The index
Dispatches
Everything the desk has filed. Reviews carry a score in the right-hand column; the essays carry a date. Both get re-read whenever a platform changes its terms.
Under review
3 scored
Hashnode Review (2026): Excellent, If You Write About Code
Hashnode does one thing with unusual seriousness — technical writing — and the free tier includes things other platforms charge for. Outside software, the fit falls away fast.
Blogger Review (2026): The Platform That Refused to Die
Google’s blogging platform has not had a meaningful redesign in a decade, costs nothing, and has outlived most of the services that were supposed to replace it. That combination deserves a serious look.
Medium Review (2026): Renting an Audience, and What It Costs
Medium has spent two years quietly improving how it pays writers — and none of it changes the fundamental bargain. You get readers you could not reach alone, and you do not get a home.Essays and workings
7 filed
Where Readers Actually Come From, and What a Borrowed Audience Costs
Some platforms hand you readers on day one. That is a real service and it is never free — it is just billed in something other than money.
The Editors, Compared: Where Your Words Actually Get Written
You will spend a hundred hours a year in your platform’s editor and about twenty minutes in its settings. Comparison tables have this precisely backwards.
What a Blog Actually Costs to Run, at Three Different Sizes
The advertised monthly price is the least interesting number in this decision. Here is the real bill at zero readers, a thousand readers and ten thousand — including the crossover nobody warns you about.
Cross-Posting Without Wrecking Yourself: A Canonical Tag Primer
Republishing the same piece in three places is a perfectly good strategy, and a perfectly good way to hand your search traffic to someone else. The difference is one tag and the order you publish in.
The Portability Audit: What Each Platform Actually Gives Back
Every blogging platform has an export button. Almost none of them are equivalent. We pressed all of them and graded what came out.
The Minimalist Blogging Platforms, and Why They Keep Winning
Bear Blog, Write.as and their neighbours offer a text box and almost nothing else. For a surprising number of writers, that is not a limitation — it is the entire point.