I’m the live example of the one who makes money from online and I’ve been successfully making money from several blogs for the last 9 years now.
Generally blogs are available in two forms, one is free and the other is self-hosted blogs (Premium) where you have to pay money. Both of them have their own pros and cons.
Free blogging platforms are free to use though you won’t have full control over your sites whereas in self-hosted sites you have to pay money for domain and hosting to run your sites (and you’ll have full control on your sites) .
If you are just starting out your blogging journey, you can start with a free personal blog. There can be lots of reasons why you want to try your hands on free blogging sites first.
The most obvious reason could be the cost. With blog posting sites, you won’t be paying a single penny for your domain name and hosting space.
For example, if I try to registering bloggers passion as my blog URL on WordPress.com, my ultimate blog URL in that case will be bloggerspassion.wordpress.com (If it happens to be available).
So WordPress.com will be added with each blog which is created for free on WordPress.com.
The same thing applies when you went on to create blogs on other free blogging platforms like blogger.com, weebly.com and blog.com etc. So the general blog syntax for your blog address will be abc.blogspot.com or abc.wordpress.com where abc is your blog name.
Here are few pros and cons of using free domain names through various free blog writing sites.
So enough about the importance of having free blogging platforms to star blogs. Here is the ultimate list of free blogging sites that you can use for creating free blogs of your own (the following list of blogging platforms are in no order, means, every blogging platform has its own pros and cons).
WordPress is also one of the most reliable and widely used free blogging platform.
You can use WordPress for creating personal blog sites, professional and I would say blog of any type. You will get most of the features that you were enjoying on Blogger.com but you will have very few options when you think of monetizing your free blog (sub-domain) on WordPress.com.
Over 34% of the websites worldwide are hosted on WordPress content management system. This is indirectly telling the importance of using WordPress.com to create free blogs.
You can use WordPress blogging software on your custom domain by downloading it from WordPress.org website and uploading it on your purchased web space.
It does not take much time in installing WordPress on WordPress friendly web hosts. If you don’t know how to do it, you can use Bloggers Passion free WordPress Installation service.
There are some limitations that should be in your mind if you are thinking of using WordPress for creating your first free blog site:
But you can get free from these and many more limitations if you went on to Start a blog from Scratch. By using a self hosted blog, it’s not only easy to manage your sites, but you can also make money blogging if you put some bucks on SEO, content writing or design.
Recommended:
If you are searching for a free and reliable blogging platform, Blogger is the perfect choice for you.
Blogger.com is not only one of the most popular blogging websites and it is owned by search engine giant Google.
Click this link to know more in detail about Blogger.com features.
If you want to start blogging as a hobby or want to start a personal blog, Blogger.com could be the best option for you. As mentioned earlier, this is a free platform and you will need to pay the domain cost in case you want to use a custom domain for your blog.
Blogging Resources:
Guest blogging sites list
Blog commenting sites
Blog submission sites
How top bloggers are making money
Live Journal is available in free and paid version. You have to pay money if you want to keep your LiveJournal blog from their free advertising.
You will be getting the features like multiple author blogs, polls and calendars, commenting and it has lots of social media features which differentiate it from other free blogging websites.
Over 16 million people are now using LiveJournal to create their free blogs.
You can also blog in several languages including Dutch, French, German, English so if you are not good at English and want to try these languages, you will feel lucky using LiveJournal free blogging site.
Here are few notable features of free blogging site LiveJournal.
You can know more in details about LiveJournal feature for free and paid account type from here.
Tumblr is a micro blogging website like Twitter and Facebook.
Tumblr is one of the fastest glowing websites on the internet and it looks like a mixture of blogger, Facebook and Twitter.
Use Tumblr to create free blogs if your site is more about the visuals.
Tumblr gives you everything to make your images look visually appealing and you can show images, videos and music in anyway you want.
They have lots of unique features that makes them the unique choice of too many bloggers:
Use this link to know more in detail about why you should choose Tumblr over other blogging platforms. You can repost, reshare, reblog anything that you find useful on Tumblr community this leads to get you more Tumblr followers without actually spending time in content creation.
Other people can also reblog your blog posts, images and videos leaving you with more followers and giving you much exposure to reach wider audience.
