Blogging can be a pain in the butt when it comes to management. Hosting your own blog has its perks — flexibility and customization — but it could prove troublesome if you don’t have much technical knowledge. Plus, self-hosting a blog requires renting server space. What if you don’t want to deal with any of that?
For a while, if you wanted to blog for free you were stuck between WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, and a few other alternatives that weren’t so good. Nowadays, you have an ocean of free blogging platforms that will serve you well depending on what you want to do.
No complicated online setups. No plugin management. No hosting costs. If you’re looking for a fast, easy, and free way to get started blogging, check out these platforms.
Roon
- Roon blogs use a responsive design.
- Maintain multiple blogs under one account.
- Write posts in Markdown or Rich Text modes.
- Export your blog data in Markdown format with one click.
- Extend functionality with premium addons.
- iOS and Mac apps are available for writing new posts.
Nancy took us through a review of Roon last year.
Postach.io
The real benefit is that Postach.io will always be as powerful and flexible as Evernote. There are plenty of apps that you can use to write notes in Evernote, which means you can use those same exact tools to write Postach.io posts. If you already use Evernote, Postach.io can be integrated in less than a minute.
Posts can be formatted in Rich Text if your Evernote app supports it (the most flexible would be to use the web version of Evernote) or you can format your posts directly with HTML or Markdown. As for comments, Postach.io utilizes the Disqus commenting system, which you can enable in your Postach.io settings.
Throwww
This is obviously good for writing one-off blog entries to be shared on social networks like Facebook. However, Throwww does allow you to sign-in using Twitter and post it as a tweet, so Throwww could be useful as a sort of blogging extension to Twitter.
There’s very little functionality to Throww, which is expected since it’s all about blank canvas minimalism. However, posts do support comments which are threaded and scored using an upvote/downvote system that’s reminiscent of Reddit.
All in all, Throwww is great if you don’t need a centralized location for all of your blog entries. If you want to write something here and there whenever you feel like it, you can. It’s simple and fast, perfect for the lazy blogger who just wants to write.
Medium
The drive behind Medium is all about grouping blog posts together in order to create context. Instead of authors having a central blogspace, articles are placed into thematic “collections” (which can be open to the public or invite-only) and as readers read certain articles, they’ll automatically be exposed to similar articles from similar collections.
In one sense, this takes away some control from the writer, but it also frees up the writer to write as he or she pleases without feeling the pressure of having to cultivate an audience for “their blog.” Medium handles all of that in the background.
Nancy recently walked us through a review of Medium.
WordPress / Blogger/ Tumblr
WordPress is the world’s largest blogging platform and provides the most functionality out of any free hosted service. Blogger, formerly known as Blogspot, is great for newbies but lacks a lot of customization options, which means most users quickly outgrow its feature set. Tumblr has a huge and active community but it isn’t exactly blogging in the traditional sense.
Which should you use?
If you want power and reliability, WordPress is the way to go. There’s a reason why it’s so popular. Plus, its ubiquity means that if you ever run into a problem, there’s a good chance that you’ll be able to find a solution on the web in no time. Be sure to read James’s tips for starting a WordPress blog.
If you want a quick setup and you intend to write long-form posts but don’t care about flexibility, customization, or personalization, then you’ll want to use Blogger. You can get started in mere minutes and you really won’t need to worry about any sort of administration.
Tumblr is something of a micro-blogging platform. You can write long-form posts on it if you want, but most Tumblrs exist simply to post images and GIFs that others can quickly share. If you don’t intend to write long-form very much, Tumblr will serve you well. Adhere to the Tumblr etiquette guidelines to maximize your blogging experience.
Which free blogging platform will you use? Do you know of any others that deserve a mention? Share your thoughts with us in the comments!
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