17 Best Blogging Platforms to Start Your Blog in 2023 With Pros & Cons

Having an online presence is a necessity nowadays. There are multiple platforms to start with but in this article, we will cover the best blogging platforms to start your own blog. You must go into minute details while selecting the website platform.

There are a few factors that need to be addressed while selecting the best blogging platform for your website. This article will be an eye-opener and will give you an in-depth overview of the pros and cons of the most popular blogging sites.

Further to this article, we have also covered the detailed tutorial to start your first blog on the platform that tops the list after comparison.

If you don’t want to waste your precious time reading this complete article then here is my recommendation after comparing the best blogging platforms in the list given below.

Our Recommendation is WordPress

We highly recommend WordPress for your website. In fact, most of our and our client’s websites are developed on WordPress. It provides the flexibility to develop any type of website.

Also, you have the choice to select from thousands of themes and plugins best suited for your website. Almost 49% of the website over the internet are currently running on WordPress.

So don’t waste your time choosing the blogging platform. Follow the link below to start your first blog with WordPress in a few simple steps.

Click here to Start your First WordPress Website in Simple Steps

(Contact us to get a discount on hosting with free premium WordPress plugins and themes)

I started developing websites in 2008, and I have personally worked on most of the platforms listed below. But after all that effort I finally halted on WordPress.

I am actually happy to tell you that I have chosen WordPress for my own blog and proudly say that Bloggersutra is hosted on WordPress.

With lots of free tutorials, themes, and plugins you can start your first blog without any hassle.

If blogging is your hobby and you are looking to generate some extra income, in that case, you require an online platform, in this article we have compared all the best blogging platforms to start your own blog.

Let’s dive into the details of the best blogging platforms.

List Of Best Blogging Platforms in 2023

Here is the list of various blogging platforms we’ll be comparing in this article that doesn’t require any programming language to start your own blog. But it is always good to have some coding skills to make some small changes to your website.

All the blogging platforms mentioned above are among the most popular on the internet. Most of them offer their service free of cost but few do charge the monthly/annual subscription.

But all have their own pros and cons. We will be covering in detail each of them to give you a clear picture as to which one suits you the best.

Before we get started it is important to know the factors that are important while selecting the best blogging platform.

How to Choose a Blogging Platform?

Before getting into details about each of the blogging platforms let’s first check the factors that should be considered while choosing the best blogging platform.

• Pricing
• Availability of online tutorials and resources
• The popularity of the blogging platform
• Number of plugins and themes available
• Ease of use and customization
• Level of coding skill required

As a beginner, you should always go with a platform that is easy to set up and requires less or no coding skills.

There should be tons of tutorials available online along with free themes and plugins to start with. You should always keep in mind the kind of blog that you plan to start now or in the future.

The blogging platform should be flexible and always have room to grow whenever your blog grows in the future.

Starting off with the wrong platform can make it very difficult to switch later on.

Lastly, even if you don’t have plans to make money blogging right now, it’s smart to make sure you have the option to do so in the future.

With all that in mind, let’s compare the best blogging platforms for beginners one by one.

1. WordPress.org (Recommended)

WordPress.org is the world’s most popular blogging software, also my favorite and trusted by many bloggers. If you search for the best blogging sites then most of them are over WordPress.

Starting in 2003, WordPress now powers more than 40% of all websites on the internet.

Note: Most people get confused WordPress.org with WordPress.com, which is a blog hosting service that is covered later in this article. To get a more clear picture you must check out the difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com.

WordPress.org is an open-source and free blogging platform that allows you to build your website or blog within minutes.

It is a self-hosted platform which means you require WordPress hosting to host your website over the internet. WordPress is a great option if you want to have full control over your blog’s future.

To get the best hosting experience with ease of managing your website I will recommend Bluehost hosting. They are offering an additional 67% discount to bloggersutra.com readers with the free domain name.

We have also covered a step-by-step tutorial to start your first WordPress blog with Bluehost.

It offers tons of free and premium plugins, themes, and features that are required by every blogger.

Also when it comes to security, again they are the best. Additionally, you can install any third-party security plugins to make your blog more secure.