From the list of free blogging sites mentioned in this page, Tumblr is one of the finest platforms to create a site that is clutter free and mostly content oriented.
If you’re in a hunt for the best list of blog sites that provides professionally designed website templates, free web hosting along with an easy to use website builder.
Give Webs.com a try and you’ll be amazed with the tons of useful features you get with it.
Webs does a surprisingly good job of making it easy to build a good-looking, customized site through a completely browser-based interface.
Weebly.com is a California-based company which was started in 2006 and in 2007; it was named amongst Best 50 Websites by Times.
Weebly is popular free blogging platform and used by many people to create their free blogs because of its versatility.
They are currently hosting personal websites and blogs of over 12 million people.
You can publish your content on Weebly sub-domain or on your custom domain and you will not be charged anything for domain mapping unlike other web hosts in the industry.
You can also drag and drop items to create menus, pages, categories etc. Using Weebly to create free blogs is a fun and you won’t find it hard to maintain your blogs.
Want to write your blogging/IM/Life or Personal thoughts privately online?
Try Penzu. It is a free blogging site that allows you to post various journals on your blogs.
You can upload unlimited images as it provides unlimited storage to its users.
Here are few great features of Penzu.com:
You can use 3 types of journals using Penzu blogging platform. Daily Diary (public can read your content), Expressive Journal (private), and Travel Journal (especially designed for travelers).
Here’s the link to start a free blogging site using Penzu.
Squarespace is one of the easiest ways to create a free website, Squarespace is a great website builder that has almost everything you are looking for.
It is the most effective blogging platform for photographers, online retail store owners, bloggers and musicians.
It will make your site not only look awesome but their templates make your site stand out from other blogs easily.
Here are few features of Squarespace free blogging platform.
Click this link to start building your free site on Squarespace.
There are over 12 million people using Yola which makes it one of the best free blogging platforms in the world.
Yola is also available in 6 languages including English, French, German, Italian, Portuguese and Spanish.
Click on this link to start building your free site on Yola in 2019.
As the name suggests, Edublogs is the perfect blogging platform for education related blogs.
If you are a college student or a professor, want to make a site on your own for free, this is the perfect choice to select from the above list of free sites.
You can create blogs as a student, as a teacher or as an institution on this free blogging site.
Currently they are holding more than one million education blogs on their free blog hosting. You can know more in detail about why you should choose Edublogs for creating for your first education blog here.
Wix.com is one of the best free platforms that you can use to build gorgeous looking sites. Well, to build an interactive website, you don’t need to code.
Wix is a good website builder where it creates beautiful and stunning websites. And you know, these websites are created by non-professional web designers.
One speciality about Wix is, they have built specific tools to help musicians and hotels grow their businesses that is not offered by other website builders.
It reported that 103 million registered users with about 45,000 new users joining every day. This clearly says that Wix users are happy with the website builder and its services.
Although it offers free blogging platform but it also has 5 different levels of premium packages that you can choose according to your website needs.
Medium.com is a fast growing free blogging platform that allows anyone to create stories and have their own personal space on the web.
You can contribute your content by creating an account for free with either an e-mail address or a Twitter account.
Ghost.org is one of the simplest yet free blogging platforms that you can use to quickly build great looking blogs.
If you are looking for a better version of WordPress where emphasis would be mainly on blogging and nothing else then Ghost is for you.
It has beautiful and elegant template themes.
Ghost does not power a wide array of websites but it is purely a blogging platform.
Postach.io is a unique free blogging platform that uses the external note organizing program Evernote to create your blog posts and manage your content.
The main idea behind Postach is that instead of having another separate platform, why not blog from already existing tool.
To sign up for Postach.io, you need an Evernote account.
Are you looking for a hassle free yet free blogging platform? Give a try to Jimdo.com once and you’ll be surprised with its features.
If you want to build an online shop without too much hassle, then Jimdo fits to your needs.
If you do not want to pay thousands of dollars for a custom built website or if you don’t know how to code then Jimdo is for you as it is a very good website builder.
Although there are a lot of common problems you might face with the list of free sites mentioned in this page (that includes, constant 504 and 502 errors, pages getting deleted, slow loading page etc). But again it depends on blog to blog, each blogging platform is different and all of them have their own set of pros and cons.
