What is the best CMS for a personal blog on a custom domain?

Ok, this is a complicated question. I think step one is to figure out what type of platform you’re looking for.

Here’s how I’d categorize your options:

“classic self-hosted CMS”

These are open-source CMS products, and you’ll need to manage everything from domains to the codebase, to hosting. With the more established products like WordPress.org, this doesn’t require a ton of technical knowledge as long as you’re patient and willing to read documentation when you get stuck.

The biggest advantages of these are 1) that they are endlessly customizable and 2) that you manage everything, so your site will have zero existential dependency on outside organizations (e.g., if your hosting platform goes away, you can just switch).

Products in this category: WordPress.org, Drupal, Joomla, Jekyll, Ghost, Magento, CraftCMS

My thoughts: I’d probably suggest WordPress. It’s the easiest to use, has the most robust ecosystem of plugins and themes, and is here for the long term.

If you want to try something new and flashy, CraftCMS has some super cool features.

“SaaS CMS”

This is probably the category I’d point you toward.

These are hosted blogs that you pay a monthly fee to maintain. They are much more “one-click” to set up, and still come with a lot of the benefits of owning all your content and having full control over everything on the site. They can be a bit more limiting in ways you can customize look and feel, but for most general use-cases they are more than sufficient.

Lots of services like HostGator offer hosted/SaaS versions of the popular open source CMSs, so your options are fairly similar to the ones above.

In this category, I’d suggest WordPress.com if you want lots of customizations.

If you just want to start writing, Ghost is probably the easiest way to have a slick CMS up and running immediately.

“blogging platform”

These are the fastest option to get up and running, and they come with the advantage of built-in distribution. But, if you want your own domain and to have ownership/control over your content, these sites are probably not your best bet.

I’d suggest posting to your own blog and syndicating to one of these sites.

Popular examples are Medium, Tumblr, and Blogger.

My suggestion if you are going down this route would be Medium, because they have a huge distribution channel, the design is great, and you can even make money off your traffic on Medium.

“website builder”

These products are likely better suited for websites that have stores or other functionality beyond a simple blog.

Popular examples are Webflow, Wix, and Squarespace.

If you do want to go this route, I’d definitely suggest Webflow…but for a blog you’re going to have your work cut out for you. Webflow is a really powerful product that will let you customize everything and build lots of slick, responsive design elements.