The best blogging platform for beginners? Not your typical choices...

Let's identify the beginner blogger's objectives:

Simple setup, no crazy hoops to jump through, plugins, security to worry about
Distribution - to keep publishing, it helps when you have readers
As little friction as possible - beginner bloggers may not have the discipline to keep pushing past the initial excitement phase. The product should be as friction-less as possible. Consistency in publishing is key in the early stages of blogging.

Top blogging platforms for new bloggers

Scribbble.co (Paid)
Write.as (Paid, free tier no longer available)
Substack (Free, 10% if you build a paid audience)
Medium (Free for posting, not publications)

Scribbble for beginners

Full disclosure, we made Scribbble 😅🤗 (Gene & Alex)

But, what would I (Gene) be saying, if I didn't have full confidence in this product?!

I list Scribbble first, but it would not be my first choice.

There, honest enough?

Let's dig in...

While all of these options are great for beginner bloggers, Scribbble was created to make publishing super simple. With simplicity it's easier focus on consistency - the top signal for successful blogging.

Edit mode, with sidebar visible. You can also toggle away the sidebar and got into focus mode which hides all interface buttons and editing pane.

Made for MacOS

Scribbble is a paid tool / platform that lets you blog natively on your desktop. The data is stored on your computer so you can do with it as you please. Currently Scribbble is available for MacOS only.

Distraction-Free Writing

For beginner bloggers, learning the habit of writing consistently is the #1 priority. Some people make the mistake of spending too much time choosing a platform and worrying about content distribution and SEO. I wrote another post on why you shouldn't worry about those things.

Focus Mode

With Scribbble, you have a plain document that looks like a notes screen. There is nothing to do but write. The moment you start writing all interface distractions disappear from the screen. We called this Focus mode.

One-click Publishing

Write, publish with 1 click - it's as easy as that. Scribbble comes with built-in publishing. You get your own subdomain (and later a custom domain). Scribbble will also feature content discovery which will help writers and bloggers get discovered.

Scribbble Pros

Desktop app, no need to open up your browser and get distracted by other things.
Publish directly to your personal blog without any setup - one-click publishing.
Zero distractions when writing

Scribbble Pricing

Scribbble is currently priced at $12/mo. Since your data is stored locally, you always have access to it should you decide to move.

Other thoughts about Scribbble

Scribbble is a new product so it doesn't have the full feature set of other players in the market like Substack. (We are currently building awesome features that will blow your socks off 🤩) For some this can be a downside and worth considering before jumping both feet into the product.

Write.as for beginners

Write.as is a simple, minimal, beautiful platform for writing. It comes with a free option so you can get started and experience the platform for yourself. I really love the simplicity of this product. Write.as focuses on reducing friction and getting out of your way as you write. The user interface is telling of the values that guide this product.

Simple and clean interface allows for focusing on writing

Blog management dashboard. Quite minimal.

Post management - as simple as it gets.

Write.as Pros

Simple layouts that focus on content - great for beginners who would rather just focus on writing
Community to share your content (nice for some distribution within the platform , though probably not huge).
Newsletters and themes (a little customization can't hurt!)
Ad-free

Write.as Pricing

At the time of this post Write.as is priced at $9/mo if paid monthly, or $72 for a year. Team plans are $30/mo or $300 annually. The pricing page lists a free tier, but your posts get unpublished unless you sign up for a paid account.

Other thoughts about Write.as

It is unclear whether this project is still maintained by the creator. Some community posts bring this into question with the lack of updates as of recently. I am uncertain about any of this, but figured it's worth mentioning if you plan on sinking time into a blogging platform. Also, I am not sure how you format the posts - could not figure this out.

👑 Substack for new bloggers - top pick!

Substack is not strictly a blogging platform but your content is hosted within their system. The free nature of Substack is very attractive. I love the fact that you can build an audience and have a chance at content distribution for free. With Substack you have a minimal setup and don't need to worry about theme setup - your goal is to start writing to build an audience.

Easy to use dashboard includes subscriber stats, access to podcast hosting and video (beta)

Substack's interface is simple and great for beginners

Substack Pros

Free
Built in email collection (newsletter)
A chance at content distribution via recommended engine
Monetize your writing (paid subscriptions for readers)
Built-in commenting
Lots of embedding options for buttons, footnotes, paywalls, special offers, donation areas, app download callouts.

Substack Pricing

Substack is free to use. The company makes their money by taking a 10% fee on paid subscriber memberships. This basically allows anyone to write for free and build an audience at no cost, and only pay when they set up paid subscriptions. I find this to be an honest approach that works really well for beginner bloggers.

Other thoughts about Substack

In terms of features and functions, Substack is really hard to beat. I am a huge fan of this platform and if it wasn't for Scribbble and my personal struggle focusing on writing, I'd go with Substack as my #1 choice. It's hard to match the value provided by Substack, all for free - making it an excellent choice for beginner bloggers.

Medium for Beginners

Medium is a decent platform to start if you all you are looking to do is write and get some eyeballs on your content. The site is free to write as long as you don't create a publication, but much of the reading is blocked by Medium's membership.

While creating an account to show you what it looks like, I had a hard time figuring out how to actually publish content and view it on my profile. There is no place to quickly see what you wrote without clicking on "My profile". This is an odd placement in my mind, but I am biased.

Medium allows free publishing per article, but will not let you create a "base" for all of your content under one roof aka. Publication without signing up for a premium membership which starts at $5/mo

If you are just starting out, it's not a bad idea to sign up for Medium and use their free publishing feature to write your first dozen posts. Beginners should prioritize consistency over everything else and Medium lets you accomplish this.

Medium's interface is minimal and helps new bloggers focus on writing.

Medium Pros

Free tier
Built-in distribution
Good writing interface
Commenting, bookmarking, sharing

Other thoughts about Medium

This is purely anecdotal, but I seem to see more and more people moving away from Medium. I don't know the reason, and maybe this is only local to the industry I'm in (startups), but it does feel like people are moving to places like Substack. I could be off on that assessment, take it with a grain of salt. For new writers, this should not be an issue if your goal is to write consistently.

Other alternatives built for Notion

If you are already a Notion user, you can set up custom domain names with your Notion space. Tools like Potion, Super, Feather.so and Hostnation make it somewhat easy to do.

Each of these options have their own pricing:

Hostnation - $5 per website
Feather.so - $19/mo up to 10k pageviews
Super.so - $12/mo per site
Potion.so - $10/mo for one website with custom domain

Wrapping up

Ultimately, if you are just starting blogging, the best platform is whatever helps you publish consistently.

The number one challenge for new bloggers is to keep at it. People get overwhelmed with options, and start planning ahead without making any progress in actual writing.

If you can overcome these typical pitfalls and just burry your head into your writing app of choice every day, you'll be way ahead of most people.

While I love the product I'm working on - Scribbble, I also recognize great products before me, and Substack in my opinion, is one of the best. It lets you write for free, build a mailing list (for free), distributes your content somewhat, and builds in engagement tools that let you collect valuable feedback from your readers. It's hard to beat Substack.

Why did we create Scribbble then? Because we have many amazing features planned but most importantly because each person is unique and should publish in unique style.

Scribbble plans on introducing various themes to let people choose their style, while retaining the simplicity of one-click, distraction-free publishing.

If you have any questions about any of the platforms discussed, you can reach me on Twitter @cogentgene

Happy blogging!