So make sure to know the primary fact before starting a free blog that it’s not a cakewalk. But if you really want to share your thoughts and create a following for yourself online, using free sites mentioned above is a great step.
What others are reading:
Here are some of the most important points to note down while using the best list of blog sites to create free blogs.
Here are few important questions around list of free blogging platforms that might be useful for you before using them to create free sites in 2019.
Yes, almost all of the blog sites mentioned above provide you hosting for free which means, they won’t charge you anything for hosting your site or posting any content on their platforms but they don’t give you full control unlike self-hosted platforms like WordPress.org.
That being said, if you are exclusively looking for best free blog hosting sites, here are a couple of them you can consider in 2019.
If you want to make money from blogging, we highly recommend you to start your site using a self-hosted publishing platform like WordPress which only costs you under $100 per year (where you’ll need to purchase hosting sites like Bluehost where you can get domain for free).
That being said, you can also make money using free blog creation sites and here are some of the following strategies to earn money with them.
All you need to get started with list of free blog sites is use your email address and there are also few free blogging platforms that allow you to sign up for free with social media sites like Facebook and twitter.
If you’re looking for best free blogging platforms in India, go for WordPress or Blogger as they are widely popular in India both in terms of usage, affordability and features.
Almost all of the 15 sites mentioned here provide blog service for free including Blogger, WordPress.com, Penzu, Yola and so on where you can create your free personal blog within a few minutes.
Blogger and WordPress are exceptionally well made platforms if you are looking for top free blog posting sites for SEO. And if you’re looking for eCommerce related free blogging platforms, then you should consider both Magento and Shopify.
As I mentioned in this post, there are a lot of free blog writing sites available out there. Choosing a free blogging site is not an easy task and you can’t try them all at once. So first know your blogging needs, and choose your blogging platform according to your profession.
If you are a beginner and searching for ways to make money from blogs, I would strongly recommend you to try either Blogger or WordPress from the list of free blogging sites mentioned above. Let me know the best free blogging site you would recommend to a newbie?
Anil Agarwal who owns Bloggerspassion.com, is a full-time blogger and SEO expert who has been helping people build profitable websites for over a decade. Bloggers Passion has been featured on premium online sites like Forbes.com, Huffingtonpost, SEMrush, Problogger, Crazy Egg, The Next Web and so on.
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Hi Anil, you did a great job I was eagerly searching some more platforms and you solved my problem, thank you.
Massive list Anil.
I have used many of them for different purposes. But, postach sounded new to me.
I am blogging on self hosted WordPress since long time. But, being a beginner if I had to start a blog without any investment, I will definitely go for Blogspot platform. It is just awesome, hosted on Google’s server so no downtime at all.
My other favourite ones are WordPress dot com and Medium. Medium looks very professional altogether, and a perfect fit for hobby writer and even for exposure.
Thanks Anil, have a great day ahead.
In my experience, WordPress has many features for any new blogger. Blogger does not have full control over the theme. Please make a post on best hosting platforms also. because sever plays a very important role in traffic.
Your suggestion Very helpful for new bloggers. I have used tumblr, blogger & livejournal
Is it wiser to choose blogger.com as a free website?
Free blogging is always an issue for beginners. They think about blogging with WordPress. Self-hosted version of WordPress is a useful one but many bloggers go for free one because for them starting with some cost matters a lot. This will definatle right.
That’s so true Janitha, free blogging sites have their own downsides as they don’t offer you full control over your sites. But if you’re just blogging for fun or looking to share your thoughts, they are great. Or if you’re looking to make serious money or build your online reputation, then, you should definitely avoid free blogging sites.
Sir thank god, i found you on google, to make my dream come true as blogger, I am very new I had bought new domain leaving sub-domain of blogger.com.
sir what to do next should I buy hosting or the blogger.com with my custom name will be ok
Sir thank god, I discovered you on google, to make my blessing from heaven as blogger, I am exceptionally new I had purchased new area leaving sub-space of blogger.com.
sir what to do next should I purchase facilitating or the blogger.com with my custom name will be alright
Sir thank god, i found you on google, to make my dream come true as blogger, I am very new I had bought new domain leaving sub-domain of blogger.com.
sir what to do next should I buy hosting or the blogger.com with my custom name will be ok
WordPress is my personal favourite and after that comes blogger. I’d never prefer other free blogging sites unless you are doing it just for you hobby and don’t really care about your articles. If anyone who is serious about Blogging and planning to go full-time in it they should always prefer going with WordPress.org. Although, it needs some upfront investment but every penny is worth it once you start to get 10X the ROI. 🙂
Free blogging is always an issue for beginners. They think about blogging with WordPress. Self-hosted version of WordPress is a useful one but many bloggers go for free one because for them starting with some cost matters a lot. This will definatle right.
