According to relevant statistics, blogging is one of the top three forms of media used in today’s content strategy.
This is not surprising. Whether you’re interested in corporate blogging or as a hobby, publishing blog content comes with many benefits. Blogging doesn’t just help you build authority in your industry – it also drives traffic to your website and enables you to better convert traffic into leads.
What are the best blogging platform collections? In order to reap the rewards of blogging, we will go through the process of choosing the right platform for your needs and goals. Then, we’ll explore some of the best blogging platforms that can be helpful if you’re looking to add a blog to your business website or create a standalone blog.
What are the blogging platforms? How to choose a blogging platform
Which blogging platform is better to choose? To choose the right blogging platform for your business, you first have to evaluate how its features align with your goals and needs. For example, if you need to improve your visibility in the SERPs, look for platforms with built-in SEO tools. If your priority is to start publishing visual content quickly, then you might focus on finding a platform that supports multimedia posts.
Let’s take a look at some of the essential features you might need for your blog. You can use this list when evaluating different blogging platforms.
Content Editor
The content editor is at the heart of every blogging platform. As a blogger, you’re probably working in this editor every day, so make sure to choose a platform with an editor you like.
You can list must-haves and nice features. For example, maybe your editor must have drag-and-drop and drag-and-drop functionality and auto-save features, but it would be nice to have an option to preview your post on a different device.
Themes and templates
Themes and templates allow you to customize your blog quickly and easily. When looking at different blogging platforms, take a look at their choice of themes and templates.
Do they have a lot of dedicated blogging options? Do they have a variety of free and premium ones? What is the average price of their premium themes? Can you edit themes and templates to create a truly customized look for your website?
You may also want the option to start from scratch instead of using a pre-designed theme.
These are just a few questions that can help you choose a platform with the design and customization options you need.
SEO features and tools
Optimizing your search content is essential to increase your blog’s traffic. According to a study by Sistrix, websites listed on Google’s first SERPs get 88% of organic clicks on a keyword or phrase, with 28.5% of them being the first result alone.
To get to the first page, you’d better need a platform with built-in tools to help you optimize your content. For example, CMS Hub provides SEO advice as you write.
If a platform doesn’t have this advanced feature, check to see if you can install a third-party SEO tool. Otherwise, you’ll have to speed up your understanding of SEO best practices and make sure to implement them on your blog.
Extensions and integrations
There isn’t a single blogging platform that offers every feature that every blogger wants out of the box. Additionally, your blogging needs and goals may change as your audience grows or your strategy shifts.
That’s why it’s important to choose a blogging platform that offers extensions or integrations with third-party tools. A platform with an app ecosystem will be able to scale with you over time, so you won’t have to migrate to a more flexible alternative in the future.
Now that you know some of the features to consider in the selection process, let’s take a look at some of the best blogging platforms on the market.
The compilation of the best blogging platforms is as follows:
- CMS Hub offers a wealth of features
- WordPress for themes and plugins
- Squarespace Design
- Wix for quick setup
- Weebly is easy to use
- Process CMS for customization
- Contently is used for enterprise content marketing
- Joomla Community Building
- Drupal’s flexibility
- Write.as privacy
- Simple Blogger
- Multimedia Tumblr
What are the blogging platforms? We’ve divided this list into paid and free blogging platforms so that you can find one that meets your needs and budget. Let’s get started.
Paid blogging platforms
Most premium blogging platforms will offer more features and control over your blog than free platforms. If you have the budget, investing in your blogging efforts now can help you grow over time, and the top list of the best blogging platforms is as follows:
CMS Hub
G2 Rating: 4.5/5.0 (1,093 reviews)
Best for: Rich features
CMS Hub ideal for users
Which blogging platform is better to choose? What sets CMS Hub apart from other blogging platforms is that it’s ideal for developers and marketers. It has the tools, technology, and workflows that developers need to build CRM-powered blogs that marketers need to manage.
CMS Center Pros
The biggest advantage of CMS Hub is that it’s powerful yet still easy to use. You can start by choosing a pre-designed theme or building your own custom theme. Then, using HubSpot’s blog editor and built-in SEO tools, you can quickly create search engine optimized blog posts using CTAs, forms, and other interactive elements. You can even create multilingual versions of your blog posts and A/B test them to reach a global audience. Before publishing, you can preview how your posts and pages will look on different types of devices.
