Best Blogging Platforms for Beginners (2024)

Starting a new blog can be intimidating for beginners. There's so much to figure out - from the technical aspects of setting up a website, to designing an attractive layout, to ensuring your content is optimized for search engines. Furthermore, there’s an information overload and all the new jargon can get heads spinning.

It's enough to make aspiring bloggers give up before they even get started. But the good news is there are a variety of blogging hosting tools that can remove much of the uncertainty.

These platforms are intuitive and feature-rich, handle backend tasks like coding, and simplify customer-facing tasks such as conversion rate optimization, design, and SEO.

In this guide, we'll cover 10 such options. We'll also dive into the key factors that make a platform well-suited for beginners. By the end, you'll have the information you need to choose the right platform for your first blog with confidence.

Here are the 10 best blogging platforms to explore:

1.Super with Notion

Super transforms your content in Notion into a sleek and functional blog. You can create and manage your content entirely within the Notion interface, then publish it through Super, thanks to the frictionless integration between the two tools.

Furthermore, Super circumvents many of Notion's inherent limitations when it comes to blogging. For example, while Notion has a built-in writing interface, it lacks features like integrations with ad networks, SEO optimization, and advanced design customization.

Super plugs all these gaps and more.

It offers intuitive design tools that make it easy to create an attractive blog, even if you're not a designer. You can customize colors, fonts, and layouts using pre-built templates, so you don't have to start from scratch. And connecting your Notion site to a custom domain is simpler and more affordable when done through Super.

Finally, Super supports adding custom code. While you’ll be fine without writing a single line of code, you have an option to add snippets to enhance the design beyond Super’s built-in capabilities and integrate the blog with your favorite tools.

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Notion could be the perfect blogging platform for beginners thanks to its simplicity and flexibility. You do not need to worry about too many settings and quickly create a functional blog with Super.

2. WordPress CMS

wordpress blogging platform for beginners

WordPress is the most popular content management system used by over 40% of all websites. However, its vast feature set and complexity can make it a daunting choice for beginner bloggers.

While WordPress offers unparalleled flexibility and extensibility, this can also be its downfall for those just starting out. The platform is anything but simple - its ocean of settings, plugins, and customization options can quickly become overwhelming. Setting up a basic, functional WordPress blog requires navigating a steep learning curve that many newcomers find discouraging.

In contrast to the streamlined, intuitive experience of a platform like Notion, WordPress often feels like using a machine gun to kill a housefly. Beginners may struggle to create a minimally viable product that "just works" without getting inundated by the technical details.

That said, WordPress is ideal for blogs with the potential to grow into large, feature-rich websites. Its plugin ecosystem provides solutions for nearly every blogging need, from SEO optimization to e-commerce integration. And its widespread adoption means easy access to detailed tutorials, support, and community resources.

However, this plugin-based approach can also be a double-edged sword. While plugins make it easy to add functionality, they also introduce additional code that can slow down your site and potentially create compatibility issues if not properly maintained.

3. Wix

Wix has evolved big time from its early days as a simple website builder into a comprehensive digital platform. Today, it combines AI-powered tools, e-commerce capabilities, and advanced marketing features while maintaining its core promise of simplicity and accessibility. So if e-commerce is the end goal of your blogging efforts, Wix might be a good option.

It is also worth noting that Wix has a rich feature page and a vast array of tools and options that can overwhelm beginners. Additionally, once you choose and publish with a template, you're locked in - switching requires rebuilding your site from scratch. This is a major drawback as you do not know your blog's future requirements — Wix can end up being too rigid for beginner bloggers.

However, Wix comes With 900+ professionally designed templates, built-in SEO tools, AI-powered features, and an extensive app marketplace, which makes it a good choice for static blogs. Furthermore, it is a no-code platform, backed by 24/7 support, making it perfect for users who want professional results without technical complexity.

4. Medium

Medium combines the ease of a blogging platform with a unique monetization model, where writers can earn through the platform's membership system. Bloggers receive a share of reader subscription fees based on engagement with their content, creating an opportunity for passive income through quality writing.