Hi. I use Weebly. I find it unreliable for uploading and posting photos. I use it mainly for posting photos for family to follow my comings and goings. I crashes a lot, especially from my phone. Also, it can not be posted to from my iPad. Most annoying.
Hi Anil, Thanks for this amazing list of free blog sites. Except for some 3-4 sites i never heard of these free blogging platforms. Luckily I got through your valuable post and now I’m trying how to get most of these sites.
Hi, Anil
Nice collection of free Blogging Site.You did a great work. Because blogging is one of the best practice every one out there are doing but none of them no the free site.For those who are looking for free website this will be helpful for them.
Thanks for sharing it great blog.
I am going to create a blog for my recently launched website. I have a question regarding these blog. Are the free blogs useful in terms of SEO? Should I do SEO work on these free blogs also?
Hey Allan, that’s a great question. Free blogs are definitely not bad in terms of SEO. Take a look at the WordPress alternatives as well (https://bloggerspassion.com/wordpress-alternatives/) once to see a variety of options. There are few sites that provide excellent SEO features such as WordPress and also provide you full control over your sites.
When i started blogging, my first free blogging platform was wordpress.com then when i realize that i cannot make a lot of customization, i migrated to blogger, and in the end i still bought my own hosting and tranfered to a self hosted blog. I recommend if you a free blogging platform, choose blogger.
If you’re really serious about making money from blogging, go for a self-hosted WordPress blog as it provides you full control. Self hosted platform like WordPress is where you go to actually download a WordPress and easily install host the WordPress platform on your own server.
Hey they!
In recent times, WordPress.com has been the most valuable website for opening a blog website. Well, I haven’t used livejournal.com but all I wish to know are the limitations of all the listed free blog websites from the paid sites?
Why do most bloggers use wordpress.com most often?
Emmanuel, we have already covered about the pros and cons of free blog sites in this post. Please check this post once and let us know in case you have additional question for us.
Hi, Anil Nice collection of free Blogging Site.You did a very good job. Because blogging is one of the best practice in off page and great job this web site provides SEO options and dynamic look for the website.
Thnks for sharing great blog A very helpful for website
Yes, blogging is definitely a great way to make money online and most of the free blogging sites shared here provide excellent features like drag and drop builder, SEO and so on. So make sure to check out each one of them and use the right one.
Hi Anil,
I agree with you, it can be a great thing to start on a free platform. Although, I started on a self-hosted blog from the get go. You can definitely save money by starting on a free platform.
Plus it will help you see if you really want to work this hard to grow your blog. It does take quite a bit of time to grow an online reputation and get people to start coming back.
If I was to do it over, I would start my blog on a self-hosted blog again. I wouldn’t want to have to migrate everything later when my blog gets big and popular.
Thanks for sharing this with us, have a great day 🙂
Susan
Hi Susan, glad to see you around here.
Using free blogging sites, you can quickly launch a new blog without having to spend even a penny as most of the above listed sites provide you excellent features and storage space. Once you find ways to make money from online, you can start using sites like WordPress where you can invest money on hosting, domain etc.
Really Great list of Website and very useful, I have often use Weebly.com, this website provides SEO options and dynamic look for the website.
True that, Weebly is great for SEO purposes and also used by over 40 million people worldwide. Using Weebly, you can literally create anything from an online store to portfolio sites or SEO friendly websites to drive more leads and profits to your online website.
