Seven WordPress Alternatives That Make It Really Easy to Start Blogging

Built and maintained by Herman Martinus, Bear bills itself as a “privacy-first, no-nonsense, super-fast blogging platform,” and it is certainly that. Bear might, in fact, be the simplest of all of the platforms featured here, with no detectable frills whatsoever. However, there’s a certain beauty to Martinus’ dogged focus on simplicity.

Posts and pages in Bear are formatted with Markdown, which might take some getting used to if you’re only familiar with WYSIWYG editors. Bear’s text-centric focus means that its content loads quickly and looks good on any device. Bear also comes with numerous themes as well as the ability to add your own CSS to further customize your site’s style. Finally, Bear comes with built-in analytics so you know how your blog’s doing.

Bear is free but can be upgraded for $5/month or $48/year. Upgrading unlocks custom domains, the ability to add images to your posts, advanced analytics, and more customization options. What’s more, Martinus actively solicits ideas from Bear’s user base and publishes his roadmap for Bear’s development.

At first blush, Ghost can feel very WordPress-like. Which should come as no surprise given that its creator, John O’Nolan, used to be a member of the core WordPress team. While it’s easy to think of Ghost as what WordPress might’ve become had it remained focused on blogging, it’s definitely emerged from under WordPress’ shadow to stand on its own merits.

Ghost is very polished, with a beautiful admin area and slick editing interface. It is, however, geared towards the “professional” end of the blogging spectrum, offering a suite of tools that includes member/subscriber management, branding controls, and first-party integrations for ecommerce, marketing, social media, etc. Subsequently, Ghost now powers a number of popular publications, including 404 Media, Platformer, and Quillette.

Because of its professional focus, Ghost is the most expensive platform on this list. After a complementary 14-day trial, the cheapest tier is $11/month ($9/month if paid annually) while the most expensive is $249/month ($199/month if paid annually). Ghost can also be self-hosted, which removes many limitations (including pricing tiers; you just pay for a hosting provider) but obviously complicates things for non-developers.

I’ve written about Medium in the past, and even set up a second Opus there to help spread my writing. Medium has experienced a bit of an identity crisis since its launch in 2012, originally focusing on editorial publications before pivoting to subscriber and patron-supported content. Medium pushes memberships as a way to generate revenue for its writers (who must also be members to earn anything), and a quick perusal of its archives quickly reveals that many writers opt to make their articles members-only in order to get a slice of that revenue.

In any case, Medium is still chugging along. Its editor remains as simple and elegant as ever, its influence obvious on Ghost and Substack’s own editors. Medium removes many of the settings and options that you’d expect to see in a blogging platform, instead emphasizing a clean and focused writing environment — which can be a plus for many.

One potential downside to Medium, however, is that the line between your site and Medium is a bit blurry; even if you set up your own publication (which requires being a member), it can look like you’re writing for Medium rather than yourself. Also, memberships are across all of Medium’s publications, so you won’t necessarily have your own unique membership list — which is important to some writers. But with its simplicity, professional veneer, and built-in audience, Medium remains a compelling platform that’s used by many.

Launched in 2017 by Manton Reece, Micro.blog occupies an interesting space between a blogging platform and a social network. When you log into your account, for instance, you don’t see a list of your posts; instead, you see a timeline of posts by other Micro.blog users that you follow, displayed in chronological order (as God intended).

That said, Micro.blog has all of the features you’d expect from a modern blogging platform. As its name suggests, Micro.blog is ideal for short posts à la Twitter and Bluesky, though it also handles longer, media-rich posts just fine. Micro.blog supports podcasting, integrates with desktop and mobile writing apps, and adheres to the IndieWeb’s ethos (e.g., you should own your own content). Micro.blog also cross-posts with other platforms including Mastodon, Bluesky, and LinkedIn, meaning your Micro.blog posts will be automatically shared to your other accounts with links back to your site.

After a free 30-day trial, Micro.blog starts at $5/month, which lets you use your own domain and comes with podcasting, cross-posting, and custom themes. The “Premium” plan is $10/month and adds email newsletters, video hosting, and integration with the Strata note app. Finally, the “Family” plan, which is $15/month, lets you add additional authors to your Micro.blog site.

Good Enough is a small studio that’s released a number of simple apps, including Album Whale and Letterbird. Pika is their take on a “a pretty good blogging platform” and as I expected, it’s delightfully unpretentious. As it turns out, “pretty good” will be more than enough for many folks.

Similar to Bear, Pika is a no-frills service. But Pika is more polished compared to Bear’s ultra-minimal, stripped down UI. For instance, Pika comes with an actual WYSIWYG editor as opposed to a Markdown editor. And it offers image uploading out of the gate. Pika’s design is very minimal with some branding controls — which means that it loads very quickly — but you can customize your site’s font and color scheme and add custom CSS for additional styling. You can also manage your site navigation and create a custom homepage.

Pika is free by default, but free accounts are limited to 50 posts and three pages. A “Pika Pro” account, which costs $6/month or $60/year, allows unlimited posts and pages as well as custom domains and analytics.

Developed by Vincent Ritter, the man behind the excellent Tinylytics tool, Scribbles is billed as “blogging for humans.” Compared to the other entries in this list, Scribbles feels like the most informal and personal, and with its subtle animations, almost whimsical.

Beneath the whimsy, however, lies a lot of functionality. Writing posts and pages is done via a simple WYSIWYG editor that allows you to add categories and images as well as schedule your posts. Scribbles’ design and branding customization is minimal but it offers many other settings that really let you customize your blog’s various details. These include the number of posts displayed on pages, toggling between displaying expanded posts and post summaries, custom footer content, and alternate labels for your blog’s various links. Scribbles also integrates with other services like Shoutouts.lol and supports cross-posting with Micro.blog.

Scribbles’ free version only allows you to make ten posts, though. If you want to post more, you’ll need to pay $5/month or $50/year, which gives you unlimited posts across up to three different blogs and unlocks features like custom domains.

I can see some of you already raising an eyebrow… “Wait a minute,” you’re thinking; “Substack is just email newsletters.” Which is not exactly true, because those email newsletters are powered by a CMS that’s a solid blogging platform in its own right.

Substack’s editor is a joy to use; it’s powerful yet unobtrusive, which makes writing a breeze. Podcasting is supported out of the gate. You can select from a number of design layouts and customization options to make your site match your brand. And even if you’re not necessarily thinking about publishing subscriber-only content behind a paywall, the fact is that Substack makes it very easy to do so. Truth be told, Substack offers so many settings for everything from site design and podcasting to community tools and referrals, that it can be a bit overwhelming. But the adventurous blogger will have lots of freedom to craft their own platform.

Arguably the most enticing aspect of Substack, however, is that all of the above costs absolutely nothing. Substack only charges you if you offer paid subscriptions, in which case it takes 10% of each transaction (which is in addition to Stripe’s credit card processing fees). That, combined with all of its many features (e.g., topnotch editor, podcasting, community tools), makes it easy to understand why Substack has enjoyed so much growth since its 2017 launch, although not without some significant controversy.