WriteFreely
WriteFreely is a clean, Markdown-based publishing platform made for writers, built with the open web in mind. It is one of the friendliest ways to start a blog on the federated network: every WriteFreely blog is a full ActivityPub participant, so your posts reach readers on Mastodon and other federated platforms automatically while remaining on a site you control.
Key Features
- ActivityPub federation — Posts are instantly shared with followers across Mastodon, PeerTube and other federated services
- Markdown writing — A distraction-free editor with live preview, written in Markdown
- Collections and communities — Create topic collections or run a community of writers on a single instance
- Multiple blogs per account — Run several blogs from one account, each with its own audience and settings
- Privacy by design — No tracking, no advertising and minimal JavaScript on public pages
- Lightweight and fast — Written in Go, it runs happily on a small VPS or even a Raspberry Pi
- Clean reading experience — Elegant, typography-first themes that put the writing front and centre
- Self-hostable — AGPL-licensed with straightforward deployment via binary or Docker
Why Use WriteFreely?
WriteFreely solves the loneliness of the self-hosted blog: your posts leave your server and reach readers where they already are, through federation. At the same time it stays minimal and private — no ads, no analytics, no dark patterns. If you want the open web to feel like a community again, WriteFreely is one of the best tools for the job.
Use Cases
- Bloggers who want their posts to reach Mastodon followers without manual cross-posting
- Writers and journalists building a personal, privacy-respecting publishing space
- Community instances where many writers publish under one umbrella
- Low-resource self-hosting on small VPSs or single-board computers
Platform
Web-based (self-hosted) · Linux server · macOS · Docker
Licence
AGPL-3.0