10 best free & paid blogger alternatives

blogging, comparisons, pros and cons / By

Hi, I’m Praneeth Kumar.

In this blog, you will learn everything related to the 10 best free and paid Alternatives to blogger.

Without further ado let’s get started.

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What is a blogger?

blogger

Blogspot or blogger instead is a product of Google which allows people to start publishing blog posts on their website which can be built under an hour for free using just your email address.

As a matter of fact, I started my first blog on blogger itself.

The platform is owned by Google which it bought back in 2003, since then, 

Google is letting people use the platform for building and publishing blog posts for free on their website.

Blogger is just another product that Google has like Gmail, YouTube, and google sites, giving access for people to use the tool to get things done.

For more information regarding blogger,

Now let’s see some more info about bloggers.

Is Google blogger dead?

is google blogger dead

No,

Google blogger is not dead at all.

According to trends built with

Over 1 million websites use bloggers on the internet today so that’s a huge number and so google is not going to shut down the free service anyhow.

Blogger is also a SEO friendly platform like there are lots of SEO settings you can do for your blogger blog, there are many blogs that are ranking high in search engines without much problem and driving lots of SEO traffic back.

And blogger is considered to be one of the best alternatives to starting a blog and earning money for free.

So overall blogger is not dead at all Rather the popularity of blogger platforms is increasing day by day.

10 free and paid alternatives to bloggers.

In this section, we will learn about 10 perfect alternatives of blogger categorized in both free and paid ways, 

You’ll also learn what are the features and pros and cons of all those options in detail.

Let’s give right in.

Have a look at both free and paid alternatives of the blogger.

  1. Wix.
  2. Weebly.
  3. WordPress.com.
  4. Medium.
  5. Tumblr.
  6. WordPress.org.
  7. Joomla.
  8. Drupal.
  9. Square space.
  10. Strikingly.

Let’s learn all these things in detail.

  1. Wix.

Free-Website-Builder-Create-a-Free-Website-Wix-com

Founded back in 2006,

Wix is an Israeli-based free website builder.

If you are a beginner in website creation or do not have much knowledge and experience in creating websites, 

Wix is a perfect option for you as it is a free website builder,

It is highly known for its easy to create websites where you can create websites just from drag and drop features and its powerful AI system.

Top Features:

Here is a list of some top features of the Wix website builder.

Free features:

  1. 500 MB storage.
  2. 500 MB bandwidth.
  3. Customer support included.
  4. No custom domain name, free domain with subdomain as Wix Site included.
  5. Lots of free themes and templates to use with the drag and drop features.

Paid features.

  1. Custom domain and SSL free for a year.
  2. Unlimited bandwidth.
  3. Professional logo maker.
  4. 24/7 premium customer support.
  5. Remove Wix ads and site Analytics available.

Now let’s learn a few pros and cons of using this platform.

Pros and cons:

Here are the pros and cons of using the platform.

Take a look at the pros first,

  1. Fast website speed and 100% uptime guarantee.
  2. Lots of templates to choose from to design to build the website and add new features easily with Wix apps.
  3. Easy drag and drop website builder with no coding or technical knowledge and a huge learning curve required.
  4. Great customer support system.
  5. Wix helps you with optimizing your website for SEO.

Have a look at the cons or drawbacks of using Wix.

  1. Wix shows ads on its free websites like Wix branding.
  2. You cannot track your FREE Wix website performance in Google Analytics, you have to upgrade to higher plans to check your website performance.
  3. Wix is a closed source platform where it is quite difficult to transfer a website from Wix to other WordPress or other website builders.
  4. You cannot switch and make changes between templates and themes after your site is live and published.
  5. You can only create and access the features of the premium plans of Wix for only one Wix website not multiple or unlimited, you have to upgrade to the premium plan for each website that you build on Wix to access advanced features that Wix offers.

Pricing:

There are 2 different categories of premium plans, websites, and business- e-commerce.

On the website, the prices are per month billed per year,

  • The basic plan for 80 INR.
  • Combo plan for 125 INR.
  • Unlimited plan for 185 INR.
  • VIP plan for 325 INR.

Let’s see the Weebly now,

  1. Weebly.

Free-Website-Builder-Build-a-Free-Website-or-Online-Store-Weebly

Founded back in 2006,

A very similar alternative to blogger and a good competitor of Wix,

Weebly is another option for those of you who are looking to start a free blog or a website either to test the waters of blogging or make it a business by investing money later on.

Weebly has got lots of interesting and similar features like Wix like drag and drop features and many more which you can learn below.

Top Features:

Here is a list of the top features of using Weebly.

Free features.

  1. Free SSL certificate.
  2. 500 MB storage.
  3. Chat and email support.
  4. SEO tools.
  5. Lead capture and contact forms.

