The Blogging Tools I Actually Use (and the Ones You Can Skip)

Most "best blogging tools" lists are affiliate padding. Forty tools, forty links, no opinion. They are written to collect commissions, not to help you publish.

This one is deliberately short. It covers the five things a blog genuinely needs, one pick per category, a free alternative for each, and an honest list of the tools you should not buy yet. Some links here are affiliate links, which means I may earn a commission at no extra cost to you. That does not change what makes the list — I only include things I would still use if the commission disappeared tomorrow.

What a blog actually needs

Strip away the noise and a working blog needs five things:

1. A place to publish — hosting and a platform
2. A way to write — a writing tool you will actually open
3. A way to find topics — keyword and idea research
4. A way to own your audience — email
5. A way to see what is working — analytics

That is the whole list. Every other tool is an optimization on top of one of those five, and optimizations are worthless before you have something to optimize. If you are still deciding whether to start at all, read how to start a blog and make money first — this page assumes you have decided.

1. Hosting and publishing

What it does: puts your writing on the internet at an address you control.

The rule: own your domain. Rent everything else. Whatever platform you pick, you should be able to leave it and keep your URLs, your content, and your email list.

Reasonable cost: $0–$15/month, plus about $12/year for the domain.

What to pick: any managed platform that lets you point a custom domain at it and export your posts. WordPress on shared hosting is the old reliable — infinite flexibility, more maintenance. A hosted platform like Ghost or a modern site builder is faster to launch and harder to break. Both are fine. The wrong choice is the one that keeps you fiddling instead of writing.

The free path: most platforms have a free tier. Start there, attach the custom domain, upgrade when traffic or a paid feature forces it.

What not to do: do not buy four years of hosting up front because of a launch discount. You do not yet know if you will still be publishing in six months, and the discount is priced on that assumption.

2. Writing

What it does: gets words out of your head.

Reasonable cost: $0.

This is the category where spending money helps least. A plain text editor, Google Docs, or your platform's own editor is enough. The bottleneck in blogging is never the editor — it is deciding what to say. If you find yourself comparing writing apps, you are procrastinating, and I say that as someone who has done it.

The one paid tool worth considering here is a grammar and clarity checker, and only once you are publishing weekly. Before that, read your draft out loud. It catches more than any software will.

If drafting is genuinely slow for you, the fix is process, not software — how to write blog posts faster covers the workflow I use.

3. Keyword and idea research

What it does: tells you whether anyone is searching for the thing you want to write about, and how hard it will be to rank.

Reasonable cost: $0 to start, $99–$130/month once traffic justifies it.

Free first: Google Keyword Planner gives you volume ranges for free with an Ads account. The "People also ask" and "Related searches" blocks on any Google results page are free topic research that most people ignore. Both are enough for your first thirty posts.

Paid later: Semrush and Ahrefs are the two serious options. They tell you difficulty scores, who currently ranks, and what your competitors get traffic from. They are also expensive enough that paying for one before you have traffic is a way of feeling productive rather than being productive.

When to upgrade: when you are publishing consistently and guessing about difficulty is costing you posts that go nowhere. Usually somewhere after month six, not month one.

If topic supply is the problem rather than keyword data, blog post ideas walks through five sources that never run dry, and profitable blog niches covers picking a lane narrow enough to win.

4. Email

What it does: turns a stranger who read one post into someone you can reach again.

Reasonable cost: $0 up to roughly 1,000 subscribers, then $9–$30/month.

This is the one category where I would spend money before I had to. Search traffic and social reach are borrowed. An email list is the only audience you own outright, and every serious blog income model runs through it eventually.

What to pick: any provider with a real free tier, a simple signup form, and easy exports. ConvertKit, MailerLite, and Buttondown all qualify. Pick on how quickly you can send your first email, not on feature count — you will use about 10% of any of them.