The platform's clean, intuitive interface makes writing and publishing quite a straightforward process. In fact, you can start writing immediately after creating an account. Visitors engage well with the content in Medium as the reading experience is equally refined, with a distraction-free layout that puts content first.

However, Medium's closed ecosystem makes it challenging to rank content in search engines, and traffic generation is largely limited to Medium's existing user base. While it works well for content syndication, building a sustainable external audience proves difficult.

Furthermore, Medium could be quite inflexible for bloggers planning to create a content-based business. You can't create custom landing pages, limiting monetization primarily to affiliate marketing.

The lack of customization options - from design to code to fonts - means you're essentially leasing space on Medium's platform rather than building your own digital asset. This makes it better suited for established writers looking for an additional publishing channel rather than entrepreneurs building a content business from scratch.

5. Blogger.com

Blogger.com, owned by Google, offers a free and user-friendly blogging platform with an intuitive interface that makes content creation effortless. While anyone can quickly create an account and start publishing, the platform comes with significant limitations.

Due to diluted topical authority across its domains, Blogger sites typically struggle to rank well in search engines, making it challenging to generate organic traffic.

The platform's rigid structure restricts monetization options to just Google Adsense and affiliate marketing, with no capability to create landing pages or connect to alternative ad networks, similar to Medium. Content creators have minimal control over their sites since Blogger retains ownership, limiting customization of design, code, and fonts.

Given these constraints, Blogger is best suited for established personalities seeking a casual blogging outlet rather than entrepreneurs building a content-based business.

6. LinkedIn

LinkedIn's blogging platform, known as "LinkedIn Articles," offers a professional publishing environment integrated directly into its networking ecosystem.

While the platform provides a clean, straightforward writing interface, its editor lacks advanced customization features. Also, the multimedia embedding capabilities are restricted, and SEO control is minimal. Articles can't be organized into categories or series, making content management challenging for bloggers.

However, LinkedIn Articles can offer immediate visibility, given the platform's extensive professional network. Its algorithm tends to favor long-form, industry-specific content, making it particularly effective for B2B thought leadership and professional insights.

Yet, bloggers can't monetize their articles directly through advertisements or paywalls, and content remains permanently tied to the LinkedIn ecosystem. The platform best serves bloggers aiming to enhance their industry authority or support their business goals rather than those seeking to build a blogging business.

7. Squarespace

Squarespace is a popular choice for bloggers as it provides an easy, all-in-one solution for building and maintaining a website. Its intuitive interface and drag-and-drop editor make it accessible, even for those with limited technical skills. Additionally, Squarespace offers a collection of high-quality templates, which can help your site look polished and professional with minimal effort.

However, Squarespace has its drawbacks, especially when it comes to flexibility and control. As a hosted platform, you’re limited to their hosting and pricing plans, which can be more expensive than many other options.

Furthermore, if you decide to move your site elsewhere, your content is the only asset you can take with you—design elements and the underlying structure are proprietary to Squarespace. For bloggers who prioritize SEO, Squarespace’s short-comings in customization and performance optimization can be highly limiting.

8. Kajabi

Kajabi can be a powerful platform for bloggers who plan to monetize blogs through courses, memberships, or gated content. It’s built to support various types of digital products, and its bundled capabilities are quite useful in integrating everything from website creation to email marketing.

Furthermore, Kajabi covers basics like HTML editing, assessments, and multimedia support. It provides pre-made templates for landing pages, automated email workflows, and supports CRM functionalities. Bloggers can also manage sales pages and checkout processes directly within Kajabi, reducing the need for third-party tools.

Kajabi also has some serious shortcomings. Its design interface could be hard to navigate, making customization time-consuming.

Also, Kajabi’s subscription rates can be steep, especially for beginners or small businesses. For bloggers focused mainly on content without complex sales funnels or course offerings, alternative platforms like Gumroad, Teachable, or even a WordPress setup with added plugins could be more cost-effective. Yet, for those wanting a platform that brings website creation, course management, and marketing into one ecosystem, Kajabi remains a strong option.

