Written by Jerry . Published on 5 Feb, 2009 . There are many discussions around the pros and cons about hosting your blog on a free platform or on its own domain. It’s undeniable that both options have its own pros and cons and both suit the needs of different bloggers. I’m not going to compare these options here; rather, a list of free blogging platform are compiled. Although I don’t recommend bloggers (who are serious about their blog) to go with free blogging platform; some of these services are really good and extremely valuable for bloggers that do not wish to spend.
So here you go, my list of 23 must see free blog hosts.
1. Blogger.com
Google’s blogger.com is (perhaps) the most widely used free blogging platform around the blogsphere. The control interface and blogging tools are easy to use and it’s highly recommended for all beginners.
2. WordPress.com
WordPress.com is where you can host and run your blog using WordPress blogging software. The blogging software WordPress is widely supported by most hosting companies, thus there won’t be much trouble if you wish to transfer your blog from WordPress.com to your own hosting in future. Also, it’s worth noting that WordPress.com prohibit most of their users to monetize their blogs. So unless you’re the very few selected big shots, WordPress.com is not recommend if you wish to place ads and sell affiliate products.
3. LiveJournal.com
LiveJournal.com offers various type of blog hosting services (free and paid) and are extremely popular around the blogsphere. At the time of writing, there are 18.4 million journals (blogs) created at LiveJournal.com!
4. Blogr.com
Blogr is a web service that provides blog space to store and share users photos, videos, audios and blog-entries. Although the service is still in Alpha, Blogr.com grew fast and is welcomed by many bloggers.
5. Xanga.com
Xanga.com provides free blogging and community networking services. Users get to host their blogs for free and they can connect to each other via the ‘add friends’ feature.
6. Blogster.com
Blogster.com is an online community of people who share interests and activities, and are interested in exploring the interests and activities of others. The website offer free image and blog hosting altogether.
7. Multiply.com
Multiply.com is not only about blog hosting. In fact the website started as social networking websites and expand their reach to blog hosting when blogging turned hot among youngsters. One good thing about Multiply.com is that they offer image gallery features in their services.
8. Blog.com
Blog.com was established in year 2005. The website offers both free and paid (premium) blogging platforms. Free account users get up to 10MB (and 250MB bandwidth) of disk storage capacity for their photo album features.
9. Freevlog.org
Freevlog.org is designed for video blogging and their service is completely free.
10. InsaneJournal.com
The website, InsaneJournal, is a simple blogging platform that’s built on open source software from Danga Interactive. Starting a diary (blog) at InsaneJournal.com is free but they recommend the highly privileged paid account.
Visit InsaneJournal.com online
11. ClearBlogs.com
ClearBlogs.com offer advance blogging features for free. Beside hosting your blog, the website allows you to limit your accessibility (friends only blogpost) as well as IP banning.
12. Etribes.com
Etribes.com allow you to share videos, photos, and writings via blogs and image gallery. The first 50MB with Etribes.com is free of charge but if you go further, a fees of £12 is charged.
13. Terapad.com
Terapad.com is more than just a blogging platform. The website offers a bunch more value, such as shops, forums, as well web pages – it works more like a CMS than a blog platform. There’re a wide range of ready-made (very well designed!) templates available for Terapad.com users. The only bad things about Terapad.com is that the free services come with unwanted ads on your blog/website – you’ll need to pay $14.15/mo if to remove the advertisement.
14. Blogsome.com
Blogsome.com is a free blog platform that’s powered by WordPress. The website is based in Ireland and offer large chunk of WordPress templates.
15. ShoutPost.com
ShoutPost.com offers free blogging platform with no ads at all. There are little blog themes to be selected but their service is totally free of charge.
16. OpenDiary.com
Blogging with OpenDiary.com is free of charge. However there’re ads everywhere with a OpenDiary.com blog – you’ll need to pay ($12 per 6 months) to remove the unwanted advertisement as well as to get advance features in their services.
17. Greasy.com
Greasy.com offer social network and blog hosting services. Like most social networking blog services, Greasy blogs have limited flexibility in term of blog designs.
18. Blogetery.com
Blogetery.com offers multiple templates, anti-spam, free sub-domain and more.
