Blogging software for SaaS-product
I'm looking for a blogging solution for my software product. Specifically, I'm looking for service or piece of software that ticks the following:
- Free plan, or at least easy to self-host
- Themable to match branding
- Markdown-based content
- Easy integration with landing page/frontend application
I'm considering
- Ghost (no free plan)
- Gatsby plugin (more work)
What blogging-software are people using for their SaaS-services?
Hey! I'm building imprint.to, which just launched on ProductHunt a few days back. The goal is to have the network the Medium provides, while giving you the same control/ownership something like Ghost would give you.
You'll have a natural audience coming in from Imprint. The difference between this and Medium is that you own your content on Imprint. You can use a custom domain, theme your blog, and have a built in newsletter. And it's free! You can see if it works for you! Here's my sample blog for reference (https://roland.imprint.to).
We use our own website template that has a blog, faq, pricing, and the landing page integrated - so it's 100% SEO-friendly. Our blog is here: https://www.saasforge.dev/blog
For my company blog, I'm using Next.js and MDX. It works well for me - I can customize the UI to my liking and write my blog posts in markdown, with React components embedded directly in it.
If you're planning on going down this route, I'd highly recommend reading through this blog post. It helped me a lot!
Hey @madshargreave - Working on something that may be of interest to you - https://astrolahq.com - Combines help docs, feedback, roadmaps, changelogs and blogging in one tool. Specifically building it for SaaS so we don't need to build them for every app.
Still working on it, but you can register interest on site and view a partial demo at https://docs.space.bio
Cheers!
You can also check https://Write.as
For my personal blog, I use Ghost. They have an open source version which is free, but the themes are limited and you would have to build your own to match the branding.
For my startup I built it myself with Next js. It's not the best, but it is more than enough for now. I write the content in Markdown, and you get Server Side Rendering by default with it, so it works kind of nice for SEO.
You can self-host Ghost, Digital Ocean have a one-click droplet for it too.
I'm still using WordPress though many people don't like it now. The ecosystem of wp is still cool. You can find useful plugins & themes easily. The interface is easy to use. Even hosting, you can find a cheap supplier for a few bucks per month.
Previously, I tried to explore static site generators like Jekyll and Hugo. The ecosystem was not mature yet. I could hardly find a free professional theme. The process was not as seamless as wp. It really takes time to catch up.
Also, the static cms like forestry.io is not as easy to use as wp. If a user only want to write and publish something online, static sites may not be the best choice.