Best Blogging Platform For Bloggers [Beginners]

You might be wondering how to choose the best blogging platform since there are several types out there. 

A newbie can get confused at first, afraid of making the wrong move. 

I had to struggle with this decision at the earlier stage, but after doing some digging, I later figured out what was best for me. 

Mind you; my best must not necessarily be your best. I will analyze some of the best and most popular blogging platforms out there so that you can make a well-informed decision for yourself. 

You will choose what will meet your needs after seeing the ups and downs of each platform.

Here is the list of the most popular and best blogging platforms, details of each will follow shortly.

• WordPress.org 
• Wix
• Web.com
• Gator 
• WordPress.com
• Blogger 
• Hubspot CMS
• Medium 
• Ghost 
• Tumblr

Like I said earlier, my best must not necessarily be your best. 

Knowing what you want from a platform, you can easily decide what will serve you best. 

You will want a platform that will simplify things for you as a beginner. 

I mean saving you the stress of doing everything yourself when I say. 

Your preferred platform should be flexible to changes, growth, and other necessary blogging essentials as your blog grows. 

I will advise you to sit down for a while to decide what you aim to get from a platform. 

Going through the details, you can easily pick what suits your need. 

Let’s dive into the details of each platform listed above.

WordPress.org

I’m a fan of WordPress.org. It’s my number one go-to platform whenever I think about blogging, and I also recommend it most times. 

If you haven’t heard, it’s the most popular blogging platform that gives life to over 43% of websites. 

Here is why it’s number one on my list of best blogging platforms.

Its user-friendly features make it flexible for beginners to add custom themes and other features like plugins which allow you to add things like contact forms and galleries.

Having control over every aspect of your blog might not be necessary to you as a beginner, but trust me, you will want to be in control when you begin to see some growth. 

Adding an online store or course and paid memberships will put more money in your pocket. 

With its search engine-friendly nature, you can add Google Analytics to help monitor where your traffic is coming from and other necessary information such as keywords to drive more traffic to your blog. 

This makes it the number one open-source blogging platform there is.

Its easy maneuverability allows adding videos and other social media content by dragging and dropping. 

It’s free software. All you need is a domain name which will cost you about $14.99 a year, and web hosting, which will also cost you about $7.99 a month. 

I can assure you that it is worth the price from experience. 

Some drawback to using WordPress.org is constant learning and managing your security which can be tedious for a beginner. 

Nevertheless, it’s still number one on my list of best blogging platforms. 

Wix 

If you are a small business owner and need a website, then Wix is for you. 

Its drag and drop features enable quickly building up a website without any coding skills. 

Founded in 2006, it’s a hosted platform you could blog on or add the blog to your website and is currently home to over 110 million users.

Let’s see why it’s number two on my list of best blogging platforms.

In case you hate to code, then Wix is for you. 

The drag and drop features enable building a site without learning to code. 

Isn’t that exciting 

While using the drag and drop features, templates are readily available to help further ease the process. 

It has the most beautiful templates you can get on any platform. 

The pricing is affordable, as you can get a custom domain for $4.50 per month and a premium plan starting from $8.50 to $24.50 a month.

Let’s now see some of its drawbacks. 

As with all free accounts and everything offered free of charge, setting up e-commerce features can only be done through paid memberships. 

If you decide to use the free account, there will be a constant pop-up of Wix branding ads which can be very annoying. 

Web.com 

This beginner-friendly website builder is unique and requires no coding skills. Just drag and then drop. 

It allows the addition of a blog section to your website or online store and has the most affordable price you can think of, starting from as low as $1.95 a month. 

Templates are there for you to customize the blog to your taste further. Website Analytics, SEO features, autosave, and other essential features are there for you to play around with.

I rank it third on my list of best blogging platforms because of its following advantages.

The price is fantastic $1.95 per month is a deal you want to take, and its customer agents are always on stand-by if you run into trouble.

It is easy to set up. 

No coding skills are required because you can drag and drop. So don’t forget that beautiful templates are there for you to play around with. 

The main drawback is the difficulty of moving your site to another platform. 