I always tell people when they’re starting out blogging that Free sites like Bloggers is the best way to start out because they allow you to put ads in the header, beginning paragraph of your blog posts, sidebar, bottom of the blog post, and footer of the blogger blog. One thing they want to do when starting a free blog is to make sure they have a copy of their contents either on their desktop PC or automatically sent to Google Drive. The reason for saving a copy of their content to their laptop or desktop PC or sent to their Google drive is because their blog can be deleted anytime for any or no reason. Being that the blogging platform they’re blogging on is public domain and anyone can report their blogs or any or no reason, it should motivate the amateur blogger to backing up their content and using the free blog platform form as an avenue of practice of strategically getting their content marketing ideas together and gaining some type of experience. Or just getting in the consistent mindset of posting blogs daily or every other day. This valuable experience I think will give them the inspiration and the proper blogging mindset so when they purchase their own domain and dedicated web hosting package, they’ll know how to keep going the extra mile in terms of blogging, content marketing, and having a piece of mind not having to worry about getting their blog deleted for whatever reason.
I would personally recommend free blogging platforms for anyone looking to gain experience and transition into the mindset of consistent blocking. It gives a person much to look forward to in terms of optimizing their writing style and building relationships with their readers without having to shell out one red cent for it a domain name and hosting. I personally tried Blogger.com back in 2005 when I knew nothing about blogging and affiliate marketing. Back then, I was an affiliate of Walmart.com and didn’t have the complete concept understood about blogging back then, content marketing, and making money in affiliate marketing. Though I made tons of mistakes and didn’t completely understand what a blog was and how it could make money while fiddling with some Walmart ads from LinkShare inside of certain positions in a blogger.com blog, I was able as an inexperienced Internet marketer-blogger to make money from the Walmart affiliate program through my blogger blog and collect a commission check a little over $72. I thought at that time I was really onto something and decided to stick with this line of work as my love slowly and quietly rule for blogging and affiliate marketing. I continue fiddling with the blogger free blogging platform and managed to potentially earn a few more dollars from the affiliate ads in it, some including Google AdSense.
So I’m really glad you put up this post about free blogging sites because it brought back some good memories of the days that I started when I knew nothing about blogging and making money online. I didn’t know about the other free blogging platforms because my mind was elsewhere at the time and was only concerned with knowing one free blogging platform that I can put some ads in my blog and start earning a few bucks just to see how serious this online business stuff really was at the time. Well, thanks again for putting this post up and I hope to read more from you soon! 🙂
Wow, that’s a very lengthy comment and I really appreciate your time for sharing your thoughts with us. It definitely helps new bloggers to pick the right choice for starting a free blog online. I agree with most of your points that one need to take a full backup of their contents as most free blogging sites don’t provide you any backup feature. Apart from that, you also need to focus on finding a monetization strategy as soon as possible so you can move to something better option like WordPress.
blog.com is gone! My breast cancer story blog is no longer available. I can’t believe it is gone. I should have made a copy, but I usually use blogger and they are so reliable. Not sure why I tried this instead. Devastated! 🙁
Unfortunately it’s gone and thousands of people lost their blogs as well. Sad to hear that your precious content is gone. That’s the reason why you need to only pick those free blogging sites with millions of people using it (sites like WordPress.org, Weebly, Blogger etc). Hopefully you’re still blogging on a good blogging platform.
The above websites are very useful, but I am a little bit confused with LiveJournal & Edublogs. Because my friend told me that both of the websites have robot issue. Please reply. Thanks
I don’t think so. Live Journal is a really good platform and if you’re looking for even better alternatives, you can check out this post: https://bloggerspassion.com/wordpress-alternatives/
hello!
great research on blog platforms.your suggested platform very informative for newly bloggers.IN my blogging carrier i have used many blogging platforms like blogger,tumblr etc.but i like WordPress most.
Thanks for information
Yes, I’m also into blogging for a long while now and I’ve tried so many blogging sites but WordPress seems to be the best option among all. WordPress is, by far, the most popular open source Content Management System which is actually used by approximately 75 million websites. Not only WordPress is free to install and upgrade but you can also find a ton of useful plugins and themes.
Veerrry good list of blog platform providers. I saw today many other similar pages, but yours collects indeed the best platforms for blogers. IMHO own hosted (f.i. on a cheap hosting) blog, installed on wordpress or something like that, would be always better choice – there are so much more options, you can use or not, but they are there 😉 But of course, for beginners it could be to difficult, then the better option is a free blog platform like the platforms on your list. Thank you!