Paid features.

  1. A custom domain for a year.
  2. Remove Weebly ads.
  3. Unlimited storage.
  4. Lots of e-commerce features varying on different plans with the advanced site and e-commerce stats.
  5. Phone support.
  6. Popup notifications.
  7. Google ads(100$ credit).

Let’s have a look at the pros and cons.

Pros and cons:

Here are the pros and cons of using the platform.

Take a look at the pros first,

  1. Lots of free and paid themes to design your website.
  2. Easy and simple drag and drop feature to edit the theme.
  3. Easy to transfer your website from Weebly to other platforms like WordPress.
  4. Fast loading website and higher uptime guarantee.
  5. Great Weebly app center to add lots of features to your website.

Let’s see cons now,

  1. Weebly shows branding ads on its free websites like Wix pay and upgrades to higher plans to remove the ads.
  2. You will have to upgrade to a higher plan to be able to access better customer support.

Pricing:

There are 4 different plans 

  • Connect for 5$ a month.
  • Pro for 12$ a month.
  • Business for 25$ a month.
  • Business plus for 38$ a month.

Now let’s talk about WordPress.

  1. WordPress.com.

secure wordpress alternatives to blogger

Founder back in 2005,

WordPress .com is a business organization of the company which launched wordpress.org which is Automattic.

The catch here is, the company Automattic offers free website hosting and a free subdomain to create a website on WordPress for free although the features are limited in free plans.

They all offer all types of plans, learn more about WordPress features now.

Top Features:

Here is a list of the top features of using WordPress.com.

Free features.

  1. Great website security and backups.
  2. Free storage up to 3GB.
  3. Good hosting speed and uptime of your website.
  4. Free SSL certificates.
  5. Free subdomain with WordPress ads and branding on your free blog.

Paid features.

  1. The free custom domain name for a year.
  2. Remove WordPress ads.
  3. Unlimited email and great customer support(24/7).
  4. Download and install themes and plugins.
  5. Unlimited storage and e-commerce features.

Let’s have a look at the pros and cons.

Pros and cons:

Here are the pros and cons of using the platform.

Let’s see the pros first.

  1. WordPress will take care of backups and updates, you don’t have to worry about it.
  2. Easy to get started, you don’t have to manage the technical stuff like hosting for building websites.
  3. Excellent customer support feature.

Have a look at the cons now,

  1. They place ads on your free website and upgrade to higher plans to remove ads.
  2. You cannot use and upload themes and plugins in the free plan of WordPress, you need to upgrade to a business plan.
  3. You cannot use google analytics in the free plan, upgrade to the business plan to do that.
  4. You cannot build membership websites with WordPress.com or monetize your website through ads or affiliate marketing in the free plan.

Pricing:

There are 5 different plans based on monthly charges billed yearly.

  • Personal for 160 INR.
  • The premium for 280 INR.
  • Business for 640 INR.
  • E-commerce for 1152 INR.
  • VIP for 2000 INR.

Now take a look at WordPress.

  1. WordPress.org.

Blog-Tool-Publishing-Platform-and-CMS-—-WordPress-org

Released back in 2003,

WordPress is a free and open-source content management system where you can create a website for free as the software is not owned by any company.

It is the largest content management system in the world managing over 40% of all the websites on the internet.

Top Features:

Here is a list of the top features of using WordPress.org.

  1. Thousands of free plugins and themes.
  2. Easy user management of the website.
  3. Easy installation, maintenance, and updates.
  4. Highly SEO optimized.
  5. A very large community of people to help you in forums and on the internet apart from web hosting.
  6. Extremely simple to use yet highly flexible and create any website you wanted.
  7. Lots of editing and publishing tools.

Let’s have a look at the pros and cons.

Pros and cons:

Here are the pros and cons of using the platform.

Let’s take a look at the pros first,

  1. Thousands of free themes and plugins to customize your website.
  2. Make your website SEO easier with plugins like rank math and Yoast.
  3. You have complete control over your website and its monetization.
  4. A large community of people using the platform for support and guidance.

Now see the cons,

  1. Regular updates to theme, plugins, and WordPress versions.
  2. You are largely responsible for WordPress safety and security.
  3. Although there is no drag and drop builder by default, there are plugins to do that and you need a few HTML skills.

Pricing:

It is open-sourced free software but you need web hosting and a domain name to get started with building a website,

Learn more on how to start a website on WordPress.

  1. Tumblr.

Sign-up-Tumblr

Founded back in 2007,

Tumblr is an American-based microblogging and social networking platform which is currently owned by automatic, the company which created WordPress CMS and runs wordpress.com service.

Top Features:

Here is a list of the top features of using Tumblr.