Once you’re ready to start promoting, you can connect your blog to your social media accounts. This way, you can automatically share new blog posts on your social networks in the same place where you wrote them.
As you post more content, you can analyze your blog performance to see which topics and content types resonate with your readers. This is because CMS Hub is built as part of the HubSpot CRM platform.
CMS Center Cons
Since CMS Hub is designed to be an all-in-one solution for marketers and developers, it comes with a lot of rich features, including activity logging, flexible themes, multi-language support, and more. That’s a good thing for most bloggers. However, if you’re an individual or small business just starting out with blogging, then you probably don’t have the time or expertise to make the most of CMS Hub’s features. In that case, you’re better off using an easier or free alternative to get started.
Example of a CMS hub website
Below you can check out the feature-rich blog that the retailer has built on CMS Hub.
CMS Center Key Takeaways
- Meet the needs of developers and marketers
- Powered by HubSpot’s CRM tool
- Built-in multi-language support, SEO recommendations, and other advanced features
WordPress
G2 Rating: 4.3/5.0 (8,096 reviews)
Best for: Themes and plugins
WordPress ideal user
Best Blogging Platform Collection Recommendations: Creating and managing a blog on WordPress may require more maintenance than other platforms, but it will provide the scalability and content management features that publishers and other businesses need to create complex blogs.
WordPress Pros:
WordPress was originally created as a blogging platform. While it has evolved into a multi-purpose content management system, it still has many features and themes for blogging.
Not only does WordPress enable you to purchase a custom domain and download one of over 3,500 themes designed specifically for blogging, it also allows you to add social media buttons, forms, affiliate links, and other features through plugins.
With over 59,000 free plugins available, the customization options are almost limitless.
Cons of WordPress:
You have to make sure that your theme and plugins are compatible and up-to-date. Otherwise, they could ruin the user experience or ruin your website. Other maintenance tasks, such as finding and repairing broken links, updating core software, and optimizing databases, will also be your responsibility. This can be difficult for site owners who don’t have the time or technical expertise to maintain their site on a regular basis.
WordPress blog example
Tech Crunch is one of the largest and most popular tech news blogs, powered by WordPress. Take a look at this WordPress website example below.
WordPress Key Takeaways
- Ideal for publishers and others who want to extend their platform with plugins
- Over 3,500 free blog themes
- Website maintenance can be time-consuming
Squarespace
G2 Rating: 4.4/5.0 (921 reviews)
Best for: Design
Squarespace is ideal for users
What are the blogging platforms? Squarespace is the ideal blogging platform for businesses and individuals to create image-rich content. With Squarespace’s award-winning designer templates and integrations with Getty Images, Unsplash, and Google AMP, you can create engaging and shareable visual content.
Squarespace Pros
While Squarespace only offers around 140 templates, they’re all mobile-optimized and fully customizable, so you can create a blog that looks just like you want it to be. Once you’ve designed your pages, you can use Squarespace’s blogging and SEO tools to create and optimize your content.
Finally, after publishing your blog posts, you can connect your social media accounts to promote them easily. Then use built-in analytics tools to understand where your traffic is coming from, what visitors are looking for, and how they interact with your content.
Squarespace Cons
Squarespace offers a lot more features, from audio file support to newsletter sign-up forms, but in the end it has limited functionality. That’s because it supports fewer than 30 extensions, so you’re mostly limited by the out-of-the-box features that Squarespace offers.
Due to their lack of some of the features that bloggers need – such as the auto-save feature – Squarespace isn’t the ideal platform for everyone.
Squarespace blog example
Squarespace does allow some bloggers to create beautiful websites, like this lifestyle blog below.
Squarespace Key Takeaways
- Best for individuals and brands who want to tailor their blog to their personal style
- There are few templates to choose from, but the quality is high
- Limited to the features and handful of extensions that Squarespace offers
Wix
G2 Rating: 4.2/5.0 (1,338 reviews)
Best for: Quick setup
Wix is ideal for users
Best Blogging Platform Ranking: Wix is a popular blogging platform for beginners who want to find hosting and blogging tools in one place and prioritize speed and design over features.