9. Ghost

Ghost CMS offers a clean, streamlined approach for bloggers who want simplicity and speed. Self-hosted Ghost platforms are known for their responsive newsletter and content management features and a faster CMS experience than WordPress on both the front and backend. However, Ghost’s performance advantage does come with a cost; it generally requires more robust hosting than WordPress to maintain this speed.

While the editor is simple and fast, it lacks key features like a media library, so photos need to be managed directly on the server. This can be a hassle, particularly if you rely on visual content.

For blogging affiliates, Ghost may feel limited since any bulk link changes require editing each HTML widget individually, making this CMS less than ideal for complex affiliate management. Although Ghost offers a redirect file for managing affiliate URLs, you won’t find the same advanced affiliate management tools or SEO plugins available on WordPress.

10. Substack

When you start blogging, you don’t need to dive into full-time professional work right away. Platforms like Substack offer the flexibility to share updates or personal content without the pressure of building a business.

While building an audience can be slow on Substack, it provides long-term control over your readership. For faster exposure, consider cross-publishing on platforms like Medium. Medium’s publications can help you gain visibility quickly, though you won’t own the audience.

A combined approach—publishing on Substack and submitting to Medium publications—can help you build credibility and grow your audience over time. Focus on consistency and quality content, and with patience, your readership will expand.

Factors that make a blogging platform good for beginners

As a first time blogger, you might want to get started with a popular platform or one that helps you set up the blog quickly. While those two are important factors, there are many more that become important when you are well into your blogging journey.

If your platform is not flexible enough to meet the ever evolving blogging needs, you’ll find yourself compromising with your blogging strategy to accommodate the limitation of the CMS.

To avoid that, you must consider all the below factors before choosing a CMS. In fact, we took all of them into account while creating the list of best CMS for beginner bloggers.

1. Ease of setup and use

The ideal content management system (CMS) will have a straightforward signup process, allowing you to get your first blog up and running quickly. In fact, you should be able to sign up with your GMail right away. Additionally, the dashboard should be intuitive, requiring little technical expertise to navigate.

Additionally, the CMS must offer customizable layouts with all the essential website features, from navigation bars to homepages and blog pages, so you can start publishing content right away.

In short, choose a blogging platform with the basic site infrastructure available to create a blog — you can always build upon and customize it to brand.

2. Writing interface

The writing interface of the blogging platform must provide an intuitive user experience, with easy access to common writing tools like spell check, word count, and formatting options. It should support your full range of writing and editing requirements, whether that's creating concise blog posts or crafting more in-depth long-form content.

Your blog posts would not be plain walls of text. They would be rich with different blocks and design widgets that highlight key text. It’s essential to look for a CMS that offers additional design tools right within the writing experience, such as the ability to insert calls-to-action, highlight important text, or create interactive elements like accordions.

What’s most important is that the writing UX must feel comfortable to you. Just like some people prefer Google Docs for writing and some lean towards Notion, your choice of CMS could depend on the writing experience.

3. Markdown features

One of the most overlooked features of any CMS is its markdown. Markdown is a simple, human-readable markup language that allows you to format text without relying on complex HTML tags. It allows bloggers to focus on writing great content, rather than grappling with complex formatting.

If a CMS can’t handle markdown or lack robust markdown support, it can cause a great deal of frustration. And seemingly insignificant instances of frustration can cause beginners to slowly quit on blogging.

4. Design capabilities

Your blog must be on brand. It should truly represent you and what you have to offer. The blogging platform you choose must have the right design features to help create a cohesive and visually appealing blog.

It’s also important that you get to customize the site's appearance without needing to write code.

Your CMS must offer a powerful, no-code theme builder, allowing you to easily adjust colors, fonts, spacing, and other visual elements to align with your brand identity. This empowers you to craft a unique user experience that keeps your audience engaged.

