ads, get a custom domain, and have more customisation options.
Read our complete Weebly review for more details.
The best free blog website for newsletters
The best free blog website platform for newsletter writers.
Reasons to buy
Easy to use
+Potential to earn money
More and more artists and designers are promoting themselves with email newsletters. For many, this is an alternative to blogging… but it needn’t be. We discovered that with Substack you can actually kill two birds with one stone. Newsletters are Substack’s main focus, but you also get a web page to share all your past newsletters in one place. So it effectively works as a free blogging platform too.
We should clarify that if you want a unique looking blog, this isn’t the best choice. Since Substack’s main focus is on emails, its blog features are extremely limited. However, you will get a basic CMS (content management system) with text formatting tools and the ability to embed images, video and other web content. Plus, Substack is free as long as you make your posts/emails free for everyone to read. Only once you start charging people for subscriptions will Substack take a cut.
When we used Substack to set up a newsletter/blog for our review, we found it to be one of the easiest interfaces we’d ever used. We particularly liked the version history feature, which lets you easily access past versions of your post, and the fact that the lightweight interface kept working, even during periods of low mobile connectivity. See our full Substack review for more details.
The best free blog website for professionals
The best free blog website platform for professional bloggers.
Reasons to buy
Huge community
+Very customisable
Reasons to avoid
Steep learning curve
–Site building takes time
With the options mentioned so far, you only get limited control over how your blog posts look. As an artist or designer, you’re probably used to having more control over your work. We think the best free blogging platform for that fine level of control is WordPress.org (not to be confused with WordPress.com.
This open-source site-building software is totally free to use, and we’ve found that what you can do with it is basically unlimited. The pay-off is that it takes a bit more work to learn the system. But if you’re planning to be a professional blogger – to actually make a proper living from blogging, it’s worth taking the time to master it.
When we reviewed it, we found that WordPress.org’s software takes some time to understand, and getting the results you want may require learning at least some web design skills. Considering this is a self-hosted platform with no dedicated customer support, that may be a step too far for some.
This isn’t, then, the best choice of free blogging platform if you want to build a blog in a day. Also, note that you’ll still need to pay for web hosting and a domain name to get your blog online. However, if you take the time to get to grips with it, you’ll be rewarded with an unprecedented degree of control over your site. Plus, any ads that appear on your blog will be ones that you’ve chosen to put there.
Our article on how to make a website will help get you started with an option like this, but you’ll also need to acquaint yourself with WordPress’s extensive documentation (our guide to the best WordPress tutorials can help).
See our WordPress.org review for more details, and also check out our guides to the best free WordPress themes and best WordPress plugins.
The best free blog website for support
The best free blog website platform for IT support.
Reasons to buy
Excellent customer support
+Simple and clean templates
Reasons to avoid
Only good for personal blogs
–Limited free storage
It doesn’t matter how many helpful ‘how to’ guides you read; sometimes dealing with blogging platforms can be confusing and frustrating. So it’s great news that Site123 offers free 24/7 live chat support to help you set up your blog.
When we reviewed Site123, we tested how good this support was in practice. Results were good: we were connected with a friendly agent just within five minutes the company promised. Note, though, that phone and email options are not on offer.
Site123 is pretty easy to use too. Like most platforms on this list, it provides a selection of ready-made styles and layouts and handy prompts to help you build your blog. So in fact, you may not need any support at all.
On the downside, the results can look a little basic when compared with more advanced platforms. And like with many of the best free blogging platforms, Site123 will place its own ads on your site. But if all you need is a simple blog with comments, post scheduling and social integration, you’ll find all that here.
For more details, see our Site123 review.
The best free blog website platform for easy WordPress
The best free blog website platform for making WordPress easy.
Reasons to buy
Totally free
+Easy to use
Reasons to avoid
Limited features
–Third-party ads
Despite their similar names, WordPress.org (number five on our list) and WordPress.com are quite different beasts. The former offers a powerful web design platform but has a big learning curve and you have to pay for hosting and a domain name. In contrast, WordPress.com is an all-in-one solution, which includes hosting and a domain, and is much easier to use.
For those reasons, we find WordPress.com to be a better choice if you don’t want to spend a lot of time reading documentation and developing web design skills. With the free plan you get free hosting, 1GB of space and a branded domain name ending in .wordpress.com. You won’t, however, have much ability to customise your site’s look and feel, and your blog will have third-party ads.
When we reviewed WordPress.com, we found it offered great value for money, a good selection of themes, and was much easier to set up and use than WordPress.org. On the downside, we also found the interface noticeably more complex than other free blog sites such as Wix, Weebly, and Squarespace.
Learn more in our in-depth WordPress.com review.
The best free blog website platform for coders
The best free blog website platform for coders.
Reasons to buy
Open source
+Good customisation features
Reasons to avoid
Not as popular as WordPress
–Steep learning curve
So far, we’ve focused on platforms where you can build a blog without knowing code. But what if you are a coder? In which case, here’s the best free blogging platform for you.
Joomla saves you from having to built your site from scratch, but still lets you add code to customise it. It’s quite a lot like WordPress.org (number 5 on our list) in that it’s free and open-source software for website building, but you’ll need to pay for a domain name and hosting (although there is a way around this, which we’ll come to in a moment).
Joomla has hundreds of templates to use and customise, and lots of extensions for adding extra features and getting your blog looking just the way you want it. It doesn’t have as many themes and add-ons as WordPress.org, but if you’re able to code, Joomla is a better bet, especially if you want a larger, more complex site. If you foresee your blog growing into something bigger that you could potentially make money from, this is probably a more scalable solution.
