12 Best Blogging Platforms and Blog Sites for 2025

free and premium themes give you full control over the design of your WordPress blog. More than customizing themes, you can add widgets to get extra features that enhance the layout of your free blog, use your own domain name, and install plugins to extend its functionality.

this free blogging platform enables you to backup and restore your self hosted WordPress blog manually or using plugins, set up automatic updates for your themes and plugins, harden your site for extra security, enforce two-factor authentication, and manage user privacy using built-in tools.

WordPress.org stands out from other blogging platforms in that it helps you build an online community, customize member profiles, create groups, and record site-wide activities. Members can create friends lists, send private messages, change notification settings, and invite friends to their groups.

your WordPress site will benefit from several built-in post types that cover common content needs. To add to that, you also have the option of creating custom post types for content such as portfolios, maps, testimonials, glossaries, etc.

WordPress comes with SEO built-in. However, since customizing your blog can interfere with the original optimization, you can improve SEO by editing tags, creating permalinks, validating your own site, and making any other SEO-related changes you may want.

use the drag-and-drop editor to design your own blog or choose one of the 500+ design templates and add a custom domain name. For help with the design, just answer a few questions, and Wix ADI will take care of the rest.

Wix is a blog site that’s built for SEO, giving you a headstart in promoting your blog. You also get to customize tags, build custom SEO profiles for specific pages, import/export URLs, make bulk redirects, and optimize for local search using the Google Business Profile integration.

build a multimedia blog and attract an audience that listens to or buys your music online. You can also create blogging sites made up of image galleries, secure the images using passwords and watermarks, upload videos, and monetize subscriptions.

set up an online shop using Wix and manage everything on mobile. Add options for offline payment, get commission-free payments through PayPal and credit cards, track customer orders, give discounts, and define custom tax and shipping rules.

extend the functionality of your blog by creating web apps using a visual builder and running them on the Wix Cloud. You can connect your app to other online tools through third-party APIs and track usage metrics.

build a restaurant or event business powered by this blog feature from Squarespace. Tock gives you prepaid reservations, enables you to manage takeouts, receive tableside payments, and design unique offers for your customers. You can also run campaigns and track conversions.

dig deep into your blog traffic data and uncover insights to power your growth strategy. You can track site visits by country, check abandoned carts, analyze engagement, monitor form conversions, and identify the keywords which bring you traffic. You can also integrate Google Analytics into your blog site.

build your blog using customizable templates made by pro designers. You can choose from Google and Adobe fonts, add custom CSS code, edit global styles for site-wide changes or style-specific sections, access free images from Unsplash, get a free domain name, and more.

move from a basic blog and build a business with an inventory of thousands of physical or digital products and manage them using tags and categories. You can also give discounts on specific products or orders over a set amount, show related products, and set up an express checkout option.

get your blog visitors to sign up for newsletters and track page views and traffic sources. You can design your emails using 30+ customizable templates, use filters to segment your audience, and get real-time campaign analytics to inform your email strategy.

use the drag-and-drop editor to design free blogs using web elements such as text, videos, and maps. You can also choose templates and customize them using the theme editor or HTML and CSS, edit images, build online forms for collecting data, and choose your own domain name.

set up and run your store using the integrated shopping cart. You can add hundreds of products, track your inventory, let customers search products using filters, add slideshows to your store, and get paid through PayPal and Stripe.

all Weebly blog sites are designed for SEO and have meta descriptions, sitemaps, and much more. You can add alt tags, customize page titles and permalinks and set up tracking. You can also change advanced settings to create a custom SEO setup for your blog.

take control of the structure of your own blog and customize navigation for an improved user experience. You can integrate Facebook and Disqus comment systems and schedule posts for publishing on your blog and sharing on social sites.

build your audience and grow your business using email marketing. You can import contacts from popular email services, choose a template, build your emails using a drag-and-drop editor, segment your lists, preview your emails, and analyze statistics.

choose from hundreds of themes and customize the design to fit your branding ideas. You can change colors, customize different elements and add plugins to your site to get extra functionality.

start with a free domain name and get unlimited email accounts and subdomains, site analytics, spam protection, a free ssl certificate, and a free worldwide CDN. Uptime is guaranteed through power backups, 24/7 network monitoring, and multiple 10 Gigabit ethernet connections.

use the built-in SEO tools to analyze your blog’s performance and identify what needs improvement. Your blog will be automatically submitted to Google, Bing, and Yahoo, and you’ll get a report that analyzes your blog’s ranking, technical SEO, and mobile-friendliness.

you can set up an online shop with Bluehost and sell physical and digital products. You’ll get email marketing tools, easy installation of payment processors, website traffic analytics, tax management, discount codes, and more.

unlike other blogging platforms, Bluehost integrates with WordPress so well that it’s recommended for WordPress hosting. When building your own blog sites, you can start using the Bluehost builder, switch to the WordPress editor for specific functionality, and go back to the builder.

no need for technical knowledge to set up your site. Fast page loads courtesy of AWS and Fastly are made possible due to 100+ data centers and servers distributed globally. You also get automated backups, a customized site search engine, your own domain name, and managed maintenance.

design your blog using raw HTML or pre-built elements and preview the display for different devices. Position every element exactly where you want it, choose from different fonts, and collaborate on the design with full tracking of who did what.

get automatic versioning of your site, password-protect single pages or your whole site, create custom ‘404’ pages with appropriate redirects, and customize your favicon and web clip. If building different sites, you can organize them into folders and export the code to a different host.

design your online shop for physical products or digital goods and services with custom product fields. Create a responsive layout for your ecommerce site with custom designs, set up email marketing, add download links, track orders, and get paid through PayPal, Stripe, Apple Pay, and Google Pay.