  1. Easy to use with a user-friendly interface and easily upload any media you like within a few clicks.
  2. Unlimited storage.
  3. No ads placed on the website.
  4. A blogging+social networking platform.
  5. Get Do-Follow backlinks easily when somebody reposts your post on the platform.
  6. Free subdomain and easily connect custom domain with SSL enabled.
  7. SEO optimized and social media integrated platform.

Let’s have a look at the pros and cons.

Pros and cons:

Here are the pros and cons of using the platform.

Take a look at the pros first,

  1. User-friendly interface.
  2. Unlimited storage for blogs.
  3. No ads displayed on the blog theme.
  4. No premium plans.
  5. It is both a Blogging platform and a social networking site where you can connect to lots of new people.

Cons of using Tumblr,

  1. It is not suited for all people as the majority of the audience is young.
  2. Fewer themes and templates and difficult to monetize the blog.

Pricing:

It is free to use software but you might have to invest money for themes and buying a custom domain name.

  1. Medium.

Medium-–-Where-good-ideas-find-you-

Launched back in 2012,

Medium is another American-based online publishing platform founded by Evan Williams who was one of the founders of Twitter social media.

It very easy for writers, experts, and thought leaders belonging to different communities to share their point of view and information in long-form on the platform to the public.

It is a fine mixture of blogging and social media.

Top Features:

Here is a list of the top features of using the medium.

  1. Easy setup and publishing stories.
  2. Easily follow other authors and publications.
  3. Recommend, share and bookmark content like social media.
  4. Get unlimited ad-free access to stories of your favorite authors through membership.
  5. Easily write long-form in-depth content with good formatting, highlighting, and lots of multimedia inbuilt.
  6. Easily measure your growth through inbuilt stats features.
  7. Access to basic SEO tools.

Let’s have a look at the pros and cons.

Pros and cons:

Here are the pros and cons of using the platform.

Take a look at the pros first,

  1. It gives a large exposure to your blog.
  2. Easy to set up and use the platform, you don’t need to worry about the technical stuff of the website.
  3. You can follow your favorite leaders and learn their opinions on the platform.

Let’s see the cons now,

  1. There is a lot of competition for attention.
  2. There are fewer analytics data to track the progress.
  3. It is not easy to convert traffic into leads.
  4. You are building backlinks and authority to medium blog with your content and you don’t own your content.

Pricing:

It has a premium membership subscription plan of 5$ per month or 50$ per year.

  1. Joomla.

Joomla-Content-Management-System-CMS-try-it-for-free-

Released back in 2005,

Just like wordpress.org Joomla is another free and open-sourced content management system for managing and publishing content on websites and e-commerce stores.

This software is written in the PHP programming language.

To date over 2.5 million websites on the internet use Joomla as a CMS to manage websites.

Top features.

Here is a list of the top features of using Joomla.

  1. Inbuilt multilingual supporting over 70 languages.
  2. SEO optimized features.
  3. Speed up the website with easy cache management.
  4. Easy editing of content with WYSIWYG editor.
  5. Easy management of articles, media, and categories.
  6. Easy installation and updates in a single click.
  7. Highly flexible and powerful CMS to build any type of website you want easily.
  8. A large community of people in a forum and extended documentation available for using the platform.
  9. Easily create your own custom templates with over 8000 free extensions to use.
  10. PHP 7 is supported with easy-to-manage things.

Take a look at the pros and cons of using Joomla.

Pros and cons:

Here are the pros and cons of using the platform.

Take a look at the pros first,

  1. It is a great content management system for beginners.
  2. It is a great CMS for SEO.
  3. Joomla is great for E-commerce.
  4. It is easy to install or update and upgrade.
  5. It has advanced user permissions management.

Now have a look at the cons,

  1. Less number of free extensions compared to WordPress and Drupal.
  2. It is more complex than WordPress.

Now have a look at the pricing of the platform.

Pricing:

It is open-sourced free software but you need web hosting and a domain name to get started with building websites.

  1. Drupal.

Drupal-Open-Source-CMS-Drupal-org

Released back in 2001,

Drupal is an alternative to WordPress and Joomla which is also a free and open-source web content management framework written in PHP and JavaScript language.

Drupal has a good reputation for being a highly secure CMS and being preferred and used in many major companies and political government websites as a CMS.

To date, more than 1 million websites on the internet use Drupal as their CMS.

Top features.

Here is a list of the top features of using Drupal.

  1. Easy management of users using the website divided into different roles.
  2. Mobile-first design and approach with a site optimized for SEO.
  3. Easy management of content with WYSIWYG editor.
  4. The faster loading speed of the blog with automatic caching enabled.
  5. Industry-standard coding with PHP 7 support.
  6. Inbuilt tracking and Statistics tool but easily connect with third-party tools like Google analytics.
  7. A large community of people to help you in the forum.

Let’s have a look at the pros and cons.