Pros

• WordPress.org gives full control over the website.
• Add additional features like a forum, online stores, and website membership with ease. This makes WordPress the best blogging platform to make money.
• Tons of online tutorials are available.
• Choose from thousands of free themes and plugins to improve your blog.
• You can easily create SEO-friendly URLs, categories, and tags for your posts. Plus, they’re a good number of good SEO plugins for additional features.

Cons

• Managing your own website comes with a bit of a learning curve.
• You will have to manage your own backups and security. But now most of the hosting providers offer free backup service and security can be ensured with third-party plugins like Malcare.

Pricing

WordPress is free to use and updated regularly to improve the overall experience and security. But all you need to have is a domain name and web hosting.

You need a domain name and web hosting for starting any type of website.

Bloggersutra readers can get started for $2.75 per month with Bluehost, an WordPress hosting provider that is officially recommended by WordPress. They are offering our users 60% off on web hosting and a FREE domain name.

A domain name is very important for every website and you should put some extra effort into selecting that. Here is the step-by-step tutorial to select your domain name.

Here is the bonus guide to get your blog online within minutes and keep all security aspects in mind.

2. Gator by HostGator

Gator is a drag and drops website builder and blogging platform created by HostGator, the popular web hosting company used to host Bloggersutra websites. I keep on migrating my website from one platform to another to share my experience with my readers.

It also helps me to review hosting providers in detail before I actually recommend them to my readers.

Gator offers a drag & drop tool that you can use to build any type of website including blogs, business sites, and even an online store.

Gator website builder is different from HostGator website hosting. The HostGator hosting service is used to start a WordPress blog.

If you are looking for a non-WordPress platform to host your website then Gator is a better choice.

Pros

• Easy drag-and-drop builder.
• Easy to set up.
• Backups, performance, and security are all handled by HostGator.
• The free domain name and SSL certificate are included in all plans.
• Easy to add an online store to the blog.

Cons

• No free account
• E-commerce features are restricted to higher plans.
• Limited apps and extensions.

Pricing

The Starter plan costs $3.46/month and it comes with all the features you need to start a successful blog including a free domain and SSL certificate.

If you are planning to start an online store then you can go with the higher plans as per the requirement of your website.

3. Constant Contact Website Builder

Constant Contact Website Builder is an intelligent website builder that allows you to create a free blog, business website, and online store within a minute.

They have a huge collection of templates to start from and your website customization is easy with their drag-and-drop builder interface.

You also get access to other helpful tools such as a custom logo maker, a professional stock photo library of over 500,000 images, and a whole lot more.

Pros

• Easy drag-and-drop builder
• Quick setup
• Free plan to try out their service
• Free domain and SSL certificate.

Cons

• Not many third plugins are available
• Limited integration with third platforms
• Migration of websites from constant contact to other website builders is difficult.

Pricing

The constant Contact website builder offers a free plan to start your own blog or website and even an eCommerce store. However, there are certain limitations to the free plan.

You can upgrade to the Starter plan for $10 per month which gives you access to a free custom domain name, free SSL certificate, and other powerful platform features along with phone-based support.

The business plan which costs $20 per month gives you access to advanced eCommerce-related features.

If you are building and blog or a small business website and not planning to use WordPress then Constant Contact is the next best choice for you.

4. WordPress.com

WordPress.com is a blog hosting service from the founders of WordPress.org and started in 2005. They offer a free hosting service for beginners.

If you want to take your blog to the next level then you can purchase additional custom domain names, storage, and other premium services.

WordPress.com have many limitations as compared to WordPRess.org, if you don’t want to use the advanced features of the self-hosted WordPress platform then this is better for you.

You don’t have complete control over your blog and the plugins and themes. It is difficult to integrate third-party plugins on your blog.

Your blog will be limited to the themes and plugins provided by WordPress.com and might have difficulty migrating your website to other hosting platforms.

Pros

• No setup required
• Easy to manage
• Offer free hosting plan and can be upgraded if required

Cons

• Can’t use custom themes and plugins
• No advertisements are allowed on your blog. Instead, WordPRess.com will show its own ads on your blog.
• Account gets suspended for violating any policy.

Pricing

The basic WordPress.com account is free, but it will have WordPress.com ads and branding.