When we reviewed Joomla, we found it offered some excellent out-of-the-box tools, as well as a good range of extensions, and overall impressive flexibility in how your blog looks and feels. However, we didn’t feel it was suitable for anyone without technical or coding skills.
Don’t want to pay for hosting? Since 2015 Joomla has teamed up with SiteGround to offer a great solution. The launch.joomla.org service offers you the basic standard publishing features of Joomla, with free hosting. This free option isn’t much use if you want an advance website from the get-go. But it is a great way to get started, as any blog you develop here can be upgraded later into a full-fledged self-hosted project.
Read our Joomla review for more details.
The most secure free blog website
08. SilverStripe
The best free blog website platform for security features.
Reasons to buy
Open source
+Strong security
Reasons to avoid
Small community of users
–Better for experienced developers
For experienced developers looking for strong security and advanced features, SilverStripe is one of the best free blogging platforms to consider. It’s a free, open-source CMS that’s easy to use once it’s set up, but you’ll need web skills to get that far. Key tools include a web-based administration panel, a WYSIWYG website editor, rich-text editing, quick embedding of videos, and a drag-and-drop, tree-based navigation structure. Note, too, that you’ll also have to pay for your own domain name and hosting.
How to choose the best free blog website platform
It’s actually quite difficult to decide which of these free blog website platforms is going to be best for you. Quite simply, because we’re all different. What might seem easy to use to one person may appear hopelessly confusing to another. And while one platform might serve one blogger’s needs perfectly, another might find it simply doesn’t let them post in the way they want.
Of course, our roundup of the best free blog website platforms above should give you some idea of which will suit you best (if you don’t have time to read the whole thing, just glancing at the one-line description under each platform name should at least get you started.) But ultimately, the best way to choose between platform is to spend a few minutes giving some of them a try. They are free, after all, so you’re risking nothing but a little of your time.
That way, you should soon discover which is the best blogging solution for you. And hopefully, that will lead to a lifetime of posting great content, and getting richly rewarded for it.
How we test the best free blog website platforms
We’ve tried all the best known blogging platforms out for size, including the ones on this list, in order to bring you a definite guide to the best free blog website platforms available today. We’ve put them through their paces, and assessed them for ease of use, the quality of their tutorials and documentation, and what the posts actually look like once you’ve made them live, on laptops, phones and tablets. We’ve tried out a variety of different post types, and looked for inconsistencies and omissions in terms of the types of media you can post, including file types. Finally, we’ve assessed how ‘free’ these services actually are, as well as how much potential there is to scale up your blogging operations if they prove a success.
FAQs
Can anyone write a blog?
Yes, absolutely anyone can create and write their own blog! Tens of thousands of people do so every day, and with so many free blogging platforms out there, all you need is a computer with an internet connection to do so… or even just a phone!
A related question, of course, is: will anyone read your blog? There are absolutely no guarantees on that score, and it’s entirely down to you to promote your blog.
If you don’t have an existing audience elsewhere, our advice is to get the content right first and then start to build up your audience gradually via word of mouth. If you can provide information and insight that’s unique to your blog, by focusing on a niche area that you’re passionate and knowledgeable about, there’s every reason your blog can be a success.
Which free blogging platform is best?
The best free blog website for you will largely depend on what you’re looking for. If you want to get up and running quickly, and don’t have any web design experience, we recommend Wix, as it makes it very easy to build a website and offers over 500 customisable templates. However, if your priority is having fine control over the look and feel of your site, and you’re willing to spend time learning how the system works, we recommend WordPress.org. Finally, if you’re an experienced coder, then you’ll find either Joomla or SilverStripe gives you the sophisticated tools you need to build an advanced site to your exact needs.
Do I need a website to write a blog?
Not necessarily. Just as you can write short posts on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram without having a website, there are other social networks that allow you to write long articles and post them there.
One of the most popular business networks for blogging right now is LinkedIn. As long as you’re signed up to the social network, you can publish articles on the site for free, without needing any technical skills. Just go to where you’d normally write a short post, click on the ‘Write an article’ button and follow the steps. Once you’ve written and published your article, you can share it within LinkedIn, and also on other social networks.
How do bloggers make money?
Making money blogging is kind of like making money by playing sports. In both case, very small number of people at the top of the tree are making a large amounts of money. A larger number of people make small amounts of money. And the vast majority are making no money at all.
There are many ways to make money blogging. If you can build up a large audience, then you can sell advertising on your blog. However, the rates for this are very small, so you’ll need huge visitor numbers to make this worth your while.
If your subject is niche, then a better strategy can be to create sponsored content that both resonates with your specific audience and sells a certain product or service to them. For instance, an interior design blogger might be sponsored by a high-end wallpaper company to decorate their house in said wallpaper and blog about it.
You can also potentially earn money as a blogger through ecommerce links. You write about a product, use a special link to allow readers to buy that product, and if you do, you get a cut.
Which free blogging platform is best for making money?
If you want to make money from your blog, then most free blogging platforms are going to make that difficult. Put simply, in return for providing you with a free blog, they will incorporate their own ads into your site, and you won’t get the money for any click-throughs; they will.
The big exception is WordPress.org. Because this is open source software, you will have total control over what happens on your blog, and that includes deciding to feature your own ads, for which the money will go straight to you. However, be aware that WordPress.org does have a big learning curve to use, and you will have to pay for web hosting and a domain name separately.
Does my blog need a domain name?
Most of the best free blogging platforms will give you a URL for your site, but it will be quite a clunky one that’s difficult for people to type in or remember, and will normally contain the company’s own name. If you want your blog to be taken seriously, then, you should really buy your own domain name, especially as it’ll only cost you a few dollars. You don’t necessarily need to do this at the very start, though: it’s something you can put off till further down the line when you start to build an audience.
Source: The top free blogging options