Beyond basic theming, consider a CMS that provides advanced customization options, such as the ability to add custom fonts. This allows you to use typography to enhance your brand's visual identity and strengthen its messaging.

Additionally, the option to design a custom navigation bar and footer can streamline the user experience, making your site more intuitive and user-friendly.

5. Page load speed

Slow-loading pages can negatively impact user experience, leading to high bounce rates and fewer visitors engaging with the content. Additionally, search engines like Google prioritize fast-loading pages, as they indicate better overall page health. Having fast-loading pages is thus super-essential for your blog.

The blogging platform you choose must have a lightweight codebase to support quick load times. Features like lazy loading, which defers the loading of page images, that occupy a lot of disk space and slow down the page speed, until the visitor scrolls down to its location inside the page, can further enhance performance.

6. SEO capabilities

Organic search traffic is crucial for the success of new blogs, often accounting for 70-80% of total traffic. This high-quality traffic not only drives more visitors to your site but also tends to convert better, regardless of your monetization strategy.

beginner blog platform with powerful SEO

Your blogging platform must contain features like easy metadata management, efficient page indexing, and streamlined redirect implementation. Platforms like WordPress offer helpful SEO plugins, but if you need a CMS that makes SEO even more hands-off, consider trying Super.

7. Support for custom domain

Blogging platforms that support custom domains allow you to truly own your website, rather than being tied to a subdomain provided by the CMS.

Without a custom domain, you lose the ability to track your site's performance, integrate tools, and add custom code, as the CMS retains control over the content you create. In contrast, a custom domain empowers you to better manage your branding, SEO, and overall online presence.

blogging platforms supporting custom domain

Furthermore, adding a custom domain helps strengthen your brand recognition, improve search engine visibility, and look more professional. It also gives you greater flexibility in the design and functionality of your blog.

Blogging platforms like LinkedIn, Medium, and Blogger do not support adding a custom domain to your content which makes them good for casual bloggers. If you want to create a blogging business and leverage multiple monetization strategies, you might want to go with a professional CMS like Super.

8. Support for custom code

The ability to add a custom code to your blogging site allows for greater design customization, enabling you to create a unique, branded online presence. It also allows you to integrate your blog with essential tools like Google Analytics, Mailchimp, and others.

This functionality supports tracking site performance, managing email lists, and leverages a wide range of third-party services to enhance your blogging experience and grow your audience.

9. Value for money

When evaluating the value of a blogging platform, consider the pricing structure and the features offered at each tier.

Platforms that provide robust functionality, extensive customization options, and reliable support at a reasonable price point can offer exceptional long-term value.

Additionally, consider any limitations or restrictions that may arise as your blog expands, and whether the platform's pricing model remains sustainable.

We would not recommend going with the cheapest blogging platform in the market because at the end of the day, you get what you pay for. However, avoid CMS’ that do not offer quality features at a high price point.

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10. Customer support and community

Reliable and responsive customer support can make a world of difference for new bloggers, especially while navigating the early challenges. Look for platforms that offer comprehensive documentation, tutorials, and timely assistance from its support team.

Additionally, an active and engaged community of users can provide valuable peer-to-peer support, shared resources, and inspiration as you grow your blog. Platforms with vibrant communities help you stay informed about best practices, new features, and industry trends.

FAQs

1. What are the best free blogging platforms for beginners?

Here is the list of some popular free beginner-friendly blogging platforms

Super with Notion - Offers a free plan but paid ones offer many more powerful features such as custom domain support, ability to add custom code, etc. Paid plans start at $12 per month when paid annually.
WordPress - Free-to-use platform but you might have to pay for some themes and plugins
Medium
LinkedIn Articles
Blogger
Wix - Free to use for beginner bloggers but you need to opt for a paid plan to add collaborators.
Squarespace - Free for beginner bloggers but paid plans offer better customization
Substack - Free to start. Takes 10% commission on paid newsletter subscriptions. No upfront costs unless you opt for Substack Pro.