I built Jottings because I was tired of the blogging platform trade-off: Either you get a free platform that owns your content, or you pay a monthly fee to escape.
Both options felt wrong.
The free option locks you in. Medium, Substack, Dev.to—they all offer "free" blogging, but there's a catch. Your audience belongs to them. Your data belongs to them. If they change their terms, raise prices, or shut down, you're stuck.
The paid option forces you into feature bloat. WordPress, Ghost, Squarespace—they're powerful, but they charge $10-30 per month for basic blogging. That's $120-360 per year just to write.
What if there was a third option?
The Hidden Costs of "Free" Blogging
Let me be honest about free blogging platforms.
When a platform is free, you're not the customer. You're the product. Your attention is being sold. Your data is being mined. Your content is locked behind their algorithm.
Medium makes money by promoting premium content and taking a cut. Substack takes 10% of subscriptions. Dev.to shows ads. Wix displays their branding.
And none of them let you own your domain. You get a subdomain like yourblog.medium.com or yourname.substack.com. Good luck moving that if you want to leave.
A custom domain changes the entire equation.
When your blog lives at yourname.com, that's yours. Not rented. Not borrowed. Owned. It's the difference between a house you rent and a house you own.
What Jottings Offers Free
At Jottings, the free tier is genuinely free. No paywalls. No ads. No surprise charges.
You get:
- Full blogging platform - Write, organize, publish
- Static site hosting - Fast, secure, no database vulnerabilities
- Subdomain - Your blog at
yourname.jottings.me - RSS feeds - Let readers subscribe the old-school way
- Tag system - Organize posts by topic
- SEO files - robots.txt, sitemap.xml, humans.txt
- Performance - CDN delivery from Cloudflare
That's not a limited trial. That's a fully functional blogging platform, completely free.
The only thing you don't get is a custom domain. But that's not a Jottings limitation—that's just reality. Someone has to register and manage your domain. It costs money. We don't hide that.
Custom Domains on Jottings PRO
If you want your blog at yourname.com instead of yourname.jottings.me, we offer Jottings PRO.
PRO costs $5 per month (or $45 per year, which is cheaper).
That gets you:
- Custom domain support - Use your own domain
- Automatic SSL certificates - HTTPS on your domain
- Priority support - Direct access if something breaks
- Advanced features - More storage, more flexibility
Here's what matters: That $5/month is not for blogging. You're already getting a free blogging platform. The $5 is for domain mapping and the infrastructure to make it work.
Compare that to the alternatives:
- Medium - Free, but you don't own the domain. No custom domain option.
- Substack - Free, but you don't own the domain. Custom domain costs $12.08/month.
- Ghost - $9/month minimum, plus your domain cost.
- WordPress.com - $4/month for basic, but poor performance. Custom domain requires the $11/month plan.
- Squarespace - $12/month minimum.
With Jottings, if you just want free hosting, you get it. If you want a custom domain, you pay $5/month. Total cost: $5/month. That's cheaper than everything else on the market.
The Only Real Cost: Your Domain Name
Here's the thing people don't talk about: Your domain costs money. Full stop.
A .com domain costs $10-15 per year. No platform can make that free. Domain registration requires infrastructure. Servers. Registrars. Support. Someone has to manage your DNS.
So when Jottings says "free blogging platform," we mean free blogging. The domain is on you. But at least we're honest about it.
Some platforms pretend this doesn't matter. They bundle domain costs into their pricing and call it "free" or "included." That's dishonest.
Jottings unbundles the cost. Free blogging platform. Optional domain support for $5/month. Your domain registration wherever you want.
This gives you choice.
You could:
- Blog for free on
yourname.jottings.me(no cost) - Upgrade to PRO and map your custom domain (add $5/month)
- Export and self-host the static HTML files anywhere (technically free, but requires technical skill)
That flexibility matters.
Why This Matters for Your Professional Presence
Your blog is part of your brand.
If you're a writer, developer, designer, or entrepreneur, people will Google your name. Where do they land? If you're on medium.com, they see Medium's branding. If you're on substack.com, they see Substack's logo.
With a custom domain, they see your branding. Your design. Your voice. Your domain.
For professionals, that distinction is huge.
A custom domain says: "I'm serious about this. I own this. I'm investing in this."
It costs $5/month. But it's the cheapest investment in your professional presence you can make.
Why We Built It This Way
I spent three years on Medium. Built a decent audience. Then Medium changed their terms.
When I wanted to move my archive to my own domain, I had to manually export everything. There was no elegant export. Medium doesn't want you to leave.
That's when I realized: Free platforms trap you. They have to, or their business model breaks.
So I built Jottings differently:
- Free blogging platform that doesn't lock you in
- Optional custom domain for $5/month
- Full export capability (you own your data)
- No dark patterns or hidden costs
Is it the perfect platform? No. Perfect doesn't exist.
But it's honest. And for a lot of people, honest is enough.
Get Started
You can start blogging for free right now. No credit card. No trial period.
Get a subdomain at jottings.me, write your first post, and see if it works for you.
If you decide you want a custom domain, PRO is waiting. If you want to stick with the free tier forever, that's fine too.
The choice is yours. And that's the whole point.