Wix Pros:
Which blogging platform is better to choose? With Wix, you have two options for creating a blog. With the Wix editor, you can choose from over 800 pre-designed templates that can be used by any blogger, whether you own a retail business or run a food review website. Or, if you know HTML and CSS, you can start from scratch. On the other hand, with Wix AI design, you can fill out a quick questionnaire and create a blog for you.
After you’ve chosen or created a template, or used Wix ADI to choose a template for you, you can start writing and editing posts on your desktop or mobile device, embedding Wix’s stock photos and videos or your own media, and organizing them into themes.
Once you’re done writing, you can configure your SEO settings to improve organic reach, use Wix’s email tools to push your content to subscribers, and share it through your social media accounts. You can further develop your readers’ sense of community by making them members.
Wix Cons:
While Wix is more versatile than other managed website builders, it lacks customization options and content management features, especially when comparing Wix to WordPress or other CMS.
For example, to add more advanced elements to a page, such as music or a map, you must add HTML code. For beginners, this process can be daunting, especially when compared to the ease of installing a plugin on WordPress. Its post editor isn’t drag-and-drop either, which can be frustrating for some bloggers.
Wix blog examples
Take a look at this Wix blogger’s website below for an example of a sleek but relatively simple blog.
Wix Key Takeaways
- Perfect for bloggers who prioritize speed and design over features
- Choose to use pre-designed templates or start from scratch
- The editor lacks drag-and-drop functionality
Weebly
G2 Rating: 4.2/5.0 (419 reviews)
Best for: Easy to use
Weebly is ideal for users
Introducing the Best Blogging Platform Collection: Weebly is another popular blogging platform for bloggers who want everything they need to publish their blog in one place, including website building tools, templates, and hosting. More specifically, Weebly is best for creating blogs that are rich in content but have more basic features.
Weebly Pros
Weebly is as affordable and easy to use as Wix, but it sets itself apart in a number of ways. For example, the editor supports drag-and-drop functionality for posts and pages. You can also create more complex layouts by adding elements like forms and image galleries. You can also add more sublevels to the navigation menu to organize more content.
All Weebly templates are also mobile-optimized, which means you don’t need to make any additional edits or rearrangements for mobile devices.
Insignificant drawbacks
While Weebly offers more features than most website builders, it does lack flexibility compared to WordPress or other CMSs. For example, you can’t drag and drop elements anywhere on posts and pages, and you can’t edit parts of the underlying source code. These limitations do make Weebly easier to learn and use than most platforms, but they can be frustrating for more advanced users.
Since Weebly was acquired by ecommerce company Square, some pain points have also emerged. A typical example: users who choose to create a website will see the standard Weebly editor, while users who choose to create a website with an online store will see a completely different editor called Square Online Builder. This has caused some confusion among users.
Weebly blog example
Check out this Weebly blog below, it’s informative but not feature-rich.
Weebly Key Takeaways
- Ideal for informative blogs
- The editor supports forms, image galleries, and other advanced elements
- No access to the source code
Craft CMS
G2 Rating: 4.1/5.0 (35 reviews)
Best for: Customization
Craft CMS ideal user
Craft CMS is a blogging platform designed for developers, designers, and web professionals.
Process CMS Benefits:
With Craft’s personalized content modeling, powerful templates, and the option to edit the source code, you have complete control over the look and functionality of your site — if you have the necessary experience.
Craft CMS also offers an image editor, collaboration tools, and localization features to translate your content into specific languages. You can now also manage multiple blogs from a single Craft installation. To analyze your content performance, you can integrate Craft CMS’s dashboard with Google Analytics.
Craft CMS blog example
If you have web development experience that takes full advantage of Craft CMS features, you’ll be able to create a complex blog with custom post types, like this travel blog below.
Process CMS Key Takeaways
- Advanced features, including personalized content modeling and localization capabilities
- Free version for a single administrator account
- Some experience in web development is required
Contently
G2 Rating: 4.5/5.0 (51 reviews)
Best for: Enterprise content marketing
Users with ideal content
What are the blogging platforms? Contently is a powerful blogging platform that’s ideal for enterprise companies with large budgets but few in-house editing resources.
