As I awoke squinting to the sun shining through tiny cracks, I was comforted by the fact I was not alone.
The phone nested deep below in a pile of clothes and Gatorades had the answers.
Comments at the blog, emails from the usual suspects readers, and even a few sales.
The world was slowly waking up, but for me the day had already begun.
A list of the best places to blog
If you’re looking to start a blog, make a website, or launch some form of online community – welcome. My family and friends constantly ask where’s the best place to blog, so I figured I’d try to save you some time.
I must say, this is a great time to blog and a good place to get started. You guys have been a tremendous help.
Down below, I’ve outlined 20+ blogging platforms and done a cost benefit analysis of each.
For those who wonder, my path was WordPress.com –> Blogger –> Tumblr –> WordPress.org, where I run 99% of my blogs and websites now.
If you want to learn more, just ask in the comments, or find me on Twitter.
Hope to talk to you soon…
WordPress.org
Browse at WordPress.org
About:
Setup so easy Snoop Dogg can do it with the elegance of NYTimes, Sony PlayStation, Wall Street Journal, Paris Hilton and more. WordPress requires no coding knowledge and is free software – it’s the domain name and hosting you pay about-as-much-as-a-cup-of-coffee-per-month for. It gives you a website like the world’s best and teaches you all about websites, too. For countless bloggers who do this for a living, WordPress.org is the best place to blog. Click here to watch our step-by-step setup video and join the largest blogging community on the web.
Stats:
- Recommended for: Blogging and websites
- Founded: May 27th, 2003
- Founder: Matt Mullenweg of Automattic
- Total users: 60 million, 19% of the internet and 1 in 5 websites as of December 2013
- Total employees: 151
- Pros: Elegance and ease
- Cons: You need to get a domain name and web hosting first (“Create a WordPress.org Blog First Try”)
- Costs: Your domain name and hosting can be bought together for about $3-6 per month. I recommend HostGator for this, but other places are more than willing to charge you more
- My verdict: The best place to blog if you’re serious about it. Good for all types of review websites, mommy blogs, company sites, eCommerce sites and more.
WordPress.com
Browse at WordPress.com
About:
WordPress.com is a free blog-hosting site with roughly half the features of .org. The general idea here is less maintenance for you, but less control of the blog. Get a .wordpress domain name like “dearblogger.wordpress.com” or pay to use your own domain name. Need a niche? WordPress.com sees 100,000 posts published each day so you’ll surely find like-minded thinkers. Not a full company website but a loyal companion for one. Write posts, try a free theme, set up social media buttons and learn blogging at WordPress.com.
Stats:
- Recommended for: Mass community blogging
- Released: November 21, 2005
- Founder: Matt Mullenweg of Automattic
- Total users: 56 million blogs
- Pros: Ease to use with little you can mess up.
- Cons: Less customization and a bit fussy with adding certain features.
- Costs: Free, you can pay WordPress.com to get a domain name without the “.wordpress” addition.
- My verdict: A lovely intro to blogging that about 1 year in takes us all to a crossroads: stay put, or transfer to WordPress.org.
Blogger
Browse at Blogger.com
About:
Blogger is Google’s free blog-hosting site. More popular at the turn of the millenium, Blogger still offers a great service but the designs are a bit elementary. Login and publish your first post for free with only a Gmail account. Try Adsense “monetization”, design a new layout and even edit your first piece of code.
Stats:
- Recommended for: Blogging
- Founded: August 2013, 1999
- Notable events: Bought by Google in February, 2003
- Founder: Evan Williams of Pyra Labs
- Total users:
- Pros: Publish anywhere, huge community, images, video, edit HTML/CSS, template designer, track traffic stats in Blogger, Adsense at no charge
- Cons: While Blogger is where many writers (including Dear Blogger) started publishing, it’s designs appear a bit childish today. Google owns your blog – they axed Reader – so acknowledge a bit less control upfront.
- Costs: Pay $10/year for a domain name without the “.blogspot” extension – otherwise totally free.
- Future predictions: May merge with Google+.
- My verdict: Everything blogging should be and more – Blogger was the sandbox for names now headlining in tech. The only real negative comes from outgrowing Blogger, at which point many (like myself) transfer to WordPress. Less popular today – even Google’s PR Mogul Matt Cutts runs a WordPress site.
Tumblr
Browse at Tumblr.com
Introduction to Tumblr:
At a time when WordPress and Blogger were neck-and-neck for new users, Tumblr showed up as the 3rd guy to the party. They received lots of sign-ups from users wanting a totally refreshing take on blogging, and have grown ever since. Tumblr was recently bought by Yahoo, who has interesting plans for the whole blog advertising thing.
Stats:
- Founded: February 2007
- Founder: David Karp
- Total users: 152 million
- Pros: Ease of use and ability to share your friends’ work through re-blogging.
