To become a writer, you need a pen, a piece of paper, determined courage and excellent language skills. However, if you wish to become an online writer, simply add a reliable blogging platform to the mix.
Now that there are a plethora of blogging tools on the Internet that can help you write online and appeal to a wide audience, the challenge you face is to filter the platforms. During our research, we not only tested these platforms ourselves and analyzed their features, prices and other factors, but also had others test them as well.
Squarespace is ranked #1 overall, with stunning templates and high-quality images perfect for blogging; if you need a blog and website, Wix would be the ideal platform; also, if you want maximum functionality and growth potential, WordPress.org, powered by BlueHost, is a good choice.
This is the best blog building platform, with a stunning design to present beautiful articles and powerful SEO tools to bring you more readers. In our tests, Squarespace was ahead of the competition in terms of features, allowing you to.
- Show blog categories
- Enable Guest Comments
- Add RSS Abstract
Squarespace has been investing more and more in blogging in recent years, and the cheapest paid plans allow you to create unlimited pages. Built-in SEO tools can help you attract a wide audience, and if you’re new to this area, it may take some time to become familiar, but they offer in-depth SEO guides to help you get started!
You can browse free and paid templates by industry and install the right options, and there are even 6 templates designed specifically for bloggers. squarespace pays close attention to the way content is laid out on the templates, and the look and feel is top-notch, with features like grid layout and 3D scrolling to give your blog a unique browsing experience.
Disadvantages
- Limited number of pricing plans
- More difficult to use than other site builders (e.g. Wix)
Wix is an intuitive website builder that allows you to integrate blogs through a series of point-and-click actions. The platform is easy to use, has many benefits, and it is very simple to integrate blogs into a fully functional website.
Analytics, comments, search, social bookmarking and more are all built in to help you and your users make the most of your blog. Wix is also powerful for mobile browsing, and updating your blog using a mobile device is an easy experience, useful if you travel a lot and plan to blog on the go.
However, you can’t create an archive in the blogging tool and you can’t add RSS – which makes it difficult to update content. In terms of blog design, Wix offers a large number of beautiful and modern preset templates, and they have recently upgraded the content editor, which, along with all the other features, allows you to.
Advantages
- Ideal for long-term growth and integration with websites
- Beginner friendly, fast and easy to build
WordPress.com is the blog hosting service from the company behind WordPress.org. Starting a blog is completely free, but you have to pay for additional features such as storage and custom domains. Unlike Wix and Weebly As always, to remove branded ads from WordPress.com, you’ll need to upgrade to a paid plan.
WordPress.com has easily earned a reputation as the best blogging platform for the following reasons.
- Optimized for mobile access, so your blog looks great on all devices
- Manage technical maintenance, software updates, website hosting, domain name registration, etc. for you
- Simple and modern design style
- Advanced analytics to help you understand reader preferences
Creating a site with WordPress.com is fast and the platform is easy to master, but customization options are limited — especially compared to WordPress.org, where you can’t edit the code or 100% control the appearance of the blog. However, upgrading to a paid plan will unlock CSS permissions, allowing you to customize your blog extensively.
The huge potential for customization, full web hosting and technical maintenance puts WordPress.com somewhere between WordPress.org and a drag-and-drop website builder. If you don’t want to deal with the extra work of website maintenance and want more flexibility than Wix, this is the right choice.
Advantages
- Powerful blogging tools, including social bookmarking and RSS feeds
- Easier to use than WordPress.org and more advanced than editors like Wix and Weebly
Disadvantages
- Not really suitable for beginners, coding knowledge required
- Fewer customization options than WordPress.org
WordPress.org (powered by BlueHost)
It is an open source software that has helped millions of users to create online blogs. In fact, WordPress.org is so popular that it powers more than 1/3 of all websites on the Internet. You get access to a range of powerful blogging tools: forums, comments, analytics, RSS, and more. In addition, WordPress integrates tens of thousands of free and paid plugins to add a variety of advanced features to your blog, including.
- Comment Management
- Email Marketing
- Visual Data Analysis
- Search Engine Optimization
- Spam comment filtering
The possibilities are almost limitless!