You can upgrade to their Personal plan for $4/month (billed yearly) to remove the WordPress.com logo and advertising from your website. You also get a custom domain (such as www.yoursite.com).

For $8/month (billed yearly) you can get additional design tools and extra storage.

After knowing the limitations, the user mostly switches to WordPRess.org. In fact, I also recommend using WordPress.org to my users to keep full control of your website.

In case of issues, you can easily migrate from one hosting provider to another. WordPRess.org actually opens the horizon of opportunity.

5. Blogger

Blogger is a hosted blogging platform. Signing up is easy since you can use your standard Google account.

After that, you just have to pick a name for your blog, and then you can immediately begin creating content. You don’t have to worry about any technical details as Blogger takes care of all that.

In a nutshell: Hosted blogging platform

Features

• Basic blog functionality; write, manage, and publish blog posts
• Traffic stats and analytics
• Google+ integration
• Google AdSense integration
• A basic layout editor, where you can change what’s in the sidebars, the header, the footer, and the navigation

Pros

• Creating content is easy, with an interface that resembles Google Docs. WordPress offers similar ease when it comes to content creation.

Cons

• Outdated designs. With WordPress, you get a much livelier community of theme designers.
• There are no external plugins. With WordPress, there are over 30,000 plugins in the official directory.

Perfect for

• Creating a personal blog that you don’t intend to turn into any sort of a commercial project.
• When you need a blog fast. Launching a new blog on the platform takes literally less than 60 seconds (tested).

Not really very good for anything other than building a personal blog that doesn’t serve any direct business purpose. For anything business-related, there are better solutions on this list.

Pricing

Blogger is free to use with Bloggers subdomains like https://example.blogspot.com. If you want to use Blogger with your custom domain name then you have to buy one from the third-party domain registrar and get it easily integrated with Bloggers.

6. Medium

Medium is a very interesting concept when it’s compared to its competitors. In short, it allows you to write and then publish your content alongside other authors at Medium.com.

You also get to follow other people’s work and be a part of the Medium community. In other words, it’s a large web publication website where you’re one of the members and can submit your own content.

In a nutshell: A platform where you can write and publish your stories, articles, or blog posts

Features

• Very good WYSIWYG interface for content composition
• Community supports for content before publishing

Pros

• The medium provides ostensibly the best writing experience out of all solutions on this list.
• Medium disperses your content for you based on algorithmic and editorial curation. With WordPress, you’re on your own when it comes to distributing your content.

Cons

• There are no themes/designs to choose from. The medium doesn’t give you much in terms of branding your work differently from everyone else’s. With WordPress, there are thousands of themes available.
• Can’t currently use your own privately registered domain name.

Perfect for

• Writers who want a home for their work. It’s great for longer-form articles. The social aspect and content dispersion mean people are likely to read what you post.
• People who want to combine creating content with social consumption of it. Right after you sign up, you get to choose the topics you’re interested in and the people you want to follow.

Medium’s applicability is rather narrow and doesn’t really support much else other than writing — however, if writing and publishing articles are all you after (and you don’t mind doing it on Medium’s website rather than your own), Medium is a superb solution.

Pricing

Medium is absolutely free to use.

While the platform looks attractive at first, the lack of monetization and control leads to most people switching from Medium to WordPress.

7. Tumblr

Tumblr blogging platform allows you to submit short-form content (short blog posts, articles, quotes, images, videos) and publish it on a microblog.

You can also connect with other bloggers on the platform and follow what they post, too. Tumblr is a hosted solution that provides you with all the tools and the hosting space required to run your microblog.

In a nutshell: Microblogging platform and social networking website.

Features

• Pre-made styles for standard content types like text, photos, quotes, links, chats, audio, and video
• Queue posts and set publication times for each posting
• Many blogs theme to choose from
• Inbox browsing messages sent to you from other Tumblr users

Pros

• Tumblr is built on a very simple idea — providing microblogs to every user. There really isn’t much to do there other than sign up and start posting. With WordPress, there’s a bit more setup needed.
• It gives you access to a whole community of content publishers. With WordPress, it’s a bit harder to find like-minded bloggers and reach out to them.