This difficulty results from it being mainly a website builder. 

Third-party plugins are few, and blogging is not as efficient as WordPress. 

If you are all about minimizing cost due to the type of business you run, web.com is what you should go for. 

Gator 

This is another perfect choice for a website building and blogging platform by HostGator. 

The drag and drop features enable easy flexibility for blogs and online stores. 

Don’t get confused with Gator and HostGator. Like the implies, HostGator offers web hosting services to start Word press blogs while Gator allows the creation and hosting of other types of blogs. 

Let’s look at some advantages of Gator to help you make better choices.

As with most drag and drop features offered by other platforms, no coding skills, thus no headaches.

Most of the tedious tasks such as backups and security are taken care of by HostGator. 

You can easily add your online store if you are into business. 

The free domain and SSL certificate make it one of the most popular platforms for bloggers.

The price is pretty low. 

You get 55% off for all builder plans. 

Starter plans are also cheap, about $3.46 per month. 

You also land a free domain and SSL certificate for your purchase. 

We all have to deal with some drawbacks like the limited number of apps and extensions it offers, not to mention how its e-commerce features are only given on higher paid plans. 

This can be very painful for a beginner with no money to spend. 

Although there is no free account, you are sure to get a money-back guarantee of 45 days if you are not OK with the platform. 

It is still a perfect platform and definitely among the top I would recommend. 

WordPress.com

It goes way back to 2005 as a blog hosting service offered by a company named Automatic. 

If you don’t want to spend money on hosting, you can go for its free blog hosting service. 

Remember that this free hosting has limited features, and the website name would look like this https://yourblogname.wordpress.com. 

You will have to opt for the paid plans to get additional features and a custom domain name without a wordpress.com. 

These are some of the reasons you may decide to go for WordPress.com.

It is free if you decide to keep things simple as a beginner. 

You may later upgrade to a paid plan for the custom domain name. 

I don’t know of any hosting platform with an easy setup like this $4 to $8 per month, which is paid yearly is the price. 

The $4 a month personal plan will give you a custom domain name and remove those undesired ads from your blog. 

Of course, there will always be drawbacks to most things offered freely. 

Drawbacks like not having complete control over your blog, constantly seeing ads that will annoy your most time, and fewer themes to play around with. 

You will enjoy it when you go for its paid version. 

Blogger 

This is one of the most common and popular platforms, popular because it is offered by the world’s most used search engine, which is google. 

This is definitely for newbies with no coding or much tech skills. 

It was launched in 1999 by Pyra lab but later acquired and redesigned by google.

It’s straightforward to use. 

The only requirement is a Google account, something most people already have. 

Here are some advantages of using this platform 

It is free of charge, requiring no technical or coding skills. 

Even a lane man on the street can use Blogger. 

You rest assured of google security because it is owned by google 

Some of its drawbacks you should know are: 

A friend of mine got suspended from this platform at one point. 

He probably violated some of their policies. This shows that Google can suspend your blog if they like.

You only have the essential tools to play around, coupled with fewer design options and templates. 

I also forgot to mention that its updates and addition of new features are not frequent, which might make your blog old-fashioned. 

Please don’t get discouraged from using Blogger, as this is where some of the well-doing blogs I know started. 

It would help if you had in mind that as your blogs grow, you will want to switch to another platform for added features and ownership. 

Hubspot CMS

If you are operating small, medium enterprise websites, Hubspot is for you as it is an all-in-one platform. 

You can use this single platform for things such as the creation of websites, sending newsletters, customer list management, and much more. 

This is because it is built on top of HubSpot’s marketing and CRM tools so that you can use it for so many things. 

This also makes its website builder flexible to customize, and you can also personalize the content your readers see based on their history on the site. 

A platform you should try out. 

Its advantages are:

• You will get better SEO rankings and conversions and a free SSL certificate.
• The setup is easy. 
• No technical expertise is required since HubSpot will host the website, and you also have the drag and drop features which means you don’t need to know to code.

Some drawbacks you should know include: 

The price might be too high for a beginner, starting from $25 a month with all the main features of a well-designed and secured blog. 

