In addition to the desire to share your own opinion, experience and own thoughts with the world, blogs are a good way to make money. This information format has rapidly gained popularity due to possibly individual development and now many entrepreneurs need the best blogging platform.
A feature of the blog format is the ability to depart from the official style, to demonstrate your readiness in interaction with the world, regardless of the reader’s personal biases and your own stereotypes.
Almost all celebrities and global corporations have similar pages. This is the best choice in order to be noticed at the world level, gain rapid popularity or build interest in the visitor content in the space of world wide web.
During years of constant competitive development, blogging tools have evolved from ordinary webpages with limited account activity into real CMS. Definitely most of them offer the customer a quick start with a minimal free set of functions, but this is enough to start blogging.
Today we will review the main offers in the market for these services as well as the main advantages and disadvantages.
This will help beginners make a choice and become full participants in the media space during the fight for first place among competitors.
Disclaimer: Many of the products that I recommend in my articles have affiliate links. This allows me to earn a small affiliate commission and it costs you nothing. This article includes web services and software that I recommend.
The best blogging platforms
Contents
1. WordPress.org
This is an interesting global blog tool set with a very rich history of formation and according to statistics, nearly 30% of modern webpages operate precisely with this CMS. Open code requires a bit of programming skills to independently change the interface of a web page. The built-in functions allow managing of basic features in the short time interval.
Main features:
- Flexible design. It means that anyone can completely change the appearance and functions of the webpage by creating a photo blog, a page for business, official’s personal page, an entertainment portal, a magazine.
- Themes for the web page. Anyone can buy inexpensive covers for his project and the installation can be completed without any programmer’s help.
- Posting features. CMS is very simple and you can save all changes, do pending posts, format text and check reader reviews. You can also restrict access to certain levels of information by dividing writers into access levels. Password protection and secret links are available.
- Multimedia management. WordPress allows inserting of images, videos, attach documents and even GIFs and all this works through Drag-n-Drop. You can easily create galleries, attach them to articles, multiple image uploads are also available.
- Plugins. Numerous extensions allow integration with social networks, forums, photo storage services, calendars, SEO systems, social network widgets, various forms, surveys, weather and time indicators, anti-spam, etc.
Pros:
- Create a reliable and feature-rich informational source using offered completely free themes with constantly replenished databases.
- The opportunity to create SEO-friendly links, attach tags, build a post structure, dividing them into categories.
- All multimedia repositories work fine on phones and computers.
- Open source can save programmers time and quickly find the fastest way to solve the problem.
- To edit-save changes, it’s enough to have a stable internet connection on your device.
- Special e-Commerce plugin is a fully free solution for online sellers.
Сons:
- Like all open-source, WordPress is often susceptible to attack by hackers, and one vulnerability found puts all web pages under attack.
- Some themes still require programming skills to fine tune.
- Changes for webpage are quite expensive or you’d be forced to study the internal software structure.
Pricing:
It all depends on many factors, namely if you want some additional features, you need to pay for paid plugins, your own domain name etc.
If you want to quickly install WordPress without the help of a programmer, then I recommend that you do it through BlueHost web hosting.
You pay only $2,95 per month (63% OFF) by registering at my link here.
2. Wix
Wix is already considered a more premium online software for experienced content makers. The free plan is enough for active work, but the company has a tricky pricing policy regarding additional options.
Main features:
- Stable download speed of any content from webpages and extremely fast data transfer due to the newest equipment and special algorithms. There is no speed limit, which allows you to work in any field.
- An endless choice from descent templates. It’s available to use all this multimedia wealth to build their own webpage with a unique design in minutes.
- Full support for drag-n-drop technology. You can drag any content onto the page to start the download. This works even on pocket devices.
- SEO tools. It’s allowed to customize tags, links, do the necessary markup of the text, insert links to other webpages.
Pros:
- You have the opportunity to duplicate posts on social media automatically, which saves a huge amount of time.
- Free SSL certificate for each webpage and search algorithms value protected webpages much higher, giving them top places in SERP.
- WIX offers a special logo editor. Without the skills of a designer, the user can easily create a logo.
- For e-Commerce, the system provides various payment methods. All this is completely safe.
- The Artificial Intelligence Assistant allows you to create quickly a stunning design for your blog in minutes.
Cons:
- After starting the webpage, the user is unable to select another design template and editing is closed forever.
- The customer will be compelled to spend a lot of money on the necessary applications offered by third-party companies. It is really very expensive.
- Newbies can get confused in a lot of options. This is especially true for any changes.
Pricing:
Basic features are available for free. Unlimited traffic, unattached domain and other additions starts at $13 monthly.
Get started with a free trial of Wix.
3. Gator Website Builder Blogging Platform By Hostgator
Gator web page building is a quite understandable system that helps you to quickly create awesome web pages using drag-n-drop technology. Even people far from the computer can easily understand the basic functionality as this is one of the most advanced platforms on our list today. It has a high degree of flexibility in use and constant updates.
Main features:
- Really a user-friendly platform. drag-n-drop works great, facilitating the daily work and web page modification. Many users compare this system while working in MS Powerpoint.
- Template design. Initially, Hostgator implies that the webpage will definitely use a template. Creating a design yourself from scratch is extremely difficult, but the variety of pre-installed options completely covers this drawback.
- Support for all resolutions and diagonals of modern mobile devices and adaptive design easily adapts even to different aspect ratios without distortions and changes in the mutual arrangement of info blocks.
- Availability of web-analytics. In this group of options all the tools make it possible to collect and analyze real data about users, their preferences, geography, demography and other features. This helps a lot to build the content model correctly.