Cons

• Not a lot of free, quality blog themes are available. With WordPress, there are thousands.

Perfect for

• Anyone who wants to launch a very simple microblog and then uses it to publish their thoughts and opinions.

If you want to build a complete website with a number of subpages or a business site, Tumblr is not the solution for you.

Pricing

Tumblr is free to use. You can use a custom domain (purchased separately) for your Tumblr blog, and there are also third-party themes and apps available to purchase.

8. Wix

Wix advertises itself as the perfect tool to create a stunning website for free. To make this possible, Wix delivers a step-by-step wizard-like environment where you’re taken by the hand through the whole process of building your site.

In addition, Wix is a hosted solution that also takes care of housing your site. This allows you to focus on creating the content and leaving the technical stuff to them.

In Short: Website builder, website hosting service

Features

• More than 500 pre-made designs to choose from
• Designs are optimized for mobile devices and tablets
• Build your site with drag-and-drop
• Functional editors for text content and images
• Blog module available
• Integrated social media features
• Extend your site’s functionality with Wix App Market extensions
• All sites come with a default subdomain (e.g. YOURSITE.wix.com), with custom domains (e.g. YOURSITE.com) for a price
• 24/7 support

Pros

• Choose from hundreds of quality, optimized templates, and designs. With WordPress, the “quality” part is not always consistent.
• You can customize your site’s appearance through drag-and-drop editors. In WordPress, that’s only available with plugins.

Cons

• Since your site is hosted with Wix (most often on a subdomain), you don’t really have full control over the site. In theory, Wix can take it down at any moment if they find it non-compliant with the terms of service. With self-hosted WordPress, you’ve got some control.

Perfect For

• Users who want to be able to build and customize a website on their own, by hand.
• Users (both business and personal) who don’t have a budget for a custom-built website.
• Users with no prior experience.

Although providing a nice selection of designs and giving you access to the Wix App Market, this still isn’t a solution that lets you introduce any wider changes to the site’s main functionality. If you want a site that can grow alongside your business for the long haul, this isn’t the tool for you.

Pricing

Wix offers a free plan for hosting your own blog. However, you can upgrade your plan to get additional benefits. The up-gradation of the plan starts from $29/month.

9. Squarespace

Squarespace provides a great tool for website creation, whether you need a blog, an e-commerce store, a portfolio, or all of the above.

Even though it’s a paid solution, there’s a free trial available. Squarespace also houses your site, takes care of the software running it, and allows you to focus on creating content.

In Short: Website builder, website hosting service

Price: $8-$24/month

Features

• Nice range of modern-looking website templates
• Can use multiple templates on a single site
• Designs are optimized for mobile devices and tablets
• Customizable own CSS styling
• Integrated image editor via Aviary
• Social media integration
• Modules for blogging, e-commerce, and portfolios
• All sites come with a default subdomain (e.g. YOURSITE.squarespace.com), with custom domains (e.g. YOURSITE.com) for a price
• 24/7 support

Pros

• Squarespace offers a really impressive set of pre-made designs that are optimized for all kinds of professions and purposes. With WordPress, finding the right theme that’s truly optimized for your site’s purpose can be particularly time-consuming.
• Its site builder is really easy and intuitive to use; it takes you by hand through the entire site-building process. To build a site on WordPress, you have to be ready to get your hands dirty.

Cons

• Like with other similar solutions, if your site is hosted with Squarespace on its subdomain, you don’t have full control over the site. Squarespace can take it down should it find the site non-compliant with its guidelines. With self-hosted WordPress, you’ve got all the control.

Perfect for

• Businesses, artists, as well as hobbyists, want to build a professional site themselves and would prefer not to spend a lot of money doing it.
• Users with no prior experience.
• Brick-and-mortar businesses and stores.

If you don’t have a design muscle in your body, you might experience some difficulties making a Squarespace site look good (due to the platform’s reliance on good stock imagery to be part of your site’s final look).

Also, Squarespace offers a good range of features from the get-go, but above that, there’s not much you can do when there’s a feature missing.

Just like with Wix, if you want a site that can grow alongside your business, this might not be quite the solution you’re looking for.

