Tech Crunch , one of the largest and most popular technology news blogs, is powered by WordPress. Take a look at this WordPress website example below. Best for: Design. Squarespace is an ideal blogging platform for businesses and individuals creating image-rich content.
With Squarespace's award-winning designer templates and integrations with Getty Images, Unsplash, and Google AMP, you can create visual content that's engaging and shareable. While Squarespace only offers about templates, they are all mobile-optimized and fully customizable so you can create a blog that looks the way you want it to.
Finally, after publishing your blog posts, you can connect your social media accounts to easily promote them. Squarespace offers even more features , from audio files support to newsletter signup forms, but ultimately it's limited in functionality. That's because it supports less than 30 extensions, so you're mostly limited to the features Squarespace provides out-of-the-box. Since they lack some feature that bloggers needs — like an auto-save feature, for example — Squarespace is not the ideal platform for everyone.
Squarespace does allow some bloggers to create beautiful sites, like this lifestyle blog below. Best for: Fast Setup. Wix is a popular blogging platform for beginners who are looking for hosting and blogging tools in one place and who prioritize speed and design over functionality.
With Wix, you have two options for creating your blog. Using the Wix Editor, you can start by selecting from over pre-designed templates that any blogger can use, whether you own a retail business or run a food review website. Using Wix Artificial Design Intelligence, on the other hand, you can fill out a quick questionnaire and have a blog created for you. After you've picked or created your template, or had one selected for you with Wix ADI, you can begin writing and editing posts on desktop or mobile, embed Wix's stock photos and videos or your own media, and organize them into topics.
Once you're done writing, you can configure your SEO settings to boost your organic reach, push your content to your subscribers with Wix's email tool, and share them through your social media accounts. You can further foster a sense of community among your readers by letting them become members. While Wix is more versatile than other hosted website builders, it lacks customization options and content management features, particularly when comparing Wix vs WordPress or another CMS.
This process can be intimidating for beginners, particularly when compared to the ease of installing plugins on WordPress. It's post editor also isn't drag-and-drop, which might frustrate some bloggers.
Take a look at this Wix blogger's site below for an example of a stylish but relatively simple blog. Best for: Ease of Use. Weebly is another popular blogging platform for bloggers that want everything they need to launch a blog in one place, including website building tools, templates, and hosting. More specifically, Weebly is best suited for creating blogs with lots of content but more basic functionality. Weebly is affordable and easy to use like Wix, but differentiates itself in multiple ways.
The editor supports drag-and-drop functionality for both posts and pages, for example. You can create more complex layouts by adding elements like forms and image galleries as well. You can also add more sub-levels to your navigation menus, which allows you to organize larger amounts of content. All Weebly templates are also mobile-optimized, which means you won't have to do any additional editing or rearranging for mobile. While Weebly offers more functionality than most website builders, it does lack flexibility when compared to WordPress or another CMS.
These restrictions do make Weebly easier to learn and use than most platforms, but they can frustrate more advanced users. There's also been some pain points since Weebly was acquired by the ecommerce company Square. A prime example: users who select that they want to create a website will see the standard Weebly editor, whereas users who select that they want to create a website with an online store will see a completely different editor called the Square Online Builder.
This has caused some confusion among users. Take a look at this Weebly blog below, which is content-rich but not feature-rich. Best for: Customization. Craft CMS is a blogging platform designed for developers, designers, and web professionals. With Craft's personalized content modeling, powerful templating, and option to edit your source code, you can completely control the appearance and functionality of your site — if you have the necessary experience.
Craft CMS also offers an image editor, collaboration tools, and a localization feature that can translate your content to specific languages. You can now also manage multiple blogs from within a single Craft install. If you have the web development experience to fully leverage the power of Craft CMS, you'll be able to create a complex blog with custom post types, like this travel blog below.
Best for: Enterprise Content Marketing. Contently is a robust blogging platform that's ideal for enterprise companies with large budgets but few internal editorial resources. Contently allows you to manage your entire content creation process in one place.
You can create and visualize your editorial strategy with their customizable production calendar tool, organize your blog posts with their tagging tool, and effectively collaborate with your team on projects by leveraging their advanced workflow tools. You can even pay for Contently's well-vetted freelancers to write some of this content for you.
