The Top Blogging Platforms to Build Your Blogging Business 🍃

It’s time to start writing amazing blog content, but there’s one problem.

You’re not sure which blogging platform is the best platform to get started with.

You know that selecting a suitable blogging platform is crucial for your blog’s success and growth. 

However, with countless options available, each offering unique benefits, you’re not sure which blogging platform you should go with. First things first, every blogger has found themselves stuck with this big decision to make, so you are not alone.

In fact, when I first decided to launch Blogging for Africa, I remember being confused about which platform I wanted to blog on because I was interested in two at the time.

In this blog post, I’ll be sharing a personal list of blogging platforms that I recommend to my own clients to start with and which blogging platforms I advise to avoid.

So let’s dive in.

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So what is a blogging platform anyways?

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Blogging platforms are the backbone of your blog; they store your content and determine its presentation to your audience.

A great blogging platform will not only effectively display your content but also provide you with the necessary tools to connect with and expand your audience, have great design options, and offer great SEO capabilities. The key is to choose the blogging platform that matches your goals and aspirations.

Here are few blogging platforms to choose from.

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WordPress Blogging Platform

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The first blogging platform that I recommend and might I add love to pieces is going to be WordPress.

WordPress.org stands as a giant in the blogging world. Known for its flexibility, it offers complete control over your site through self-hosting. Users can tailor their blogs with a vast library of plugins and themes. However, this freedom requires responsibility, as users must manage security and update themselves.

WordPress is actually the top-rated blogging platform among bloggers for a few reasons.

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1. Ease of use.

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Setting up your blog and navigating the backend of WordPress is super simple due to the WordPress backend interface being designed to help everyone succeed. Its dashboard is intuitive, offering a straightforward way to create, edit, and manage content.

This makes it a great choice for beginners and experienced bloggers alike. With just a few clicks, you can easily publish a blog post, upload images, or edit existing content to your blog without overwhelm and complications.

You also do not need any coding to get started, which is great because that means you don’t have to hire a website designer or someone with an IT background. With WordPress, you can create and manage your website with zero knowledge of HTML or CSS, which I’m sure we all find exciting.

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2. WordPress Themes & Customizations:

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Another great benefit to utilizing WordPress is that they have great themes that you can utilize to get your site up and running with style in no time.

So what are website themes? Website themes are pre-made website design templates that you can utilize to give your website a more clean and professional look. WordPress provides a wide variety of free and premium themes. These themes allow you to tailor your blog’s look to reflect your brand and personality.

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3. Great Plugins.

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One of my favorite benefits of utilizing WordPress is handing down the plugin options. With WordPress plugins, you’re able to increase your blog’s functionality, enhance the blog viewer experience, and provide better performance. Plugins enable users to expand their site’s capabilities.

Here are just a few things having a WordPress plugin can help with:

• Site Performance: Plugins can help improve your website speed, manage website caches, optimize your website images, etc.

• Search Engine Optimization: Plugins can help improve your search engine ranking.

• Lead Generation: WordPress offers a variety of plugins that can help you build your email list utilizing website pop-ups and landing pages that keep your viewers on your website.

• Protection: Plugins can also help with your website’s protection from malware and blocking unauthorized login attempts.

• Eccommerce: Plugins can help you start offering your products online and so much more.

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4. Google Loves WordPress.

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One of the major benefits of choosing WordPress is that Google loves websites that utilize WordPress.

Matt Cutts, former head of Google’s Web Spam team, stated, “WordPress handles 80-90% of the mechanics of search optimization.“.

This is a pretty huge endorsement but makes perfect sense due to WordPress handling most of the basic tasks of on-page search optimization. However, I believe Google favors WordPress over the other blogging platforms for a few other reasons, including that it’s mobile friendly, WordPress site permalinks and structure, easy to add metadata, etc.

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5. Active Community Forums.

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Another great benefit to utilizing WordPress is being able to reach out to other WordPress users to ask questions, share or hear others stories, and work together on any issues that may arise utilizing your website. With thousands of contributors around the globe, the community forums provide valuable insights that can really help boost your overall experience.

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6. WordPress is affordable.

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WordPress offers free and paid plans, or you can get started with a hosting company of your choice. I personally like Hostgator. Keep in mind that with WordPress free plans you can’t utilize your custom domain name, but at this time you can upgrade your free WordPress website to a paid site. However, starting with a paid WordPress website is recommended for businesses.

Paid or hosting plans typically range from $4 to $25 per month.