Open source means you can modify the code and have full control over the look of your blog, with the caveat that you’ll need some programming skills (or hire a developer) to take full advantage of this flexibility. WordPress.org is a good choice for people looking to develop more complex blog sites over time, but one of the significant drawbacks is that it takes more time and effort to learn than a drag-and-drop site builder like Squarespace or Wix.
Advantages
- Very powerful blogging system with over 54,000 plugins to choose from
- Fully customized by coding
Disadvantages
- Not suitable for beginners as coding is required
- Hosting, domains, and plugins must be managed by you alone
This is an easy-to-use modern site builder that is easy to get started, offers excellent live chat features, and is great for beginners who need extra support, but is not ideal for serious or complex podcast sites. SITE123 is only for small personal blogs and is more quantitative (rather than qualitative) in its features:.
- Blog-specific templates
- Automatic release schedule
- RSS
- Comment System
- Comment Reply Tool
- Comments are automatically confirmed
- Social Media Integration
In addition to the built-in blogging tools, you can also visit SITE123 App MarketTo install additional features to extend the blog. As with everything else in SITE123, the App Market is easy to use and designed to help you the most! Another noteworthy feature is 24/7 round-the-clock chat support for quick resolution when you run into trouble while building your site.
The built-in blog templates are fully optimized to look beautiful on both mobile and desktop devices, and while not as high-end and professional as Squarespace’s themes or offering as much creative control as WordPress.org, the look and feel is clean and uncluttered.
Thanks to its simplicity of use, Weebly is easily one of the best blogging platforms out there. You can build websites and add blog pages without writing any code, they will handle all the technical work in the background and make sure your blog loads quickly.
Some of the impressive features include.
- Detailed analysis of blog performance
- Easily accessible archives
- Comment System
- Social Media Integration
Scheduling a post is easy and you can set your blog to go live at a specific time. For example, if you blog during the day, but Weebly Analytics tells you that readers engage in the evening, postpone the release to that time. Drag-and-drop web themes are easy to manage, allowing you to easily launch a blog site without any technical issues, and all themes useResponsive Design.
On the other hand, with Weebly, you don’t get the same design freedom that you get with some of the more advanced site builders. The preset templates are well structured, but you don’t have as much control over the layout and color scheme as you do with Squarespace and Wix.
Advantages
- Quick, easy and suitable for beginners
- Extensive blogging features, such as comment management and scheduled posting
Disadvantages
- Fewer customization options than other platforms
- Long-term growth may be limited
It’s a design-focused site builder that requires no technical knowledge, and you can think of it as a more powerful version of Squarespace, with a variety of stylish templates and great ease of use that makes it a great choice for a quick start-up blog.
When it comes to blogging features, Duda covers all the basic options: post categories, social bookmarking, onsite search, RSS feeds, statistical analysis, and more, but lacks two core blogging features: archiving and commenting, so you have difficulty interacting with visitors.
All templates useResponsive DesignYou can choose from templates that are already populated with presentation content, or blank templates with more design freedom. All edits to the template are made directly on the screen, which means that every little tweak doesn’t open a confusing new window!
Advantages
- Preset templates to suit users of all skill levels
- Quick Setup Wizard gets you started in minutes
It’s a great platform for people who want to get a blog up and running quickly, but lacks the most intuitive editing experience and the sleekest preset templates.
Blogging features include data analysis, posting comments, and social bookmarking, which is everything you need to get started. You can add tags and assign categories to posts, and for each category you create, a new sub-page appears in the navigation menu. one basic blog feature missing from Jimdo is archiving, where you must edit the navigation bar to create sub-pages for the posts to be archived, and then assign individual categories.
The design options are very simple and do not require any technical knowledge, however, if you are a high-end user, you will find creative freedom more limited. The drag-and-drop editor makes it easy to edit text and position images, but while it’s easy to add custom content to a template, it’s very difficult to change the preset structure.
Advantages
- Easy-to-use template structure makes editing quick and easy
- Simple design means you can launch your website in a fraction of the time
Disadvantages
- Templates sacrifice creative freedom for ease of use
- Adding a blog archive is difficult
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