Before publishing your content, Contently's smart content review tools will ensure your content is aligned with your brand, optimized for search, and legally compliant. Finally, to refine your content strategy, Contently enables you to compare your content's performance against industry benchmarks, quantify its ROI, and measure its performance by topic, format, and sources directly in your dashboard.
The biggest drawback of Contently is that it's beyond many small businesses' and individual's budgets. Check out its blog below. G2 Rating : 3. Best for: Community Building. Joomla is an open-source CMS with advanced content and user management features that are built directly into the platform. This makes it an excellent WordPress alternative for creating community-centric blogs.
Joomla offers rich built-in functionality as well as thousands of extensions. For example, Joomla allows you to create custom post types, manage hundreds of users, and publish content in multiple languages right out of the box. It also offers some great extensions for blogging. EasyBlog by StackIdeas , for example, provides a much cleaner drag-and-drop editor than Joomla's built-in editor.
You can also enable star ratings on your blog and automatically publish posts to your social media platforms with this extension.
Because of its robust built-in functionality, Joomla does have a steeper learning curve than a CMS like WordPress so it'll require more time to set up. It also offers a smaller selection of themes and extensions than WordPress, which can limit your customization options. Below is an example of a Joomla blog built with EasyBlog. Many of these features are also invaluable when you need to trim your word count.
You can find out why I like this premium grammar checker in my Grammarly review. LivingWriter is a new writing app for writing stories or a book. Rather than using a word processor, Living Writer is accessible via your web browser. It helps writers arrange their plots and stories using boards much like Scrivener. Living Writer contains a series of outline templates for popular story structures like the Hero's Journey. It's a great choice for short stories and novels.
LivingWriting now includes apps for Android and iOS and a new offline desktop mode. You can take out a day free trial without using a credit card. ProWritingAid is another proofreading and grammar checker writing app that will help you improve your writing and refine the art of self-editing. It works similarly to Grammarly , but it's more affordable.
If you're unsure about this writing software and how it compares to the apps above, I recently published a detailed review and video comparison. I use this book writing software to write feature articles for newspapers, long-form content, reports, books and more. In the past, I used Scrivener for blogging. These days, I use it mostly for long-form writing. Scrivener makes it easier for writers as well as students to organise their ideas and manage more complicated writing projects, using both the desktop and mobile writing app.
It's also available on iPad. For exploring this writing app to write faster and converting speech to text , check out my guide to how I use the writing app Dragon Naturally Speaking. If you're on a budget, you can try dictation by using the inbuilt software in Windows or Mac for your work. It works on Mac, Windows or Linux as an app on your computer. Pro backups up your work to the cloud for safety and anywhere access. It's a distraction-free writing app much like Byword or IA Writer and comes with a focus mode and white and dark themes.
However, Write! Pro includes more fonts and editing features than those apps. For example, the app enables writers to set daily goals around word-count and arrange both short and long-form writing using a file and folder structure as well as tabs, kind of like Scrivener.
Writers can also share their work with readers and editors from inside of the app. It also supports Markdown. Rev is another useful dictation app for writers. Alternatively, if you interview someone for writing better non-fiction articles, you can save time by transcribing these interviews.
It's more accurate than using a dictaphone but at a cost. One of the trickiest parts of self-publishing is creating a book that looks good. Or at least it was. With Vellum, you can create beautiful looking e-books and print books in minutes. I prepare all my books for self-publishing with Vellum, and it's a delight to use.
Ginger software is an affordable alternative to Grammarly. It enables you to translate documents written in Spanish, French, German and more into English and check for grammar errors. IA Writer is my favourite distraction-free writing app for short blog posts and articles. While Scrivener is great for managing large writing projects, this writing app is perfect for smaller ones.
This writing app for iPad, iPhone and Mac helps writers overcome distractions through a feature called the Focus Mode. The writing app also has a full-screen mode that highlights the line you are currently typing and fades out everything else on the document.
This is one of the most ingenious features I have come across for focusing your mind on the current point, which is rather useful especially in creative writing projects. I use IA Writer on my laptop, desktop and mobile. It's an elegant, easy-to-use word processor and it syncs my writing across all of my devices. Use for: Writing whatever, wherever Pricing: Free. That's right, if you're a writer on a budget, you don't need to spend any money buying expensive writing software or apps. I like plain text editors for writing something short quickly and easily, without thinking much about it.