19. Friendster.com
Yes I know Friendster is more about social networking but they do offer free blogging services to their users. In fact, many beginners start their first blog with Friendster as there are ready-made audiences (their friends in Friendster).
20. Netcipia.com
Netcipia.com offer free blog and wiki for private or public display with up to 2GB of storage.
21. SquareSpace.com
SquareSpace.com allow you build your blog with numerous themes, also allows you to add other site features.
22. Bravenet.com
I was kind of reluctant to place Bravenet.com in the list but there are indeed free blog hosting services with Bravenet. What’s pull me away from categorizing them as free blogging platform is because that they are more like a free web hosting services. Upon sign up, users get 1.5GB monthly bandwidth and 50MB disk storage for free. You can then install your blogging software and run your Bravenet.com account as a free blog account.
23. Edublogs.org
Edublogs.org is a WordPress powered blogging platform for educators.
I think that WordPress is better than any other blogging platform on the list.
Yeah, I agreed. In fact most of my websites are now built with WordPress.
i would prefer a wordpress for my blog
I run on SquareSpace. I love it. You should do a more in-depth examination of it. It is the tortoise in the blog app race for sure…but it has a VERY compelling feature set.
Great post!
One thing not good about SquareSpace is that their free blog platform is only available for trial period. Users are charged ($8 – $50 monthly) after trial period and I think that might be a little expensive for some.
But then again, I agree with you Tom. SquareSpace indeed is running on set of features that makes me “WOW”.
I have never use most of the platforms listed above but that’s alright. I enjoy blogging with blogspot and I don’t see why should I changed that.
Nice post, anyway!
I’m sorry but I’m biased to WordPress. I honestly didn’t know half of those platforms existed. Either way, a thorough overview of 25 quality blogging platforms.
nice list thanks..
Yeap….. I agree with Babylon Maid…..I’m enjoy blogging with blogspot.
Nice Blog Software Collection. In Many other blog software are available like Weebly.com and Blog.com
Is there anything but WordPress? Nice post.
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i would prefer a blogspot for my blog,but nice list thanks
Thank you for good Article
looks like WordPress dominate the platform
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Hi, I have tried ALL of the above in details because I am f…ing sick of blogspot and the horrible design of its dashboard. As a graphic designer I found ALL the above horrible and nasty. I do not recommend any if you want to have a great looking blog. The only two that I would strongly recommend is ETRIBES (you need to upgrade to pro to be avble to add any entry after crating the so called free account.), it has great looks and great features. the other one is SQUARESPACE (also requires payment after 15 days…).
But the good thing is: go to TYPEPAD if you are really serious about blogging. Its around $80 a year and the features are PRO.
For god sake, does anyone know any other FREE and GREAT blogging system that doesnt try to look modern while being “windows 98″ style?
Cheers.
Great post, by the way. very detailed. Good work!
Also, WordPress is great for basic blogging or if you are an expert in xml/html and are able to upload your customized templates, but again, dashboard gives you the feeling of working with windwos 98 environment. Horrible looks. Good luck for all of you!
Cheers and thanks for posting this great explanation, anyway.
Netcipia has a very large amount of widgets and edition tools but lacks templates and layouts. If you are looking for a great blog/website system with word based features (wigzyg) and dont mind the looks, try it. No ads at all. Its free and has unlimited storage.
Cheers
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Yesssss!
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Thanks for the great list of blogs. I didn’t know there are so many free blogging platforms. The most popular are Blogger and WordPress though…
larg!
thanks the info, it’s very useful to me, but still unfortunately many of them have been blocked in China, i cant access them…
it’s annoying to bypass the GFW ever time i want to use this platforms.
WordPress is NO.1 Blog platform.
I love wordpress.
interesting and useful article
I get a lot of valuable information from your article. thanks
I love love love wordpress. Thats what I use.
Hi,
good work , Thanks For share .
Seems I cannot access my blog in etribes.com anymore.Whenever I try to open etribes.com , it’s displaying a page cannot be displayed.How can I retrieve my posts?
I think Tumblr is by far the best blogging platform because you can post from your mobile device and the number of designs they have is awesome.
Great List! What bout Posterous??
i use most of them. most them use wordpress engine. thakns..for the list
hmmm.. i think some of them not funcional again..just some of them stll grow up
great post, i really like it, its very informative, i will link it to my new post. thanks
We use all of them but Wordpreess for our website as we like it the best. Thanks for the list blogging platforms.
