Awesome Platforms You Can Use for Your Blog

Rachel Mendoza

As I’ve mentioned in my previous blog posts, having a blog for your Etsy shop plays a critical role when it comes to brand awareness, reaching new audiences, increasing conversion rate, and more.

Now that you’ve decided to give blogging a try, it’s time to think of what platform to use. There are free platforms available if you don’t want to worry about hosting bills.

We have here a list of awesome blog platforms that are free to use, so you can start your Etsy shop blog!

Weebly

Weebly is an excellent platform for beginners. Its drag and drop components make it user-friendly to someone not familiar with coding. With this feature, creating a website is easy as a breeze.

It offers free and paid plans. The free plan is for basic use and the paid plans have 3 options: Personal, Professional, and Performance.

If you’ll be using it for blogs, then the free plan will suffice. Hosting is included and you’ll have access to custom layouts, free themes, and sharing features.

Wix

Wix is probably one of the best blogging platforms especially for those who are just starting. It’s a drag-and-drop website builder that lets you choose from a wide range of free templates. Free Wix accounts also have 1 GB bandwidth and 500MB storage.

Like Weebly, it offers free and paid plans as well. The Premium Plan has 4 options: Connect Domain, Combo, Unlimited, and VIP.

Substack

Substack enables you to reach your audiences through email newsletters and works as a free blogging platform as well. A free account will get you your web space and your newsletters will be hosted.

However, Substack is not a place to create beautiful blogs. It focuses more on the written word and it offers a simple CMS.

One amazing thing about Substack is the potential to earn some money from your blog posts. When you start to have a following, you can turn that into paid subscriptions. Substack is a low-risk and straightforward way to earn if you are truly prepared to put a lot of effort into building your brand.

Joomla

Joomla is the best platform for scalability. It has a flexible and powerful content management system that enables you to build any kind of blog or website.

Joomla is a self-hosted, open-source solution where the software is free. However, you have to pay for a domain name and hosting for you to be able to use it.

Joomla’s paid plans have 3 options: Personal, Business, and Agency.

WordPress.org

WordPress.com is the best platform for fine control over your blog’s design. When it comes to free blogging platforms, it’s one of the best as well. It also has an active and big community. Like Joomla, the website building software is free but you have to pay for your domain name and web hosting.

The system is a little bit complicated to use than Wix or Weebly especially if you do not have a website 

design or technical experience.

WordPress.org is the gold standard when it comes to usability and customization.

WordPress.com

Yes, you read it right – another WordPress platform. WordPress.com is a different service from the same organization that offers both website building tools and hosting.

This platform is aimed at enthusiasts, hobbyists, and beginners because it’s easier to use than WordPress.org. However, it has fewer options over the look and function of your website.

The free service offers 3GB of space, free hosting, and domain name ending in .wordpress.com.

Site123

 

Site123 takes pride in its excellent customer support and user-friendly system. It offers ready-made layouts and styles with the simplest prompts.

Here, you will get all the basics and it’s ideal for a simple personal blog. Your readers can comment, you can schedule your blog posts and you can integrate your social media accounts.

Contentful

Contentful is a unique platform where you can future-proof your blog content. It offers a way to separate content and design which is called an “API-first” approach. Here, your content is stored on its servers then you can call it into any platform or design as you like.

If you decide to build a site in the future that is completely different from what you have now, you can easily bring everything in.

About Charles Curry

Charles founded his Etsy shop Wall Decal Source in 2012. He opened his decal shop and decided to create a nursery decal for his sisters new baby. Funnily enough he published the decal as an item for sale on his Etsy shop and people really liked it. Well a few years later and his shop has been almost completely taken over by nursery wall decals. He must still be a kid at heart. As Charles tested and tried all sorts of methods to expand his shop he stumbled upon a few simple formulas for consistently growing Etsy sales and views.
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