What are some of the best free blogging tools for beginners? Starting a self-hosted WordPress blog can be expensive, so free blog tools are needed.
As a beginner blogger, you want to keep your expenses low.
This is why I have curated a list of the best free blogging tools and resources that help your blog look professional and blogging life easier.
I know that some in the coaching/education area around blogging have heavily promoted and recommended many paid versions of these products. While there are benefits, I know you can do much with free versions when you’re just starting as a blogger.
From writing tools to video editors: all of these have free options that give you enough to create content.
DISCLOSURE: This post contains affiliate links, meaning if you click on a product or service, and decide to purchase it, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you. All recommended products and services are based on my positive experience with them. For more information, please read my Disclaimer.
Top Free Blogging Tools For Beginners
All of these tools have free features that in many cases are enough for your blogging needs.
However, they also have premium options you may want to consider as your blog grows into a business.
Some blogging investments will need to be made in the long run if you want to turn it into a full-time career.
However, let’s enjoy the free options that take your blog to the next level.
1. Grammarly
Readers will judge you on the quality of your content. Be as error-free as possible when it comes to spelling and grammar.
One of the best free blogging tools for beginners is Grammarly.
This writing tool helps with spelling, grammar and style. It’s ideal for anybody for whom English is a second language, and for those who are bad at writing.
I love to use it to catch any errors that I make, and to reduce superfluous words that I tend to use.
Grammarly has a handy browser extension that gives you insights and feedback quickly.
The Grammarly upgrade to premium gives you additional features including:
- Adjust your writing tone
- Rewrite full sentences
- Write fluently in English
- Catch accidental plagiarism
- Generate text with 1,000 AI prompts
So, if your writing is VERY bad, I suggest upgrading. But for most, the free version is all you need for now.
2. Airtable
Next on my list of favourite free blogging tools is Airtable.
Keeping yourself organized is important. While Google Sheets is an option, it’s not as powerful and easy to manipulate as Airtable.
I use Airtable to organize my blog posts and Pinterest pinning activities. The ability to manipulate my data and information is what keeps me recommending it to bloggers and business owners alike.
Some of the best features include the manipulation of the fields and the ability to create different kinds of fields (short text, longer text, date, email, multiple select to name a few) in a few clicks.
Here’s an example of what I’ve created in Airtable:
It’s much easier to use than Google Sheets for list management.
What’s also great is that you can access your data and lists across various devices through the platform’s cloud-based storage.
The best feature about Airtable is that you can change how you view your data – although this is limited to the free version.
3. RankMath – SEO Plugin
Far better than Yoast, RankMath helps bloggers keep track of their on-page SEO for posts and pages. It also has a handy redirection feature when you change your URL.
You can add up to five keywords to track as you write your blog content.
It also has a table of contents feature that is an alternative to standalone plugins.
It’s one of the best free blog tools for beginners and the best thing is that it’s easy to use.
4. Google Search Console And Google Analytics
This is a no-brainer! Finding out how your blog content is doing trafficwise on Google is important.
Despite ups and downs with ranking for publishers – including blogs – Google still remains a huge driver of blog traffic for many.
Google Analytics: gives you data on your site traffic, where it comes from, who’s visiting your site and how long they’re sticking around. You also find out about their journey through your site.
Google Search Console: gives you information on the keywords (queries), and how your posts are doing in terms of ranking. This is a very good tool when you’re updating your blog content to determine what needs attention.
TIP: If you’re finding it hard to understand Google Analytics, and are frustrated with the dashboard, you can invest in an easy-to-use analytics provider such as Fathom Analytics. Read my full Fathom Analytics review to understand why I switched. It’s a worthwhile investment to keep it simple and easy.
5. Pretty Links
For bloggers who are getting into affiliate marketing, Pretty Links is a freemium plugin (upgrade is not required) that helps cloak those long, unsightly affiliate URLs.
It also helps track your affiliate links in WordPress.
A cool feature is the quick way you can add an affiliate link using the Pretty Links button when editing content in WordPress.
Here’s an example, as I was typing this section of this blog post. See that star symbol in the little pop-up?
That’s for Pretty Links.
Type in your affiliate product name that you would have used to create the Pretty Link. It automatically pops up the link. Click and voila, no need to remember your URLs.
6. CoSchedule Headline Studio
Want to have blog post titles that grab your reader’s attention?
CoSchedule’s Headline Studio allows you to test how effective your blog post title will be.
It works within WordPress, giving you an immediate result for your initial headline. Here’s an example:
Why do I love it? It pushes me to work harder at crafting a better headline.
| RELATED: How To Write A Blog Post Title That Grabs Your Reader’s Attention
7. Mailerlite/Convertkit
There are two great options for email marketing platforms for beginner bloggers.
Email marketing platforms help you build your email newsletter list. They are a powerful marketing and monetization tool (think email sales funnels).
While you may get prompted to choose MailChimp with your WordPress theme, it’s better to go with an easier-to-use email marketing platform such as Mailerlite or Convertkit.