I was searching for the blog site list and i found your blog it have very good list of blog site thanks for sharing with us
Hi,
good work , Thanks For sharing.
The only one any serious blogger should consider is WordPress as it offers the most versatility.
hmm…i can’t choose 1 from wordpress.com and blogger.com
they are the best
Wonderful read, and excellent points. Cheers
Thanks for the list. Blogr seems not to accept new signups though.
Hi guys, Ye man WordPress is the way to go, even for a neebee like me.
But here is a question? As part of a linkbuilding exercise I was led to believe that done correctly, ie, set-up blog properly,profile and quality content can provide some linkjuice to your money site. Any thoughts or comments on that aspect
I’m relatively new to this game, and this article has really helped me! Thanks!!
I had no idea there were so many! It’s quite incredible really. WordPress has to be the best though doesn’t it???
I think Posterous is one of the best free platforms today, with all its new posibilities.You can also register your own domain.You also can post from web,mail,cellphone etc and attatch all kind of files.Easy to use dashboard…and also integrated with the most popular social media sites..like facebook,twitter etc.
I also like Blogger.com…easy to set up and you can use your google account…infact many pros are using blogger. Anyway everybody can find a favorite today, I think…
This can be a smart blog site. I mean it. You have a lot information about this problem, and so much passion. You also know the way to make people rally behind it, clearly from the responses. Youve got a style below thats not too flashy, but makes a statement as massive as what youre saying. Great job, indeed.
I Think the reason wordpress is so far in away the best is the number of plugins that can be used, especially the SEO focused ones, make life really easy….
I use wordpress and blogspot, but it seems interesting to try the other
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Hello,
Where can I find a list of free blog providers like wordpress.com that run on the Word Press platform ?
wordpress.com is one. Any others ?
blogger.com provides us with free blogs but it doesn’t run on the WordPress platform and so I’m dismissing that one out.
I want to create more than one blog but on different domains which I do not own myself as I don’t want to create all my blogs on a single domain (like create all of them on wordpress.com only) and have all my eggs in one basket.
The free blog service providers must be running on the WordPress platform as I’m used to this platform only. Hence, on the look-out for free blog services running on the Word Press platform.
Thanks
Hi,
I have found that google show blogspot pages most and as it’s from google family, it’s indexed earlier. But customization is very restricted and low. So I don’t use blogger/blogspot. Today you have showed me some great alternatives. Thanks a lot…..
This is a great post. I agree with most of it.
Really like your blog ,because are very interesting and very useful articles here ,I will return later for new items.
Take care of you !
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Hi,
Thanks sharing informative post. I looking for such kind of Blog hosting website list. I will tryout now for website ranking on google search
Thanks for the list. You can tell that these are legitimate high quality blog sites since I’m on it 2 years later and they’re still all available!
very helpful indeed. funny thing is, this was one of the first sites i got to in my search for !top 10 free blogging platforms”
are you missing “movable type blog” and “blog engine blog” platforms
Very nice site, contents are useful really helped me to find killer blog platforms!
Hi,
Great blog post with Free blog hosting website list. It provides not only blog site and also best blog community site for sharing thoughts on blog community.
Very rarely do I come across a blog thats both informative and entertaining
I think you missed http://www.blogymate.com BlogyMate is a social blogging platform and full free.
Thanks for sharing the list, are these blogs do follow and do they easily let us create blogs and posts.
This is really helpful for bloggers like me thanks for sharing this wonderful info… keep it up.
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You missed cool blog hosting blogerzi.com
Wow what a wonderful post
I must thank you for info.Till now i knew about WordPress and Blogger only. I guess i would use all of these to see which one is better.
Cheers
I personally use wordpress but will be exploring some of these other options now.
I use WordPress and Blogger, however I look forward to checking out others.
I think the vast amount of themes and templates available make WordPress the best out there. I’m quite keen to check out some of the newer, less established platforms too.
I think this article is written in 2009 so need to update as there are other awesome Micro blogging platforms are added as well such as Weebly, Posterous and Tumbler
I only knew about wordpress and blogger.com, never even thought that any more such sites may also exist…