Pros and cons:

Here are the pros and cons of using the platform.

Take a look at the pros first,

  1. The CMS is highly secure and safe and less prone to hacks compared to other CMS.
  2. The CMS is highly flexible and used by some of the largest companies in the world like a fox, Pinterest, puma, etc.
  3. It is a highly powerful CMS as it is very easy to create any kind of website.
  4. Lots of free Drupal modules and themes to use.
  5. Very active customer support with lots of web developers involved to help you out.

Cons of Drupal.

  1. It has a steep learning curve for beginners.
  2. You can see some performance issues like website loading speed and compatibility of modules.

Pricing:

It is open-sourced free software but you need web hosting and a domain name to get started with building websites.

  1. Square space.

Build-a-Website-–-Website-Builder-–-Squarespace

Launched back in 2004,

Square space is an American website building and hosting platform.

Unlike WordPress and Joomla it is a closed source CMS like Wix.

It is a paid service with no free access like Tumblr and blogger.

The platform is known for its easy-to-design templates and support.

Approximately 3 million websites are using Squarespace as their CMS to date worldwide.

Top features.

Here is a list of the top features of using square space.

  1. Free custom domain and SSL certificate for a year.
  2. Unlimited storage and bandwidth.
  3. Lots of SEO features to improve the visibility of a website on search engines.
  4. 24/7 customer support system.
  5. 100$ Ad Credit for Google ads.
  6. Professional email from Google.
  7. Lots of templates ready to use for any situation.
  8. Allows unlimited people as contributors to help the website grow.
  9. Promotional pop-ups and banners for collecting email addresses and marketing purposes.
  10. Lots of e-commerce features included in higher plans.

Let’s have a look at the pros and cons.

Pros and cons:

Here are the pros and cons of using the platform.

Take a look at the pros first,

  1. Lots of templates to choose from for your website.
  2. Easy to build a website through drag and drop feature.
  3. Easy to transfer the website data from and to (import and export) Squarespace.
  4. Great customer support.
  5. E-commerce-friendly platform.

Cons of using Squarespace,

  1. No free plans, use 14-day free trial to test the waters and either upgrade later or quit the platform.
  2. Limited SEO customizations and tools.
  3. There is no room for you to use third-party apps and plugins as you would do in WordPress themes and plugins or bloggers.
  4. Editing blogs and making changes in the design of the website can be pretty time-consuming.
  5. Prices are pretty expensive considering the features it offers.

Pricing:

The prices vary depending on whether you want to pay annually or monthly.

Take a look at the annual pricing.

  • Personal for 12$ a month.
  • Business for 18$ a month.
  • Basic commerce for 26$ a month.
  • Advanced Commerce for 40$ a month. 

Take a look at the monthly pricing.

  • Personal for 16$ a month.
  • Business for 26$ a month.
  • Basic commerce for 30$ a month.
  • Advanced Commerce for 46$ a month. 

Let’s see the last one,

  1. Strikingly.

How-To-Make-a-Website-–-Free-Website-Builder-Strikingly

Strikingly is a website builder platform that allows users to create a single page or multiple page website with little or no technical knowledge involved easily within minutes.

Top features.

Here is a list of top features of using strikingly because there are both free and paid plans, first learn free and then head over to a pro features.

Free features.

  1. 500 MB storage per site.
  2. 5 GB bandwidth per month.
  3. Strikingly.com as a sub-domain for free in your free domain.
  4. 24/7 customer support system.
  5. Simple store with 1 product per site.

Paid features.

  1. Connect a free custom domain name for a year.
  2. Customized checkout popups for email marketing.
  3. Unlimited bandwidth and storage varying in different plans but a maximum of 10 GB per website.
  4. Simple store with up to 500 products per site.
  5. Create and monetize your website through membership tiers.
  6. Priority customer service and English phone support.
  7. Removed strikingly ads from your website.

Let’s have a look at the pros and cons.

Pros and cons:

Here are the pros and cons of using the platform.

Take a look at the pros first,

  1. Great customer support system.
  2. Easy to use platform with drag and drop feature built-in.
  3. The perfect platform for building single-page websites.

Cons of using strikingly.

  1. Not the best for SEO. The only solution for building multiple pages comes also comes with the Pro plan
  2. A limited free plan means that you really need to pay to get the features worthwhile.
  3. They have very fewer tools to scale the business.
  4. Expensive to upgrade if you want a single website with more features and remove ads on your website.

Pricing:

There are 3 different paid plans where you can pay the price based on a monthly and yearly basis.

  • Pro for 16$ a month.
  • Vip for 49$ a month.
  • Limited for 8$ a month.

Ending remarks.

There you go I have answered all the top and best alternatives of the blogger.

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I will catch you next time till then,

Keep learning and keep growing.