Advantages of content:
Contently allows you to manage the entire content creation process in one place. You can create and visualize your editing strategy with their customizable production calendar tool, organize your blog posts with their markup tool, and collaborate effectively with your team on projects by leveraging their advanced workflow tools. You can even pay Contently’s highly vetted freelancers to have them write some of this content for you.
Before publishing your content, Contently’s intelligent content moderation tool will ensure that your content is consistent with your brand, optimized for search, and compliant with the law. Finally, to refine your content strategy, Contently enables you to compare your content performance against industry benchmarks, quantify its ROI, and measure its performance by topic, format, and source directly in your dashboard.
Disadvantages of content
The biggest downside of Contently is that it’s out of the budgets of many small businesses and individuals. With prices ranging from $3,000 to $25,000 per month, Contently is one of the most expensive blogging platforms for enterprise companies.
Examples of content blogs
Royal Bank of Canada, one of the largest banks in North America, uses Contently to streamline content creation across 14 marketing departments. Check out the blog below.
Content Key Takeaways
- You can manage the entire content creation process
- In-depth analysis
- Pricing is only available for enterprise companies
Joomla
G2 Rating: 3.9/5.0 (338 reviews)
Best for: Community building
Joomla ideal user
Best Blogging Platforms Ranking: Joomla is an open-source CMS with advanced content and user management features built directly into the platform. This makes it a great WordPress alternative for creating a community-focused blog.
Joomla Pros
Which blogging platform is better to choose? Joomla offers a wealth of built-in features as well as thousands of extensions. Joomla, for example, allows you to create custom post types instantly, manage hundreds of users, and publish content in multiple languages.
It also offers some great extensions for blogging. For example, StackIdeas’ EasyBlog offers a more concise drag-and-drop editor than Joomla’s built-in editor. You can also enable star ratings on your blog and use this extension to automatically publish posts to your social media platforms.
Joomla Cons
Joomla does have a steeper learning curve than a CMS like WordPress due to its powerful built-in features, so it takes more time to set up. It also offers fewer themes and extensions to choose from than WordPress, which can limit your customization options.
Joomla blog example
Here’s an example of a Joomla blog built using EasyBlog.
Joomla Key Takeaways
- Advanced content management features
- Steep learning curve due to powerful built-in features
- A blog extension like EasyBlog may be required
Drupal
G2 Rating: 3.8/5.0 (375 reviews)
Best for: Flexibility
Drupal ideal user
Introducing the Best Blogging Platforms Collection: Drupal is a highly flexible open-source CMS that is best suited for advanced users as well as enterprise companies with complex blogging needs and are looking for a self-hosted solution.
Drupal Pros:
Drupal has hundreds of features and modules out of the box. If you know how to use them or have the time to learn, then Drupal will provide you with more powerful features than other open-source platforms.
Specifically, Drupal supports multiple taxonomies, content types, page templates, blocks, views, and more for creating and managing a large number of different types of content. It also has advanced user privileges, so you can provide site administrators, content editors, and other stakeholders with personalized access to specific content. This – along with its multilingual capabilities, layout builder, and other modules – will allow you to create and manage large, complex blogs
Cons of Drupal:
If you don’t know how to use Drupal’s out-of-the-box features and modules, and you don’t have time to learn, they can be confusing and hinder your blogging efforts. In this case, it may be better to use a simpler platform.
Drupal blog example
Below is a Drupal blog with all the add-ons and modules developed by the site owner.
Drupal Key Takeaways
- Best for technical users with complex blogging needs
- Powerful content management capabilities
- Advanced user rights
Free blogging platform
Although free blogging platforms may not offer as much functionality and flexibility as premium blogging, many can still offer the blogging tools and customizations you need to get started. Let’s take a look at some of the most popular options below.
Write.as
G2 Rating: 4.3/5.0 (23 reviews)
Best for: Privacy
Write as an ideal user
Write.as is a lightweight blogging platform that is perfect for individuals who want to create a simple blog with a minimalist design.
Advantages of writing
Write.as offers a streamlined editor with only one auto-save feature that provides the experience of writing in a virtual diary. Write.as is also free to use and doesn’t support ads.