What matters more than the tool: having one obvious reason to subscribe on every page, and actually sending something. A perfect provider with an empty send history is worth nothing. Email marketing for bloggers covers what to send once people are on the list.

5. Analytics

What it does: tells you which posts people find and which ones they leave.

Reasonable cost: $0, or $9–$14/month for a privacy-focused option.

Google Search Console is non-negotiable and free. It shows the actual search queries bringing people to your site — which is better topic research than any paid tool, because it is your data. Check it monthly, not daily.

For on-site numbers, Google Analytics is free and more than you need. Plausible cost a little and are far easier to read. Either works. What matters is that you look at two numbers — which posts get impressions and which get clicks — and let that steer what you write next.

The tools you can skip

This is the part most roundups leave out, because there is no commission in telling you not to buy something.

Skip until you are making money:

• Premium themes. A clean free theme reads exactly as well. Nobody has ever subscribed because of a theme.
• SEO plugins beyond the basics. One plugin that handles titles, descriptions, and a sitemap is enough. The rest is a dashboard full of green lights that do not correlate with traffic.
• Social scheduling suites. You can post manually until the volume genuinely hurts.
• Paid stock photo subscriptions. Free libraries are good now. Original screenshots and simple diagrams outperform stock anyway.
• Course platforms, membership plugins, funnel builders. Buy these when you have a product and buyers, in that order.
• A second keyword tool. Two subscriptions telling you slightly different difficulty scores does not make the decision easier.

Skip permanently, in my opinion:

• Anything promising automated traffic. If it worked, it would not be for sale.
• Bulk AI content generators. They produce volume, and volume without a point is exactly what search engines have spent years learning to demote.

A starter stack that costs almost nothing

Here is the whole thing, for someone starting this month:

Category	Pick	Monthly cost
Domain	Any registrar	~$1 (billed yearly)
Hosting/platform	Free tier with custom domain	$0–$15
Writing	Google Docs or your editor	$0
Keyword research	Keyword Planner + Google's own SERP	$0
Email	Free tier under 1,000 subscribers	$0
Analytics	Search Console + Google Analytics	$0
Total		~$1–$16/month

That is a fully functional blog for roughly the price of a coffee. Every upgrade from here should be triggered by a specific problem — "I cannot tell which keywords are winnable," "my list outgrew the free tier" — not by a sale.

If you want the fuller picture of how this stack turns into income, how to monetize a blog covers the seven routes that actually pay.

How to decide on any new tool

Before you add a subscription, answer three questions:

1. What specific problem is this solving, in one sentence? If you cannot name the problem, you do not have it.
2. What would I have to stop doing to make room for this? Tools take time to learn, not just money.
3. Would I still want it if the free trial ended tomorrow? Trials create sunk-cost momentum. Decide before you start one.

A tool that survives those three questions is worth paying for. Most do not.

FAQ

What blogging tools do I actually need to start? A domain, a publishing platform, something to write in, and an email provider with a free tier. Everything else can wait. That combination costs roughly $1–$16 a month.

Do I need a paid SEO tool like Semrush or Ahrefs? Not at the start. Google Keyword Planner and the "People also ask" results are enough for your first several months. Upgrade when guessing about keyword difficulty is actively wasting posts.

Which email tool should a new blogger use? Any provider with a genuine free tier and simple exports — ConvertKit, MailerLite, and Buttondown all work. Choose based on how quickly you can send your first email, not on feature lists.

Are free blogging tools good enough? For the first year, almost always yes. The free versions of hosting, analytics, and email cover everything a blog under a few thousand monthly visitors needs. Paid tools remove friction; they do not create traffic.

How much should I budget for blogging tools? Under $20 a month to start. If you are spending more than that before you have earned anything, the spending is a substitute for publishing.

---

The uncomfortable truth about tools is that the gap between the cheapest workable stack and the most expensive one changes your results far less than publishing twelve good posts instead of three. Buy the short list. Skip the rest. Go write.