You might like writing and sharing your knowledge or ideas with others. But, do you sometimes feel that your words aren’t getting enough attention then they deserve?

If this is so, starting a blog is the best way to promote your work, earn money and present it to a wider audience. There are many profitable niches which you can select for blogging.

Here the question arises, is creating a blog free?

Of course! Starting a blog will cost you nothing.

You just need to choose best blogging platform.

In this article, I’ll help you by showing the top 10 free blogging platforms on which you can easily set up a blog and start expressing yourself to the world.

Here is the list that we will be discussing and comparing in this article:

1. WordPress.org
2. Medium
3. Wix
4. Ghost
5. Weebly
6. HubPages
7. Joomla
8. Tumblr
9. Blogger
10. Postach.io

Are Free Blogging Platforms Really Helpful?

To answer this question, first you need to think whether you’re already a blogger, who has been blogging from months or years or you’re just a beginner?

However, if you’re the one who has not yet experimented with a single blog or a website and wondering how it works then starting a blog with a free blogging site will be really helpful.

Free blogging platforms will give you various amazing tools with which you can easily create and run your own blog.

You can test your ideas and figure out whether your blog topics hold the potential to attract viewers or not, without spending even a single penny.

That is why free blogging platforms are always recommended for beginners who are new to the blogging world.

Now, let’s start with the list that I kept on hold for a while.

Here you go!

Best for those who want to customize their blog. Little coding knowledge is required. You’ll be surprised to know that almost 30% of blogs on the internet are using WordPress.

You can create a blog for free with few easy steps. However, some efforts are required if you want to build a professional website. In the beginning, you need to invest your time and effort in learning and understanding things on WordPress. Meanwhile you can select best wordpress hosting and then install a theme for your blog.

The biggest benefit of WordPress is that you will have full control over your blog looks and other functions. To track the metrics of your blog, WordPress offers various google analytics plugins also.

WordPress.org software is totally free, so no additional cost is required. Moreover, all the upgrades are also free. But, buying a domain name will charge you approximately $15 per year (readers of websofttutorials will get free domain name + one year hosting for free) and hosting will cost you around $3 – $15.

If you are

• Open source and free
• Easily-to-use dashboard
• Thousands of themes and plugins
• Versatile and customizable

It is another great blogging site that works like WordPress but comparatively has a smaller community. It is an open-source management system that gives a self-hosted solution.

You can build any kind of a blog using different amazing designs and also create templates on your own.

You just need to have your own domain name and hosting to use it. Moreover, there are hundreds of themes available and various extensions to effectively optimize and customize your blog.

It is totally free to use, you only need to have your own paid domain name and hosting.

• Powerful and flexible
• Free amazing templates
• Useful extensions to add more features to blog

Medium is another big platform used for many purposes. Anyone having an account on it can publish his writing.

Over 60 million readers visit Medium every month. 

You’ll find a range of topics here, from science to technology to art, Medium has a wide number of users where you’ll get a chance to present your blog and get maximum views and shares. Undoubtedly, it is the best platform to give maximum exposure to your content.

It is quite easy to use this platform without worrying about other things like hosting or domain name. However, the only disadvantage of Medium is that you cannot build your own individual space on the internet as you can build with other blogging sites such as WordPress, Wix, Blogger, etc.

Blogging is completely free on Medium. You can share your stories to your followers, as well as millions of readers who follow relevant topics.

• Easy to use and navigate
• Exposure to a huge audience
• Fast and reliable

Wix is best for non-techie. It is a free website builder that was founded in 2006. You can easily manage it as it comes with super simple interface and  drag and drop options.

It is very easier for you to create a stylish website with modern designs. You’ll find a large number of templates here. Moreover, there is no additional cost for hosting as it is free. You just need to arrange and pick templates for your blog.

What differentiates Wix from others is its premium quality themes and templates for free.

I have use both wix and WordPress so according to my personal experience I have made Wix vs WordPress comparison.