Moving from one blogging platform to another might give you headaches. It can be lengthy and tedious, depending on your previous provider.

Although HubSpot CRM gives free tools, there is no free version of the CMS available. 

This is something you should take note of if you are all about minimizing cost. 

Medium 

Medium is like a social environment or space that allows users or writers to push their content out there to the world. 

All you have to do is create an account by signing up, then go with publishing articles. 

It has become a massive community in recent times, consisting of bloggers, journalists, experts of other disciplines, and course writers. 

Despite the limited social networking features, it is still pretty easy to use, so go ahead and play around with some of its features. 

Medium is free of charge. 

You won’t pay a dime for it. 

Let’s go through some reasons you may want to use the medium. 

You can easily reach people with similar interests because there is an already existing community of such people. 

No coding or any form of technical skills are required. 

It allows you to focus more on writing, thus saving you the time and energy to build a blog or design websites that can be boring and annoying and, most importantly, a source of distraction. 

Its drawbacks are:

Making money is somewhat tricky as you cannot run your ads. 

Be careful not to lose your blog because your audience goes with losing your blog, and it offers minimal features of brand building and designing. 

You don’t get the chance to have a domain name unique to yourself or your business. 

You Will always have something of this nature: https://medium.com/@yourname, which doesn’t look professional. 

Ghost 

Available as a hosted platform and software capable of being installed, Ghost is a blogging platform mainly focused on blog post-write-ups. 

Its advantages are:

• The JavaScript features have made it super fast since its inception in 2013. 
• Writers can be more focused on blogging and writing instead of website building, and you don’t need any setup for its hosted version. 
• The user interface is clean and well structured, intuitive, and free of clutter. 

The drawbacks you should know are:

The price is somewhat similar to those of other platforms, about $14.99 a year for a custom domain and $7.99 a month for web hosting. 

The price is OK, but it can be challenging for a beginner.

The setup can be challenging if you are the do-it-yourself type of person.

However, the themes are limited for customizing the blog, and this customization cannot be done quickly with apps.

Since its user interface is somewhat simple, options are minimal.

Tumblr 

Think of Tumblr as Twitter in which you tweet, retweet, and follow posts or individuals of interest to you. 

The same goes for Tumblr, which offers features like following other blogs, reblogging, and some other sharing features.

Advantages 

• It functions like social media where you can blog, follow and reblog specific posts, videos, images, and audio.
• The free subdomain comes like this: http://yourname.tumblr.com, which can be connected to a premium custom domain name; as with most social media, the setup is straightforward.
• It is free to use, except that you have to purchase a custom domain and other third-party apps for customizing your blog. 

Its drawbacks include:

You cannot extend Tumblr as your blog grows because its limited features and many themes don’t give additional features. 

The Tumblr blog can be complicated in terms of backup or importing it to other platforms.

If you want to know my take on the best blogging platform, I will go for the number one on my list, WordPress.org. 

Here are my reasons for making it my overall best blogging platform

• Your blog is genuinely yours because you have control over every aspect. 
• As your blog grows and you want to rake in more money, you can easily add features like online courses and businesses of your choice.
• Their custom themes can be stunning. You get a unique blog appearance. 
• There are many plugins to play around with, and it is friendly to search engines. 
• Talk of the cost, considering all the features you stand to get, I would say it is affordable and worth the price. 

They are arranged from top to bottom, with the top being the best. 

You might have your list arranged according to your preference, but this will at least remove the confusion you might have while choosing the platform to use for your blog. 

If you are already a professional blogger with lots of experience with these platforms and others not listed here, please feel free to drop your list in the comment box, or you can decide to rearrange my list in order of your preferred platform. 

Just make sure to drop a comment in the comment box below, and I will be happy to read them. 

Questions for further clarification can also be asked, and I will be glad to answer them. 

Let me allow you to catch your breath as you have come this far with your reading but ensure to stay tuned for our next money-making piece because helping you make money keeps this place going. 

If you will like to know more about blogging and how to make money from blogging, feel free to check out our other content.