10. Weebly

As the Weebly team states, the idea behind the platform is to make website creation available for everyone and not only programmers. Weebly remains one of the easiest-to-use site-building solutions out there.

It delivers great tools for creating straightforward sites that serve specific purposes. Weebly is another hosted solution, which means that it takes care of housing your site and all the technical details related to it.

In a nutshell: Website builder, website hosting service

Price: FREE-$25/month

Features

• Offers 8 categories of 100+ pre-made designs
• Designs are optimized for mobile devices and tablets
• Drag-and-drop content builder
• Social media integration
• e-commerce, and blogging modules
• All sites come with a default subdomain (e.g. YOURSITE.weebly.com), with custom domains (e.g. YOURSITE.com) for a price

Pros

• The drag-and-drop site builder is both intuitive and user-friendly. With WordPress, drag-and-drop building is something you only get through external plugins or themes.
• It’s optimized for building single-purpose sites like resumes, portfolios, or online business cards. With WordPress, you still have to install the whole WordPress software, so you’ll end up with many superfluous features.

Cons

• If you’re on the free plan, you can only create five pages for your whole website. With WordPress, there’s no limit.
• Like with other similar solutions, if your site is hosted with Weebly on its subdomain, you don’t have full control over the site. With self-hosted WordPress, you’re the only person in control.

Perfect for

• Single-purpose sites like resumes or portfolios.
• Users with no prior experience.

Probably not the best solution out there if your website is meant to serve more than a single purpose (like being just a resume site, or just a portfolio). There are tools on this list that provide more well-rounded solutions.

11. Ghost

Ghost is a nice blogging platform but different from other blogging platforms like Joomla or Drupal, with easy-to-use interfaces and an intuitive way of creating content.

In addition, Ghost delivers two basic versions of their product. You can either subscribe to the pro version ($29-$199/month depending on the plan) or download the free software and install it on your own web server.

In a nutshell: Hosted blogging platform as well as downloadable blogging software

Price: FREE, plus web hosting costs; or up to $199/month

Features

• Ghost only supports blogging
• Content creation and editing through a nice side-by-side interface with Markdown syntax on the left and the preview on the right
• Add media with drag-and-drop
• Designs are optimized for mobile devices and tablets
• (Pro version) Unlimited transfer and storage, the possibility to upload any theme, and priority support

Pros

• It’s a blogging platform that’s aware of itself. It’s not trying to be anything else. You’ll only find features that enrich your blogging experience. At this point, WordPress is much more than a blogging platform.

Cons

• Ghost’s focused simplicity is also its flaw. It’s perhaps not the best solution for building a business site or a website project of a larger scale. WordPress can handle e-commerce, business sites, and more.

Perfect for

• Web developers who want to stay on the cutting edge of what’s out there (Free version).
• People who want to build good-looking blogs for themselves with easy-to-follow administrator interfaces (Pro version).

Although an extremely promising blogging platform, Ghost is not yet a particularly convincing solution for building a general-purpose business-type website

12. Jimdo

Jimdo’s blogging platform delivers a way for you to build a beautiful website and have it optimized for search engines.

Your Jimdo experience starts by picking the design for your site; then you’re led through the process of having your site launched to the world.

Jimdo is also a hosted solution, which means that they take care of the technical details and give your site a home.

In a nutshell: Website builder, website hosting service

Price: FREE-$21/month

Features

• Modern site templates in 4 categories: business, store, portfolio, and personal
• Designs are optimized for mobile devices and tablets.
• Upload and display high-resolution photos in galleries
• Google Maps integration
• Social media integration
• Blog functionality
• E-commerce module
• Front-end content editing with drag-and-drop
• All sites come with a default subdomain (e.g. YOURSITE.jimdo.com), with custom domains (e.g. YOURSITE.com) for a price

Pros

• The front-end content editing feature is really intuitive. You can build your whole site and create your content from start to finish in a true WYSIWYG manner. With WordPress, this is only available through third-party plugins.

Cons

• If you’re on the free plan, you only get 500MB of disk space, no website traffic statistics, and you can only sell up to five products in your online store. With WordPress, the only limits are those imposed by your web host.
• There aren’t many designs available. With WordPress, there are thousands of themes on the web.