I use Dynalist to create bullet-point outlines of articles and book chapters before I dictate them. It also enables sharing and collaboration, which is useful if you want to commission an article and give it to another writer to create. If you're the type of writer who likes to outline their work in advance, this app is useful. It also supports Markdown and can be used as a to-do list tool.
For instance, it has features such as Markup-Based Text Editor, keyboard shortcuts so that writers can be faster, a library to organise notes and documents, set writing goals, publish directly to WordPress and Medium, and so on. It includes mobile and tablet writing apps. Arguably, it's not quite as distraction-free as IA Writer, but it helps you organise both small writing projects like a blog post and large ones like a book.
Final Draft is the default app of choice for screenwriters. I've experimented with Final Draft and it strikes me as an example of powerful writing software with a bigger learning curve than your typical word processor. Although I don't write screenplays I was in a creative writing group a few years ago, and a few screenwriters in it used this app.
Meanwhile, the AI Co-Writing feature is useful for generating high-performing copy. Powered by a sophisticated AI, the co-writing feature helps users write, expand, rewrite, or simplify sentences. INK has several other features to enhance content visibility and your writing experience. However, you can opt for other paid plans based on your content needs. Get started with Ink today.
Grammarly started operations in and has positioned itself as the leading grammar and spell-checking tool on the market. It towers over others because you get to check spelling and grammar as well as spot contextual errors, improving your writing skills. One of the aspects of Grammarly that I find enticing is that it comes with an easy-to-use browser plugin. Such detailed checking makes the writing process fluid. The writing assistant tool highlights sentence structure and style problems and can even help you make your text more concise, clear, and understandable.
Grammarly has divided its plans across three tiers: Free, Premium, and Business. The Free and Premium plans are best suited for individual marketers and professionals. Using Wordtune, you can work to make your content more compelling, engaging, and easily consumable. To help you achieve this, the service uses advanced, neural-net-based NLP technology combined with standard AI tools. It attempts to improve the readability of the text instead of regular grammar checking that focuses more on syntax than semantics.
Wordtune helps you write sentences that read great and at the same time preserve the original meaning. It provides you with several different options for every sentence that you need to rewrite. Apart from the above, the following are some of the other features Wordtune offers:. Like Grammarly, Wordtune also has a three-tiered pricing structure. The Free plan is available for everyone to use without payment or registration. For advanced functionality, you can switch over to the Premium paid plans, as explained below.
It offers advanced grammar and spell-checking, along with style suggestions. You can choose from over writing styles that are pre-built into it. The software helps writers improve their content by providing detailed reports that can help enhance their writing style.
It also provides you with unique writing suggestions, related articles, and even videos and quizzes to make the editing process more engaging. ProWritingAid helps you search for and weed out unwanted elements in your text, such as redundant text, vagueness, and excessively long sentences.
And like most AI-based editing algorithms, it learns and helps you learn as you go forward and use it more. Use it for research projects, professional articles, and more. The one feature of ProWritingAid that I need to mention is its ubiquity. No matter what editor you use, ProWritingAid can help you out. Plans are segmented, keeping user needs in mind. It works to help sales and support teams compose and send personalized responses to customers.
Using this tool, managers can also gain insights into managing conversations and training teams for better customer communication. Currently, the tool is used by large brands such as TaskUs and Lionbridge.
Sapling claims to capture language problems and errors much better than traditional spell-checking tools, as it uses a machine-learning algorithm. It also has an impressive autocomplete feature that can help speed up your process of drafting replies. With Sapling, you no longer have to depend on chatbots that use shaky logic.
The tool works to empower human agents by storing and retrieving the most common query responses. With a single click, you can reply to a customer and resolve their problems. This tool is essentially an AI content generator that produces an AI article for you based on the information you supply to it.
To use the article writing software, you have to enter a topic headline or keyword, and the automation system in the software will scrape related information from the web and create an article for you. It only seeks to augment the writing process by collating information in a persuasive manner which content writers can then optimize as per their needs.
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