- Cons: Less customization, just a shade less professional and not ideal for conducting business.
- Costs: Free, pay Tumblr to get your own domain name without the “.tumblr” addition
- My verdict: Great for photography and other forms of art. Super-simplistic designs and a whimsical vibe make Tubmlr a great choice for any new blogger.
SquareSpace
Browse at SquareSpace.com
About:
All over television with beautiful and encouraging ads, SquareSpace offers a nice solution for the business owner in need of a web presence. Get online quickly with a free trial, setup a cool design and start attracting clients – that’s the motto. If a more complex blogging platform were snowboarding, Squarespace would be skiing, in the pie wedge stance
Stats:
- Recommended for: Individual and business blogs and websites
- Founded: January 2004
- Founder: Anthony Casalena
- Total users: ?
- Pros: Elegant designs setup with a couple of clicks.
- Cons: Less customization – you’ll pay for things that may come free at a place like WordPress
- Costs: 14-day free trial with plans from $8 and up afterwards
- My verdict: Less hands-on than WordPress but arguably better advertising and accessibility – Squarespace gets your business site up quickly. A good quick solution.
Google+
Browse at Plus.Google.com
About:
If you need a guide on how to use Google Plus we’ve got you covered, because we’ve been trying to dominate it for a year now. Fun features like the badge make getting followers easier. Google Plus brings you instant community + audience – two things any blogger wants more of. Make sure to share publicly if you want to build any sort of following.
Stats:
- Recommended for: Social networking (“social layer”)
- Released: June 28, 2011
- Founder: Google Developers
- Total users: 540 million per month
- Pros: Google circles, photography (1.5 billion uploaded each week), “hangout” feature, multi-language, authorship, can increase a publisher’s search rankings, Gmail integration, chat, mobile chat, mobile publishing,
- Cons: None, start using it today.
- Costs: Free
- My verdict: Absolutely necessary for anyone who wants to be considered an expert in anyt field. Fun. Challenging. If you’re curious, I’ve also written on how to master Google Plus over at Social Media Explorer.
Alternative Communities ? ?
Medium
Browse at Medium.com
- Founded: 2012
- Founder: Evan Williams (Twitter, Blogger) and Biz Stone (Twitter)
- Total users: ?
- Pros: Story telling feel, goal to improve content quality
- Cons: Still low usership
- Costs: Free
- My verdict: Probably won’t reach the development status of WordPress.org but definitely chomping at the heels of Blogger, Tumblr and even Twitter as it borrows several of their services, like topic searches and nostalgic photo shares from the founders themselves.
Hubpages
Browse at HubPages.com
About:
Hubpages started as an article network, the kind of place where you were rewarded for publishing lots of articles on any one topic like cooking, travel or home-improvement. Today, it boasts millions of informative articles and guides. However, a by-product of mass publishing is slightly lesser quality. You may find articles at Hubpages you’d wonder why anyone would ever publish. Or, you may find the best home for your blogging and writing needs.
Stats:
- Recommended for: Social networking (“social layer”)
- Launched: August 6th, 2006
- Founder: Paul Edmondson
- Total users: 74,000
- Pros: Not going out of business soon.
- Cons: Less ownership of your work.
- Costs: Free
- My verdict: A solid place to start writing and learn from other experts. Tightly-knit. Fun for everyone involved.
Joomla
Browse at Joomla.com
About:
Joomla is an advanced CMS used by developers to publish some of the websites we visits each day. Written in PHP, it uses many of the same structures as a WordPress site does. For whatever reason, developers have flocked elsewhere, but Joomla remains one of the web’s oldest and savviest places to run a blog or website.
Stats:
- Recommended for: Content Management, Web Content
- Released: August 17th, 2005
- Founders: The Joomla Project
- Total users: 35 million downloads
- Pros: over 6000 free extensions, estimated as the second most used content management system (CMS) after WordPress
- Cons: Smaller community, help out articles you find may be out of date.
- Costs: ?
- My verdict: Only really for a Joomla developer or website manager. Not an easy access point for a beginner.
Live Journal
Browse at LiveJournal.com
- Recommended for: Blogging, journaling, writing a diary
- Founded: April 15th, 1999
- Founder: Brad Fitzpatrick
- Total users: 39.6 million accounts, 1.7 million active accounts
- Pros: friend others to read their entries and leave comments, avatars, user info pages, to-do lists
- Cons: moved design to Russia in 2009, basic plan users see advertisements
- Premium features: express lane for quicker load times, call from your phone to a LiveJoural number and post voice recording to your journal
- Costs: Premium version, not sure of the costs here. Anyone know?
- My verdict: In mother Russia, blog write on you.