Perfect for

• Someone with very few website-building skills looking to put together a simple, presentable website with minimal fuss.
• When you need basic SEO taken care of for you, and if you’re planning to introduce a small e-commerce component.
• Users with no prior experience.

Jimdo is a very simple alternative to things like Squarespace. However, if you’re looking to build a site for free, other site builders will give you a better user experience and potentially an overall better result.

13. Shopify

Shopify is one of the most popular e-commerce solutions on the web. While with Magento Community you do have to take care of hosting your online store yourself, Shopify handles that part for you. You can simply concentrate on selling your products.

In a nutshell: Hosted e-commerce solution

Price: $14-$179

Features

• Advanced e-commerce functionality, with a shopping cart module, inventory management, payment gateway options, automatic tax handling (based on location), and more
• Over 100 themes/designs
• Optimized for mobile devices and tablets
• Integrated blogging module
• Customized branding for your store
• Multilingual by default
• Option to accept credit cards.
• Customer profiles and groups
• SEO-friendly
• Social media integration
• Email marketing module.
• Web hosting is handled by Shopify
• Traffic analytics (integrated with Google Analytics)
• Customer support

Pros

• There are 70 payment gateways available and you can easily accept credit cards.

Cons

• On the cheapest Starter plan, you can only offer up to 25 products in your database.
• Credit card rates depend on your plan. You get higher credit card handling rates if you’re on the Starter plan (2.9% + $0.30). The more expensive your plan, the lower your rates.

Perfect for

• Business owners who want to launch an e-commerce store, but don’t have much technical knowledge in that area.
• Building your own store without any outside help.
• Handling other additional elements of your site, such as a blog.
• Having an online store with additional standard website functionality.

If you’re knowledgeable about site-building and e-commerce, you’ll find solutions on this list that give you better extension possibilities, more overall features, and the freedom to potentially do anything you want with your online store (since you’d be hosting it on your own server).

That said if you’re just getting into selling things online and want to do everything yourself, Shopify can often be a great place to start for new businesses and less technically savvy folk!

14. Megneto

Magento is an e-commerce software that you can use to run online stores. The basic Community version of Magento is available as a free download.

There’s also the Enterprise version, but that comes with a hefty $18,000, so we’ll skip that one for now.

Recommendation: 2buy1click is one of the top Magento agency based in London and have worked with more than 20 eCommerce brands worldwide. 2buy1click uses some of the best Magento development processes to ensure every eCommerce delivered is perfect to every pixel and codes

In a nutshell: e-commerce software and platform

Price: FREE, plus web hosting costs

Features

• Advanced e-commerce functionality, including inventory management, calculating shipping charges, coupon management, payment gateway options, shopping cart, and more
• Web services API
• More than 5,000 extensions and add-ons
• Customize your store’s design through themes
• Built-in multilingual capabilities
• Blogging module available through a free plugin
• Optimized for mobile devices and tablets
• SEO-friendly

Pros

• First and foremost, Magento is an e-commerce platform. It offers advanced features and is capable of giving you anything you might need from your online store. With WordPress, e-commerce is only available through plugins.
• A number of good PDF user guides are available on their website. With WordPress, you do get the Codex, but it’s very technical in nature.

Cons

• The themes are not that great-looking … some of them are even a bit outdated.
• There aren’t many default payment gateways available.

Perfect for

• Business owners who want to launch an advanced e-commerce store with a big inventory and many employees working together on a single database of items.

Although a real contender for large high-street-chain-type shops requiring extremely capable platforms with which to build custom eCommerce sites, this isn’t the easiest software to learn, run or modify for inexperienced users.

15. Google Sites

Google Sites is a website creation tool, optimized primarily for simple websites and wikis.

Although the tool is still available, it doesn’t appear to be the best alternative, especially compared to other, less-dated tools on the market.

In a nutshell: Hosted website and wiki platform

Price: FREE

Features

• By default, all sites are available as a sub-directory under “sites.google.com/site”, but you can also buy a custom domain (e.g. YOURSITE.com)
• Three levels of permissions: Owner, Editor, and Viewer

Pros

• It’s free. That’s about it.