set up your site to rank on SERPs using in-built SEO tools. Decide what should be indexed, easily create image alt tags, edit Open Graph tags, create the schema markup, and automatically generate meta descriptions.

design your site by editing pre-built page designs or drag-and-drop HTML elements and A/B test different elements or whole pages. The design process is simple, allows for collaboration, the editor is responsive, and you can set up unlimited popups.

design funnels with custom checkouts and increase conversions. Improve your customers’ UX with 1-click upsells, generate leads using quizzes and surveys, and analyze page traffic and other metrics to improve page optimization.

monetize your gated content through memberships and subscriptions and give your customers the option to manage their subscriptions, order history, and profiles. You can sell subscriptions, e-courses, and e-books and smoothly handle thousands of visitors.

sell both physical and digital products online. Design your storefront for high engagement, set up bump offers for increased order value, create recurring payments and discount codes, and accept payment from 10+ payment processors.

build a growing online business by generating and engaging leads using the free CRM. Manage your form submissions and track leads down the funnel, accept appointments, segment your leads, auto-assign leads based on lead source, and automate your email marketing campaigns.

learn more about your audience through stats on traffic, views, reads, and fans. You can track reader engagement, analyze traffic sources—including the option to search other platforms for posts linking to your story—and also see how much your stories have earned over time.

you can email old and just-published stories to your readers and build relationships by allowing replies. You can upload an existing email subscribers list in CSV or TXT format, export them for use elsewhere, and track subscriptions to monitor your audience growth.

as one of the best free blogging platforms for newsletter marketing, you can create a publication and send newsletters to promote your product or service-based content. You’ll be able to manage draft, scheduled, and sent emails, monitor metrics such as open rates and click-through rates, preview emails, and track subscribers.

there are two ways to earn on Medium’s Partner Program. You can earn a portion of your readers’ subscription fee depending on how much time they spend on your stories or 50% of the subscription fee for active membership referrals.

you can customize your Medium blogging sites by changing your profile image, background, accent colors, and fonts. You can also customize your header by adding a background image, changing the size and alignment of your name and bio, adding a logo, and adding a custom domain name.

you can design your blog from scratch or choose a template from the library and modify it. You can customize the layout by adding gadgets, edit the HTML and CSS code, add different media types, and integrate with a custom domain.

the default monetization option is running ads. You can set up a Google AdSense account and run ads, deciding whether they’ll appear on the sides or between posts. You can also run your own ads or those from other services, or implement other monetization options such as affiliate marketing and sponsored posts.

you can decide whether your blog will be visible to search engines or not, add titles and alt text to images, hide specific pages and posts from search engines, and define custom redirects for posts and pages.

you can backup your blog, save your customized theme, and import posts and comments into your blog. You can also search your posts and pages using search operators, add team members to your blog and allocate them permissions.

Blogger is one of the best free blogging platforms for analytics. You can set up an analytics account and start tracking what your audience reads, where they visit from, etc. You can also import data from other systems into Analytics to unlock new insights and integrate directly with services such as Salesforce Marketing Cloud and Search Console.

Ghost stands out among the best free blogging platforms as a blog site that you can customize without the fear of compromising your blog’s performance. You can also change your site structure using dynamic routing and visit the experts’ directory to find a qualified designer or developer.

Get help managing your site by inviting team members and allocating them different roles and permissions. You can also choose a timezone that fits your audience, publish in multiple languages, integrate with 5,000+ apps through Zapier, and run your own referral program.

Ghost enables you to set up multi-author bylines, create RSS feeds for podcast players, and schedule posts and pages. You can also define custom layouts for featured posts and see a preview of how your post will look on mobile, social, search, email, and web.

Ghost automatically generates canonical tags and metadata for every page, informs external services about site updates, and comes with the Google AMP built-in. You can customize URLs and work on technical SEO without relying on plugins.

monetize your blog through recurring subscriptions and manage memberships using labels and notes. You can view member stats, import/export members, send email newsletters, and integrate with Stripe for payments in 135 different currencies.

you can set up several blogs under the same account, with the first one being the primary blog. Secondary blogs can be password-protected and turned into group blogs. You can also export your blog’s content and download it as a ZIP file.

you can customize your blog for a unique look by editing your theme’s HTML and JavaScript or creating a custom theme. You can also set up a custom domain name to personalize your blog.

you can include different types of content in a single post and edit the text using popular formatting features. You can drag-and-drop content blocks to re-arrange them, add audio from Spotify or Soundcloud, and create a chat post.

although lacking in SEO capabilities compared to traditional blogging platforms, Tumblr’s links are dofollow. You also get the option to customize title tags, write alt text and descriptions of images, customize the URL of every post, and use up to 30 tags.

Tumblr secures the platform from malicious actors by disabling JavaScript in blog descriptions and pages. The platform is further secured through an active bug bounty program where vulnerabilities are reported and resolved.

SEO capabilities are built-in to help you easily define settings that will rank your site on SERPs. You can work on everything from keywords and SEF URLs to metadata and sitemaps. You can also customize the SEO settings of your menu items.

this lightweight code base provides a platform for creating standalone apps which you can integrate into Joomla as extensions. Since it’s separated from the CMS, there’s less overhead when building RESTful web apps and command-line tools.

design your blog by editing the available templates or creating a custom one. You can use more than one template, assign specific templates to specific pages and use Bootstrap’s pre-written CSS and JavaScript code to create responsive designs.

work on multimedia content using different editors for maximum flexibility. You can paste content from popular word processors, edit your content from the frontend, create categories with unlimited nesting, schedule articles, and access previous versions of your articles.

set up the backend of your blog for security, functionality, and monetization. Easily update Joomla and your extensions, set up paywalls, add tags, create custom fields for users, contacts, and articles, and implement caching for your blog.