You can take the benefit of the free plan. But, if you want to upgrade your plan, there are three types of plans that give some extra features.

Combo plan costs around $17/month in which you will get your own domain and remove advertisements from your website.

Unlimited plan costs $22/month that include unlimited bandwidth and storage limits

Business basic plan is for $28/month in which you can sell online and get business apps.

• Easy to use and edit website
• Premium themes and design templates
• Great mobile-friendly website tools

Ghost is another blogging platform with great features.

It is built on JavaScript and is available for a hosted or self-hosted version.

Ghost gives amazing features with a live preview of text on the screen. Creating a post is fast and easy and there are various options in the editing segment.

The Self-hosted plan costs you nothing.

However, for hosted service, you need to pay according to the number of websites and the amount of traffic.

Investing $29/month will give you one blog and 50,000 monthly page views including SSL encryption.

• Clean and smooth user interface
• Superfast
• Live preview of blog posts
• Easy to create mobile-friendly websites

Weebly is similar to Wix and comes up with easy drag and drop options. You can also sell products here.

It provides social media icons, newsletter subscriptions, media boxes and many more. However, you need to buy a domain name, which is not free on Weebly. The free plan will give you five custom pages, subdomain, 500MB storage and space for ads.

Creating an account is free. But, you need to spend $5/month to get a custom domain name.

For advanced features, you need to upgrade to higher plans that range between $12-$25/month.

• Easy to use
• Simple mobile optimization and customization
• Easy to upgrade
• High-quality templates

Hubpages is just like a Medium, where everyone’s content is managed at one place. It connects millions of users and allows sharing content that is seen by its large open community.

People can write blogs of under any niche. You just need to create an account to publish your content here. Hubpages allows you to share your stories with a wide audience and also earn money from ads and affiliate links.

It is totally free with no paid subscription, which means you can use it for free without paying any amount for a subscription every month.

• Search Engine Friendly
• Good customer support
• Totally free
• Easy to manage

Founded in 2007, Tumblr is a microblogging and social networking site, which is best sharing short-form content.

Tumblr is quite popular among youngsters and data from Dustinstout revealed that 46% of users on Tumblr are aged between 18-34 years. Amazingly, there are almost 371 million visits each month and 7 million new blogs are created every month. So, You can use its effective social network and get your blog across a large number of users.

Tumblr is mostly used by mobile phones, so you can easily write and share the blog. It is always easy to customize your blog with themes here and boost your posts through social media.

It is totally free. However, if you’re using it for business purposes, you can invest some amount to promote your business through ads that will appear to your desired audience within the site.

• Easy to set up
• Additional social feature to build a link with other users
• Easy to publish different types of content i.e. videos, images, GIFs or audio
• Easily customizable themes

Here comes another Blogging platform, which was founded in 1999 and bought by Google later in 2003.

It is way easier to use, you just need to sign up with your existing Google account and get access to run a blog on it.

Hosting is free and you can easily customize your blog with great themes.

It is completely free.

• Free and easy to set up
• Free hosting and other maintenance
• Mobile-optimized templates
• Track and prevent spam comments

If you want to create a beautiful blog in the easiest way possible, Postach is for you.

Blogging on Postach is effective and fast. It is powered by Evernote, which is an application that serves as your notebook. Users can create notes such as images, texts, drawings, photographs, etc.

Evernote can syncs automatically across all your devices i.e.smartphones, tablets, or computers.

You can publish your Evernote content on Postach easily. Moreover, it comes with a bunch of great themes and amazing content storage option that allows you to store content in Dropbox.

It offers a free trial at starting and when the trial ends you need to upgrade your plan that starts from $5/ month in which you will get your own domain, premium themes, password protection, source code access, and priority support.

The price of Postach plans ranges from $5-$25.

• Integration with Evernote, Google Analytics, Twitter, Facebook ,andDisqus.
• Social media links
• Custom domain support
• Variety of theme
• Easy customization
• Source code access