Cons

• Not very functional, and not very pretty.

Although once relatively cutting edge, Google Sites now feels more than a little outdated and arguably falls quite a bit short of its rivals

16. Drupal

Drupal is another member of the Big Three most popular content management system (CMS) on the web. Drupal is perhaps the most technical CMS among all that requires good technical skills.

Development started on Drupal 8 features back in March of 2011. Since then, the developer has looked forward to the outcomes of every development, feature completion, clean-up, API completion, and release candidate (RC) phase with bated breath.

There is no doubt that Drupal is offering tons of features for developing your own website. In this article, we will go through the latest Drupal features list that is a must for webmasters.

It is best suited for the website running an e-commerce business. It has got a variety of themes and plugins inside the store.  One can find both paid and free plugins and themes.

Drupal is free content management software with lots of features. But due to the availability and requirements of various modules to establish the website it requires a good SEO-optimized web hosting provider.

You should keep a few things in mind while selecting the domain name and web hosting for your blog or website.

In Short: Software that runs your website, with extensive content management functionality, and requires good technical skills.

Price: FREE, Web hosting may cost along with paid themes and plugins

Features

As mentioned earlier there are tons of features offered by Drupal. We will go through the important drupal features list that makes it a special and favorite of many webmasters.

• Advanced administration panel with five sections: Content, Appearance, People, Structure, and Configuration
• User and permission management
• Multi-site use for a single installation across several sites
• Multilingual, offering more than 70 languages
• Advanced content management and control over your users’ rights to view, administer, and create content.
• Complete control over the content presentation, including themes, views, jQuery integration, and more

1. New Theme Engine

Drupal 8 includes a brand-new theming engine called Twig, which is PHP-based, flexible, fast, and secure. Since it is PHP-based and supports the latest industry standards it is easy to use and configure.

2. Improved HTML5

HTML5 is now more or less the de facto standard when it comes to writing web markup. The same is now available natively in Drupal 8, giving you access to input fields like date, e-mail, phone, etc.

3. Multilingual

Drupal 8 boasts extensive multilingual features right out of the box. The admin interface has built-in translations.8

4. Mobile Friendly

Drupal 8 is mobile-first in its approach. All the built-in themes that come with Drupal 8 are responsive, along with an admin theme that adapts to different screen sizes, and a ‘Back To Site’ button to go back to the front page.

5. Configuration Management

Drupal 8 has configuration management built into it at the file-system level so that carrying over configuration elements (like content type, views, or fields, etc.) from local development to the server is a breeze.

6. Easy Authoring

New Drupal 8 features bring unprecedented power into the hands of the Content Editor, with WYSIWYG editor CKEditor now bundled with the core.

7. Fast Editing

There’s something great about seeing something that needs changing and having the ease of access to change it—directly and quickly.

8. Views Integrated with Core

Views sit high up in the Drupal module hierarchy, as it is an integral part of most website projects, and a lot is pretty much impossible without it.

Site designers have used use this hitherto-contributed module to output galleries, maps, graphs, lists, posts, tables, menus, blocks, reports, and what-have-you.

With this Drupal 8 feature, Views is part of and firmly integrated with the core.

9. Built-in Web Services

Drupal 8 now makes it possible to use itself as a data source, and output content as JSON or XML.

10. Better Accessibility Support

Drupal 8 has excellent support for industry-standard accessibility technologies, like WAI-ARIA. ARIA Live Announcements API and TabManager are significant improvements in Drupal 8, which provide control for rich Internet applications.

11. Improved Loading Speed

Drupal 8 caches all entities and only loads JavaScript when necessary. When a page is viewed, its content doesn’t need to be reloaded again.

Pros

• Over 16,000 additional add-ons are available. With WordPress, however, you still get double that number.
• Great multilingual capability. With WordPress, this is only available through plugins.

Cons

• At the time of writing, there are only 584 actively maintained themes. With WordPress, you get thousands of themes.
• Drupal has a learning curve. Building a good-looking, quality site from start to finish takes time. The learning curve of WordPress is much smaller.

Perfect For

• Advanced web projects that go above the standard definition of what we normally understand as a website.