The drawback of utilizing WordPress.

• Maintenance: WordPress requires regular updates and ongoing maintenance, which includes monitoring for plugin conflicts, adjusting settings, and managing custom solutions.

• Security: WordPress may face security vulnerabilities stemming from weak passwords, outdated core software, or plugins that have not undergone thorough testing.

• Outsourcing for technical issues: Unlike other popular blogging platforms, when utilizing WordPress, if a technical issue arises that you cannot fix yourself, you may have to reach out to experts for further assistance. Fiverr and Upwork are great resources to start with.

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Showit.co Blogging Platform

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My next favorite blogging platform is going to be Showit.co; actually this is the blogging platform that I utilize and love. Showit.co is great for a lot of the same reasons I recommend WordPress.

However, WordPress and Showit.co do have a few differences which are:

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1. Ability to create and almost custom website.

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One of Showit.co’s best features is the ability to create an almost custom website utilizing their drag-and-drop interface. Having a website that looks even slightly different from the average website design within your niche can definitely help your brand stand out and create that wow factor with your visitors, which is great for branding.

Even better, you can accomplish all of this utilizing zero coding, CSS, or HTML.

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2. Showit.co’s Drag and drop design interface:

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Showit’s drag-and-drop interface lets users take charge of their website design like never before. You can tweak just about everything, from colors and fonts to images and layouts, making it truly your own.

Honestly, this drag-and-drop feature is one of my favorite benefits of utilizing Showit.co. You can make your website look like how you want with minimal effort.

You can edit the computer and mobile versions of your website easily to your liking, which can be a little harder to do on WordPress. Even if you utilize a premade theme, designing your website can still feel a bit limited and bulky, especially for brand-new beginners.

Yes, WordPress has great pre-made themes, but making those themes look unique to your brand is not as simplistic unless you utilize a plugin like Thrive Themes, which can help.

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3. Showit.co SEO Capabilities.

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Showit provides tools for optimizing SEO, and its integration with WordPress facilitates additional enhancements in search engine optimization.

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4. Can still utilize WordPress.

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With Showit.co, you can still utilize the benefits of WordPress for your blog. Can you say whoosah?

This is beneficial for SEO enhancements.

5. Mobile-friendly.

Showit.co is mobile-friendly, which is great for offering a user-friendly website and SEO site ranking.

6. Hosting.

Showit.co hosts your website for you, so there’s no need to pay for a separate hosting plan.

7. Website Backup.

Showit.co provides consistent design backups every 10 minutes, which are retained for a duration of 7 days.

8. Support.

Lastly, showit.co offers online support for help with your website if you encounter any website issues, which is great because you don’t have to outsource to get help if your site has any issues.

One of the disadvantages of Showit.co is going to be the pricing and e-commerce.

Showit.co monthly pricing starts at $29 for the blogging feature and $39 per month to add custom plugins to your website.

Showit does not provide e-commerce capabilities, which may pose a challenge for businesses that focus on selling products.

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Squarespace

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So Squarespace is going to be a maybe.

Squarespace offers great drag and drop design feature, great design templates to start with, it’s a all in one platform meaning they offer your websites design, hosting, ecommerce, analytics and your own domain name on their platform.

However though there are benefits of utilizing Squarespace, there are quite of bit of drawbacks for instance instance you’ll need to add custom coding if you want to do the following.

• Change a squarespace form.
• Want more SEO capabilities.
• Optimize your blog images.
• Show your website pages in another language.
• Filter your blog post.

Also, Squarespace websites are said to have slower loading speed and while if a sites loading speed is slow with WordPress you can utilize plugins to better your sites performance with Squarespace, you can not and would have to utilze other methods.

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There are a few Blogging Platforms I Would Avoid

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There are a few blogging platforms that I would avoid, which are:

Wix.
Weebly.
Blogger.
Medium.

A few reasons to avoid these platforms:

• SEO capabilities.
• Bad site speed.
• Lack of design capabilities.
• Limited navigation.
• Website design and templates
  do not look good for blogs.
• Lack of control over your content (medium).
• Design template limitations
  meaning you can’t change
  your website template if
  wanted to overtime.

In conclusion, picking a blogging platform needs to match your needs, skills, and goals. Whether you care more about looks, simplicity, or the chance to expand, there’s definitely a platform out there that’s just right for you.

As you explore your choices, think about what you want to achieve and how each option fits into that picture. Ultimately, the best pick will help you express yourself and build your online presence.

Ok, until next time. Cheers! 🥂

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