Both are free for up to 1000 subscribers (after which you pay), with many great features included in the free package including:
- Automations: automated emails that you can use for your welcome series of emails for those who signed up to get a freebie.
- Unlimited campaigns/broadcasts (i.e. what you send out to your email list)
- Tagging, grouping/segmentation to be specific about your audience
- Beautiful forms for signups
I use Mailerlite, but both are good. Check out both to see which one appeals to you.
8. Canva
I won’t go into too much detail here, because Canva has become a staple for many. It’s one of the best free blogging tools for bloggers for all the things you can do with it.
From creating Pinterest pins to developing digital products and selling them. There’s so much you can do with Canva.
If you’re not using it yet, what are you waiting for?
9. Ahrefs – Free Tools
If you are a data enthusiast and want to know exactly how your blog is growing (this could be a good or bad habit – if you become obsessed), Ahrefs is your best option.
Here are some of the free tools it offers:
- SEO audit: find out about the health of your blog with Ahref’s Webmaster Tools. You get access to a Site Audit (for the technical health of your blog), and Site Explorer (the backlinks your blog has).
- Free Keyword Generator: get access to a limited number of potential keywords for your blog content for Google, Bing, YouTube and Amazon
- Free Keyword Difficulty Checker: get a sense of how difficult your preferred keyword is for ranking, and get an idea of who the top competition is for it. It’s a taste of what you can get from Ahrefs.
- Free SERP Checker: gives you an understanding of the ranking of a keyword in ANY country without having to use a VPN.
I know it all sounds technical, but if you’re big into understanding SEO for blogs, then this all makes sense.
There are many more free tools Ahrefs provides with limited insights. They’re still useful in giving you a taste of where your blog is at “healthwise”.
10. Elementor Website Builder (Free Plugin)
One of the most widely used page builder tools for WordPress is Elementor. It gives you the power to design a landing page, or sales page and move content around as you wish.
While there’s a bit of a learning curve with it, it’s still one that becomes a powerful tool for you. Consider how you can design a static home page or About page.
Some WordPress themes, like those by Bluchic and Pix and Hue are based on the Elementor platform.
All you need in most cases is the free Elementor plugin.
Check with your WordPress theme developer/documentation to see if you can use Elementor. Not all work well with it. In some cases, themes such as Kadence, have their own features that help you build your theme.
11. Hubbub Lite
You want to have good sharing buttons on your blog so that people can share your content with others in their network.
But the ones you get for free to themes are often not that great. They tend to be buggy and limit what you can do.
While I use the pro version of Hubbub for the extra features, you can start with Hubbub Lite (formerly Grow Social, formerly Social Pug from Mediavine).
Some of the features in the free version include:
- Share buttons placed above or below your content
- Floating sidebar share buttons
- Social share counts and total social share counts
- Editable button labels
- Retina-ready share icons
It’s light, fast and works well with most themes.
12. Microsoft Clarity – Heatmaps
Want to know what people are doing on your blog posts? What is resonating with them and what isn’t?
Microsoft Clarity is what I like to call a free “spy tool” for bloggers and website masters. It gives you an idea via an anonymous video of what people are seeing on the page, what they’re interacting with and where they stop.
This gives you a chance to fix what’s not working.
13. Pinterest
Why have I included Pinterest as one of the free blogging tools for beginners?
For two reasons:
- It’s a fantastic place to promote your blog content, especially in the wake of Google search getting messed up with algorithm changes
- You can generate blog post ideas from Pinterest Trends, keyword tools and just a general search around the site.
14. Instagram
WHAT? How can I recommend Instagram as a free blogging tool?
Aside from being a fantastic place to promote your personal brand and blog content, it’s also a research tool.
Here’s where you can find:
- Trends for your niche: check out reels and keywords to see what is getting activity from Instagram users
- Use the Meta AI prompt to see what keywords people are using for search phrases
15. UpdraftPlus Free Plugin
This one is the most important of all of the free blogging tools for beginners. UpdraftPlus is a backup plugin for your site.
Inevitably, there will be a moment when you will do something wrong and your site will crash. I know, because I’ve done it before as a common beginner blogger mistake.
While your hosting provider may be doing a backup for you, it’s always best to have a backup of the backup… in your hands.
While I had a freak accident where I almost lost this blog completely – even using Updraft Plus – I still have it as a measure, just in case.
It’s free… you can set it to give you a backup to your Dropbox or Google Drive on a regular basis.
These Best Blogging Tools Are Just The Start
Having some of the best blogging tools to work with is not enough. There will be blogging skills and best practices to learn.
However, as a beginner blogger, I’m sure you will have lots of recommendations for tools – many of them cost quite a bit. You don’t need them all as a beginner.
Invest in your blog wisely. Try free blogging tools for as long as you can before you move up to pro or paid versions.
| READ MORE: Top 10 Free WordPress Plugins For Beginner Bloggers
QUESTION: What other free blogging tools should be on this list?
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