Quora
Browse at Quora.com
- Recommended for: Question and answer based websites
- Released: June 21st, 2010
- Founder: ?
- Total users: 500,000 reported in 2011, more now.
- Pros: Collaborative feel and separate blogging platform recently released.
- Cons: Less costumization.
- Costs: Free
- Interesting facts: 30% of Quora users hail from India. Founded by two former Facebook employees.
- My verdict: If you’re passionate about a topic but don’t have the time to maintain a blog, submitting questions and answers to Quora discussions is a great compromise.
Typepad
Browse at Typepad.com
- Founded October 2003:
- Founder: Say Media
- Total users: ?
- Pros: Ease of use
- Cons: Less costumization
- Costs: Free
- My verdict: Just love the news? If so, know that ABC, BBC, CBS, MSNBC and more use Typepad to maintain blogs.
Weebly
Browse at Weebly.com
- Founded: 2006
- Founder: David Rusenko
- Total users: hosts 15 million websites
- Pros: Drag and drop feature so easy a monkey could use it.
- Cons: Less control for the user
- Costs: ?
- My verdict: I’ve heard a lot of positive reviews here. For a company owner who needs a website but despises tech, it’s Weebly or Squarespace, and both are sound choices.
Drupal
Browse at Drupal.org
- Recommended for: Blogging, Content Management, Web Applications
- Founded: January 2001
- Founder: Dries Buytaert
- Total users: 1 million users and 30K developers
- Pros: 22,900 free add-ons, free and premium themes via the Drupal Theme Garden
- Cons: Quite involved, not ideal for beginners
- Costs: ?
- My verdict: Fun for developers and bloggers with a real interest in building code.
Squidoo
Browse at Squidoo.com
- Founded: 2005
- Founder: Seth Godin
- Total users: 1.5 million
- Pros: Lenses and points systems to level up are only part of the fun.
- Cons: Like Hubpages, you might not feel an ownership of your work.
- Costs: Free
- My verdict: A classy place to meet others before you get more serious about blogging.
New Releases ? ?
Postach.io
Browse at Postach.io
- Recommended for: On-the-go bloggers, note-taking
- Founded: 2013
- Founder: Evernote
- Total users: 20,000
- Pros: Supports popular comment plugin Disqus, lighter feel, easy to use.
- Cons: Less costumization
- Costs: Free
- My verdict: Too soon to form a verdict here!
Facebook Notes
Browse at Facebook.com/notes
- Recommended for: Social media integrated blogging
- Founded: 2013
- Founder: Facebook Developers
- Total users: Well, 1.1 billion already on Facebook…
- Pros: Simple to share images, links and quotes – useful if you’ve got a large, Facebook-centric audience already.
- Cons: Limited design and that blue Facebook-y feel we all should just escape every now and then.
- Costs: Free
- My verdict: Not much different from a Facebook page – I predict this to be a feature Facebook tries, directs advertisers to, then slowly wanders away from.
Svbtle
Browse at Svbtle.com
- Founded: 2013
- Founder: Dustin Curtis
- Total users: ?
- Pros: New, different; aren’t we all?
- Cons: Must apply for a membership and no commenting feature as of yet.
- Costs: Free
- My verdict: They are a “network of great people who want to make it easier for people to share and discover new ideas”. Excited to see where Svbtle goes in the next few months.
Sett
Coming soon!
Ghost
Coming soon!
Posthaven
Coming soon!
Posterous
Deprecated.
Almost Extinct ? ?
Blog.com
Browse at Blog.com
- Recommended for: Blogging
- Founded: 2004
- Founders: ?
- Total users: 2 million
- Pros: Free themes, multi-author blogging, social media widgets, video
- Cons: Less customization
- Premium features: Your own domain name, advertising network
- Costs: ?
- My verdict: You’d hope a domain name as strong as blog.com would produce a winner…
Zoomshare
Browse at ZoomShare.com
- Founded: ?
- Founder: ?
- Total users: < 50K
- Pros: Still has a community
- Cons: Shifting 100% of users to paid version
- Costs: “As of May 22, 2013 our free website service has been discontinued. If you would like to convert to the paid service click here and upgrade for the low cost of $6.95 a month.”
- My verdict: Not enough information to form a verdict.
Xanga
Browse at Xanga.com
- Founded: ?
- Founder: ?
- Total users: < 50K
- Pros: Resembles WordPress
- Cons: Unclear timeframe of new software releases
- Costs: ?
- My verdict: Not enough information to form a verdict.
The End?
Hardly! But now it’s your turn. If you’ve got anything to add, drop it in the comments below.
Lastly, I want you to know I’ve worked for literally weeks making this article as insanely helpful and informative as I could. If you could take a couple seconds to share it, that’d be awesome!
Thanks and cheers!
