Looking for some free blog sites to help you start sharing your writing with the world. Whether you just want to share updates with your family and friends or you want to start a blog and build a broader audience, we’ve put together five great sites where you can start a blog for free.
1. Wix
Wix is a free website builder that can be totally managed from the front end. The main characteristic of this platform is that it comes with drag and drop options, so you don’t have to handle anything in the back end. The design is very intuitive and modern, which can be used by both beginners and advanced.
The nice thing about Wix is that it has free hosting included, so you just need to arrange the layouts, pick a template, and you’re all set. It provides a nice collection of free and premium themes and templates for different purposes, including blogging.
2. WordPress
WordPress.org is the king of free blogging sites. It is a free platform, but you need to build the site mostly by yourself afterward. You also have to host the software yourself. While you can find some free WordPress hosting, a better long term strategy is to pay a moderate amount for a solid WordPress host.
This is where Bluehost comes into play. Not only is it very cheap, but it also provides solid features, including a free domain name, 50GB of disk space, unmetered bandwidth, free SSL, and 100MB of email storage per account. At this very moment, Bluehost is the cheapest sensible WordPress hosting you can find out there.
Because you’re hosting the WordPress software yourself, you have full control over how your site looks and functions, as well as how you make money from your site. But the flip side is that the setup process is a little bit more hands on.
On the opposite side, there’s WordPress.com, which is the other face of WordPress a platform used mostly for personal blogs because it’s easy to set up and free. However, you’re also quite limited in the way you can customize the site.
And especially if your plan is to monetize your blog in any way, the free WordPress.com version will prevent you from doing that.
3. Weebly
Weebly is another website builder that you can use not only to blog but also to sell products or showcase your portfolio. It is somewhat similar to Wix to the extent that it provides a WYSIWYG editor with drag and drop elements.
If you want to add a certain button, you can simply drag it to the page and customize it. The same happens with photo galleries, slideshows, and any other multimedia element.
Weebly provides sidebars, media boxes, forms, ad spaces, social media icons, newsletter subscriptions, and many more. Moreover, the platform comes with built-in analytics and lets you use your own customized domain (for which you need to pay). On the free plan, you get five custom pages, a Weebly subdomain, 500MB storage, and ad spaces.
4. Blogger
Blogger is one of the oldest free blog sites, though its popularity has dipped in recent years. It’s a solid solution for personal blogs, but it’s not the best resource for professional use. It works just like the other hosted platforms, you need to create an account first in order to use it.
After you create it (which is simple), you have to pick one of the default themes and you can start writing your thoughts down. This platform has an interface similar to a Google+ profile and the editor looks like a Word page.
Blogger delivers a bunch of themes to choose from, each providing different skins, advanced color filtering, and various minimalist gadgets (aka widgets). But nothing too fancy or any advanced design customization.
In general, Blogger has simple appearance options, so the focus stays more on the writing part. A nice part about this site is that it comes with ad spaces that you can place within your content pieces.
5. Tumblr
Tumblr is one of the original free blogging sites on the web. It’s just a bit ‘milder’ than the others on the list. Unlike the rest of the platforms that are mostly created for publishing purposes, this one here is more oriented to multimedia or social media-like content.
The interface of Tumblr is more playful and is easy to get started with you can simply sign up and then you’re allowed to start posting. Just like a regular blogging platform, it provides multiple post formats for different types of content.
The thing with Tumblr is that it is purely for personal use and wouldn’t put up a great solution if you have business oriented plans. It is simplistic, offers basic customization options and as I said earlier, has more of a social media vibe.