Teams can also use it like Google Docs to share updates, proposals, and work in progress (with a monthly subscription).
Write as a disadvantage
Write.as does require you to use Markdown, which is a syntax that uses special characters to format text. For example, you can enter an asterisk to create a bullet point, a hashtag to create a title, and [Link] to add a link. Grammar is not difficult to learn, but it may require some practice. If you only want to click a button to create a bulleted list or add a hyperlink, then it’s better to use one of the following free platforms.
Additionally, while Write.as is free to use, you’ll have to upgrade to its Pro plan for $6 per month to connect a custom domain name, install a custom theme, remove nofollow tags from links, and more.
Write.as Example of a blog
Check out an example of a Pro blog below.
Write the key takeaways
- Best for people who want a minimalist interface and design
- Requires you to learn and use Markdown syntax
- The free version is ad-free
Blogger
G2 Rating: 4.1/5.0 (76 reviews)
Best for: Simple
Bloggers are ideal users
What are the blogging platforms? Blogger is a free platform designed for novice bloggers. While it lacks many content management features, Blogger is more feature-rich than most free blogging platforms. As a result, Blogger is ideal for individuals looking to start a lifestyle blog as a hobby or to earn some extra money.
Pros of bloggers:
Best Blogging Platforms Leaderboard: The biggest advantage of Blogger is the ease with which it is to create and customize a relatively basic blog.
To get started, you just need to create an account on Google, choose a template, and publish it. You can buy a custom domain, optimize your SEO settings, connect your blog to Google Analytics, optimize your posts with Adsense, and even edit your website’s HTML and CSS — but you won’t be able to do much beyond that.
Cons of bloggers
To better understand the limitations of the platform, you can compare Blogger with WordPress or other CMS. With Blogger, you can’t install plugins to extend the functionality of your website. You can’t create different content types, such as portfolio pages. And you can’t change the default display of content from reverse chronological to most popular posts.
In short, if you need content management features and customization options for your CMS, look for an alternative to Blogger.
Blogger blog example
Take this personal blog below as an example.
Key takeaways:
- Best for lifestyle bloggers
- More feature-rich than other free blogging platforms
- You can’t create a custom post type or change the display of a post
Tumblr
G2 Rating: 3.9/5.0 (26 reviews)
Best for: Multimedia
Ideal users
Introducing the Best Blogging Platforms Collection: Tumblr is appealing to both individual bloggers and brands. While bloggers may use this as their only platform, brands tend to use it as one of many platforms to showcase their personality.
Tumblr Pros
Which blogging platform is better to choose? Tumblr combines the power of blogging and social networking in a highly visual publishing platform.
Tumblr offers everything you need to create a professional-looking website. You can choose from hundreds of free and premium themes and add multiple pages, sidebars, social sharing buttons, comment sections, and more. You can also purchase a custom domain name from a domain registrar instead of using a free subdomain: yourusername.tumblr.com. If you have HTML coding skills, you can further customize your website.
When you’re happy with the design of your site, you can start creating and publishing multimedia post types. Include photos, GIFs, links, chat conversations, audio files, and videos in your content to make it more engaging, memorable, and shareable.
Since other users can easily like, reply, and retweet your posts on their Tumblr and other social accounts directly from their dashboard, it’s a great platform to engage and nurture an online community.
Tumblr Cons
Limitations on the website can be frustrating for users. For example, you can only schedule (or “queue”) 50 posts a day, which can limit your ability to plan and execute a long-term content strategy. You can also only upload videos in MP4 format that are less than 100MB and can only track 20 tags at a time. Additionally, if you are found to have violated Tumblr’s Community Guidelines, your site can be suspended at any time.
Example of a Tumblr blog
Vogue has a highly visual and multimedia-rich website on Tumblr. Take a look below.
Ranking of the best blogging platforms
Key takeaways:
- Ideal for publishing multimedia posts
- Limits on what you post, when, and how often
- Ideal for individuals and brands to engage with their followers
Start blogging
Once you’ve identified your blogging goals and needs, you can choose a blogging platform that has the functionality and flexibility you’re looking for. Ideally, your platform is like a CMS Hub, combining ease of use and powerful features, so you can start blogging and reap the benefits of SEO and traffic.
