Forbes Advisor’s team of experts has rated and reviewed the best blogging platforms to help you choose the right one for your needs. To make our recommendations, we looked at 17 data points that include ease of use, costs, customer support, reviews, features and functionality.
We then assign each platform a score out of five in each category, with five being the highest. In addition, we also took into account the needs of different types of users such as bloggers, businesses and marketers. Here are some of the categories we used to rank the providers that made the top of the list.
Pricing
For pricing, we considered whether a blogging platform offered a free version or free trial. For those that charge fees, we looked at what the starting price was, what the range of prices was between the various tiers available and whether each higher tier offered valuable add-ons that benefit users. Pricing totaled 20% of our weighted scoring.
General Features
Features were broken down into two categories: general features and additional features. For general features, we were looking for factors that each platform should have and whether it was available automatically or as a paid add-on. These general features include multimedia support, drag-and-drop functionality, SEO tools, analytics and third-party integrations. We weighted general features at 25% of our total score.
Additional Features
Then we looked for features that we considered to be more unique offerings in the field. Again, we used the same criteria, meaning whether the feature was included automatically with the platform or whether it was necessary to purchase it for an additional price. These unique features included offering free domain names and ecommerce functionality. Additional features accounted for 20% of the total score.
Third-party reviews
We turned to popular third-party review websites, including G2, Capterra and Trustpilot, to find out what real users of these blogging platforms thought about them. To score these, we looked for reviews on each site that scored at least 3.5 out of 5 points and rated the companies on how many reviews were left in that range for each blogging platform. These customer reviews accounted for 5% of the total score.
Expert analysis
Using all of the market research and the categories listed above, we also ranked additional criteria from customer reviews, such as popularity, value for the money, ease of use and stand-out features. This final section accounted for 30% of the total score.
