Blogger

Blogger is the rarest thing in this category: a product that publishes on a domain you own, with a certificate the platform creates and renews, and charges nothing for any of it. There is no rate card, no upgrade path and no plan that unlocks the thing you actually wanted. What it does, it does for everyone.

Underneath, it is a blog and only a blog. Posts and photos are stored and served by Google, the design surface is a template picker with editable layouts and background images, and revenue is meant to come from advertising rather than from you. Everything can be taken out again as a feed file, and the theme downloads separately, so nothing you write is trapped.

What you give up is everything that has happened to publishing since. There is no store, no newsletter, no audience tooling beyond visit statistics, and no documented way to reach anyone at the company — Blogger scores 1 for support because the help centre's only invitation is to leave feedback on an article. Connecting a domain means entering two CNAME records and four A-records by hand at your registrar. The product is maintained rather than developed: the blog has not posted since 2020, while the Android app and the help centre are both still being updated.