Blogging has turned out to be an amazing approach to express your ideas, thoughts, and create your own presence over the Internet for your company and providing your existing as well as potential customers with the required content.
If you are planning to come up with your own blog, but do not want to get into the hassle of developing, hosting and deploying it by your own, you can opt for the free blogging platforms that are considered the best and can be accessed for free. These platforms offer their users with a large number of features and normally come with both free as well as premium plans.
The 10 best blogging platforms of year 2012 are as under;
1. WordPress
WordPress happens to be one of the most feature-rich platforms for blogging available until now. It happens to be one of the most popular and well accepted open sourced web applications with numerous useful features even in its free version such as gorgeous themes, SEO, anti-spam filters, traffic stats and a lot more. Many other popular blogs like Flickr, people Magazine’s Style Watch, CNN’s Political Ticker also use the WordPress platform for their blogging needs.
2. Blogger
Blogger is a very popular blogging platform owned by Google and offers quite a lot of amazing features to its users. It offers ease of use and mostly beginners prefer opting for Blogger interface. Furthermore, it offers some features for free which is only available for premium users on other blogging platforms. It can be considered the best free blogging platform and it allows you to monetize your traffic.
3. Blogging.com (formerly blog.com)
It is another vital WordPress-powered platform when it comes to blogging. Just as other services, it holds its own share of advantages and disadvantages. In the free version, it offers its users with amazing themes, various plugins, and many more. The service offers 2GB of storage capacity initially but it can be enhances to with later packages. But, WordPress basic storage capacity is 3GB. However, the bad part is that the service exhibits more adverts than WordPress.
4. Blogdive
This is also another WordPress powered free blogging platform. The great thing about this service is that there are different sub-domains to choose from to personalize your blog.
5. Jux (no longer functioning)
Jux happens to be an innovative and unique blogging service which enables users to share their content over the Internet.
Speaking conventionally, Jux is not a blogging platform as mentioned before, but it holds numerous similar features and functionalities. Rather it enables you to come up with your own microblogging portal which allows you to share your content over the Web.
6. Tumblr
Tumblr is a featured-pack and popular microblogging portal. It offers numerous interesting and outstanding features like audio based blogging, blogging themes, and free customized domains with a lot more. You can even get your Tumblr account linked with your Twitter or Facebook so that you can easily update your social media feeds via a single location.
7. Posterous Spaces (no longer functioning)
It is yet another amazing blog-publishing platform which is more or less similar to the Tumblr. The platform offers incredible privacy as well as viewing features so that the users can easily control on who can see what on your Posterous Spaces portal. This was recently acquired by Twitter and it may impact on how the site functions in the near future.
8. Blog.co.uk (no longer functioning)
They have an interesting and active blog community and it’s totally free to use. The only problem is that as a free user, you’ll have so many ads on your blog. You’ll only be making money for them with your traffic.
9. Blogetery (no longer functioning)
This service is powered by WordPress and offers a great set of features. You will be able to make use of more than 40 plugins, custom domain mapping and approximately 140 themes.
10. Weebly
When it comes to Weebly, it is a lot more than only blogging, it is a totally featured website builder. It offers numerous features such as maps, audio/video, slideshows, image galleries, drag and drop interface with many others.
11. FreeBlogit (no longer functioning)
It’s also a free WordPress powered blogging platform with incredible free themes to choose from.
12. LiveJournal
Livejournal, popularly known as LJ, is another user friendly free blogging platform offering the service of free blogging and also social networking. You can create your own networks, interact with others and participate in Polls along blogging.
Conclusion
With WordPress and Blogger being the most popular and most used, choosing the better between the two popular platforms can be confusing. There are a large number of other blogging platforms available, and opting for a particular one is more of a matter of personal needs and taste.