If you’re on WordPress, you can find so many cheap yet reliable hosting services like Bluehost (instead of going for unknown and less popular hosting choices) as they also provide you free domain name. If you want more info: you can check out this post: https://bloggerspassion.com/how-to-install-wordpress-on-bluehost-in-under-5-minutes-with-screenshots/
LiveJournal is nofollow. And SquareSpace is trial only. Try Zoho or SnackWebsites.
It doesn’t matter whether it’s nofollow or not as we’re only talking about the free blogging sites. Thanks so much for your other suggestions as well!
Hi Anil,
I am starter blogger person and i follow you last six month your all post and read very careful so you all post useful for me. and i am asking one question can you advise me best theme for starter blogger.
First of all, thanks so much for following me for so long time and I’m really glad to know that you’re reading our blog posts, hopefully you’re learning new things. For starting bloggers, there are so many options out there, I suggest you to check out Elegant themes once.
Hi Anil!
Would you mind if I ask you what theme are you using for this blog? I liked it very much and would want a similar one (using same will not be good).
I hope you will be able to answer this.
Thnks!
Dhakkanz
Dhakkanz, its a custom build theme which is designed by designer.
Hi. I use Weebly. I find it unreliable for uploading and posting photos. I use it mainly for posting photos for family to follow my comings and goings. I crashes a lot, especially from my phone. Also, it can not be posted to from my iPad. Most annoying.
If you’re using a site only for uploading pics, I think you should better check out Tumblr as most people I see post a ton of photos and it’s also a great platform that offers you a ton of options for storage. So go give it a try if you’re not happy with Weebly.
Blog.com is a piece of crap, it never works right and the server is down a lot, it runs slow. Especialy in the last 10 days, it has been horrible.
You can only know a blog by actually trying it, don’t tell people how great it if you haven’t used on a daily basis like i have.
Shams, we recently updated this post and added 5 more free blog creation sites into this list. I hope this will help you. Please let us know in case we are missing any popular free blogging platform here.
Blog.com is no more active now and thousands of people who’re using their platform lost their content and sites. You can better check out this post if you’re serious about building your blog on a professional platform: https://bloggerspassion.com/wordpress-alternatives/
ucoz.com is the site which lets you control the way your site works. You can add css, scripts, html, pages, entries, multiple users, multiple subdomains. It provides the option of search through tags, common search. Moreover own themes can be added with full style sheet control.
Heard a lot of good things about Ucoz, thank you for your suggestion, will definitely check it out and include it as well in the future. I guess it’s already offering easy to use drag-and-drop website builder with an intuitive interface designed for businesses. Keep sharing more information.
Hi Anil,
Free blogging is always an issue for beginners. They think about blogging with WordPress.org or WordPress.com. Self-hosted version of WordPress is a useful one but many bloggers go for free one because for them starting with some cost matters a lot.
Blogspot and WordPress.com are the leading websites which provide opportunity to blog free of cost.
You have listed some great websites to use by newbies.
Great post indeed.:)
Have a nice week ahead.
~Ravi
Hi Ravi, as you said, free blogging sites are definitely an issue for anyone including beginners as they don’t provide you much control, features, security, storage and so on but the only reason to consider them is when you’re starting out, it’s always better to start for free (unless you’re ready to spend some money on things like hosting, design etc). Thanks for the comment.
WordPress.com is the best site for creating blog as wordpress provides various themes and plugins to use .
But I think blogger.com is the anathor great site for begginers.
Blogger.com and wordpress are two most popular blogging sites also tumbler is popular but it didnt provide options like wordpress
WordPress.com doesn’t provide you plugins WordPress.org provides you all the plugins. The major difference between both of them is WordPress.com is completely free to use whereas the latter one requires hosting, domain etc. You can check this post if you’re curious: https://bloggerspassion.com/blogger-vs-wordpress/
I have only tried 3 out of that list, Blogger, LiveJournal & WordPress. I then discovered the wonderfulness of self-hosting my own WordPress blog and have never even contemplated looking anywhere else. 🙂
That’s what I think about WordPress too. Once you’ve realised the importance of using WordPress.org, you’ll never go back to any other blogging platform. It’s just like becoming an Apple fanboy, once you’re addicted to Apple products, you’ll never go back to something else.