If you’re a beginner and have no prior experience building websites, you’ll almost certainly struggle to build a site with Drupal and get it to a level where it actually looks good, is usable, and is understandable to unskilled admin users.

17. Joomla

As I had mentioned previously, you can start your blog on any of the platforms but then I recommend WordPress to my readers due to its seamless features. Almost 45% of the website is powered by WordPress.

but is always better to select your own blogging platform depending on your requirement and the availability of themes and plugins. I find WordPress to be easy to manage and you can find tons of free WordPress plugins and themes.

Introduction To Joomla

Joomla is among the top three content management systems (CMS) including WordPress and Drupal. It has got tons of capability to launch a fully responsive website or blog and is also helpful to create an eCommerce website.

It also has got tons of plugins and themes available on the internet. The themes and plugins associated with Joomla are free, however, few themes and plugins are available as paid content.

Tons of websites and blogs are running on Joomla and we will be discussing later setting up a website/blog from Joomla.

In Short: Software that runs your website/blog with extensive content management functionality (CMS)

Price: FREE, Webhosting is chargeable, and Themes and Plugins may be chargeable (Free themes available).

Features and Benefits

It offers tons of features and new features are being introduced on a regular basis. However, the most important features for which Joomla is known are given below:-

• Multilingual, offering more than 64 languages
• e-commerce supported
• Extensive content management system.
• An integrated contextual help system
• Media manager for uploading and managing any type of media file
• Banner/adverts management
• Contact management for multiple contact details for your site
• Search management/advanced search feature
• Advanced categorization for nested content categories
• Front-end editing from both the admin panel and live site
• Create and manage multiple menus
• Front-end and back-end templates are available
• Large library of nearly 10,000 extensions

Joomla Benefits

7 reasons why Joomla! is the perfect platform for your online projects.

• A flexible system, easy to extend and customize
• Search engine optimized out of the box
• Free forever Open Source software
• Security-conscious development with an excellent track record
• Joomla! speaks your language
• Grows organically as your needs evolve
• Build powerful PHP applications

Pros

• Joomla delivers great features in terms of advanced user management, user groups, and even contact management. However, WordPress provides only basic functionality in those departments. No extra plugins are required for these features.
• It’s got many built-in features (like cache management, banner management, advanced content permission settings, etc.). With WordPress, you need plugins to get most of those. Few of the plugins are paid with WordPress.
• Great multilingual capability (you can manage the languages used on your site) The website can be made with multiple languages according to the region. With WordPress, this is only available through plugins. Plus may or may not be paid.

Cons

• Joomla may seem a bit intimidating due to the technical appearance of the admin panel. WordPress is a lot more user-friendly.
• There’s no official library of designs/themes. There’s an official library with WordPress.

Perfect for

• Sites with large content.
• Advanced web projects that require good content management.
• Gov sites, educational sites, social networks, corporate sites, and large publishing houses.

Joomla was once an extremely popular and influential platform, it’s no longer commonly considered to be an ideal solution for those new to the idea of operating their own website.

Our Pick for the Best Blogging Platform (WordPress.org)

Here we have seen the 15 best blogging platforms to start your blog and make money out of it. I always recommend WordPress to my readers.

We believe that WordPress.org outperforms all other blogging sites. It is powerful, easy to use, affordable, and the most flexible of all available blogging platforms.

To help you start your own WordPress site, we have created a complete guide on how to start a blog in 7 Easy Steps.

If you’re looking for a WordPress alternative, then our second choice for the best blogging platform would be the Constant Contact website builder.

Their free AI-powered drag & drop website builder makes it easy to build any type of website from a blog to a business website to an online store.

But if you don’t agree with me then feel free to leave a comment about the issues you have faced with WordPress.

If you are actually interested in starting your own blog with full control then you must go for WordPress.org, with lots of themes and plugins available in the market you can start any type of website.

We have covered a few tutorials to create websites with WordPress.

• Start your own Youtube-like website with WordPress
• Create a review website with WordPress

Special Offer: Get 67% Off & Free Domain Name with Bluehost WordPress Hosting

If you come across any other blogging platform which is not mentioned in the list above then do share it with us. We will check it out and try to add them to our list.

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