Pros:
- Gator provides an SSL certificate that has a good protection level against hacking. This option also helps to make SEO for web pages, because the SEPR rank for webpages with secure HTTP is much higher.
- Users can’t purchase domains or subdomains from third-party sellers as this eliminates the possibility of fraud.
- Easy interaction with social networks, including FB, IG and Twitter. Simply copy the post link to show visitors a full article or news with the correct markup.
- Drag-n-drop has completely replaced the need for cascade style and hypertext markup. You can quickly create a multi-layer design, modeling the blocks of your own preference.
- Customize everything as you want to. You can change everything from design elements to images, banners, creeping lines, etc.
Cons:
- You will not be able to add marketing blocks, third-party applications or tools. Only what the developer offers is available.
- Only basic customization is available. The user doesn’t have access to the source codes.
Pricing:
Gator offers only 3 monthly billing plans: Starter for $3.46 (limited custom properties without the ability to change a domain), Premium for $5.39 (design restrictions are completely removed) and eCommerce (allows you to enable payment systems and implement a virtual showcase) for $8.30.
You can get started with Gator Website Builder for just $3.46/month.
4. Constant contact blogging platform
Constant Contact Webpage Builder is a web-based system based on artificial intelligence. It involves quickly starting a blog or webpage for a business within minutes. It is also possible to create a blog with the click of a button, as the platform is easy to learn and it does not look like solutions from other developers. Users note excellent usability and high response speed to any action.
Main features:
- Customization with drag-n-drop technology works well on mobile devices and even old computers. In total, 5 different types of blocks are available for the user and you can change the position of the object or delete it at any moment completely without influencing the rest of the design.
- Interaction with portable devices. It means that the webpage is perfectly visible from any device or tablet and any theme offered by the system easily adapts to various screen resolutions.
- Free images. The system cooperates with royalty-free company Unsplash, which allows you to use their photo library. There is a convenient search by topic, and all objects are equipped with an attached description and tags.
- Infinite number of subpages and all this is available in the free version! The user can at any moment change the URL path, change the structure, link names and configure the main menu.
Pros:
- For beginners there is a very clear and detailed tutorial that allows you to understand the basics of the platform and the support center always answers questions.
- You can create an online store. The platforms for selling digital products and real goods are very different. The system allows you to profitably demonstrate the object of sales.
- There is a simple built-in image editor. Just insert a link to Unsplash.
- The algorithm with artificial intelligence is constantly changing the design and analyzing the blog depending on the key words used.
- Templates are adapted for portable devices. All functions of the interface are saved, which allows you to fill pages from anywhere in the world where there is a connection with enough speed.
Cons:
- The free version allows you to add only 3 products for online sales.
- Technical support has been answering to users for a very long time and sometimes the wait lasts up to one week.
- Support for SEO features is extremely weak. This has a very negative effect on search engine optimization.
Pricing:
Free basic functions, but a prepaid pricing plan costs £6 per month, if you make payment for 1 year in advance.
5. Squarespace
This system contains an infinite amount of webpages and is one of the best page web-builders available for free and drag-n-drop technology is also available here. This software is constantly evolving, surprising customers with new features.
Main features
- Convenient blogging. This is a must-have solution for bloggers with lots of options. Readers can leave moderated comments, there is full support for AMP, a blog can have several authors with different rights. It is possible to schedule posts on a calendar.
- Technical support works in Live Chat mode. This is very rare for such systems. Employees respond almost instantly, which allows you to quickly solve any problems.
- Availability of a compatible mobile application. All features are free and they work perfectly on mobile devices. This is a unique option for such a product.
- Ample opportunities to make a design based on more than hundred proposed themes, so you can change almost any feature, edit the menu.
Pros:
- Users have the possibility to change templates at any moment.
- Templates are quickly adapted for mobile devices and the control system has the same property.
- Widgets are subject to customization, you can install them at any point and resize.
- It’s possible to install widgets from other manufacturers. This is a very rare option for blogging platforms.
- You can quickly change templates without influencing the quality of the displayed content.
Cons:
- Auto save function is completely absent. All unsaved data is deleted by default.
- The templates are too large, which complicates the download with a weak internet connection.
Pricing:
Squarespace offers the following monthly billing plans: Personal for $12, Business for $18, Basic Commerce for $26, and Advanced Commerce for $40.
You can try blogging on Squarespace with a free trial.
Let’s summarize it
The choice of a platform for blogging directly is based on the desire to make money, the number of options and on willingness to pay.
If you want to create a full-fledged free webpage, then this is definitely WordPress. If you are reluctant to understand all the functions and need to make a quick start, then these are ready-made products like Wix or Squarespace, offering a quality GUI.
Our personal preference is WordPress because of reliability and numerous additional features for the person who has made minimal efforts for independent and easy training.
Use the following instructions for the final choice:
- Pay attention to scalability and flexibility in use, so that you do not have to jump to another product in the future.
- Be sure to consider the transparent pricing policy of the company, as well as immediately calculate the cost of the most necessary package of services.
- Make your own wish list and verify compliance.
- You should test the possibility of changing anything you want, counting in ready-made modules installed with one click..
- Make sure everything works well on mobile devices and in all popular browsers without distortion.
- The availability of responsive technical support is also a fundamental factor as well as intuitive interface with minimal programming. This will allow you to operate with information much faster.
- Favorable financial offers from a service provider on various conditions, from subscription to purchasing a specific lifetime package of options.
This simple guide should help beginners make their choice.
