Choosing Bear ʕ•ᴥ•ʔ
I want to blog more, and to do so it needs to be as frictionless and easy as possible. I also care about the politics of the people running the services I use. I don't want to give money to people who actively shit all over everyone who isn't white, cis and male.
Ultimately, I'd prefer to be in as much control over my blog as I can, but I don't actually want to deal with all the nitty-gritty of managing self-hosted stuff. I want Markdown support. I want easy image posting. I want to be able to take my toys and leave whenever I care to. Now I think I may have found my forever home with Bear.
Wordpress
I used to have a WordPress blog via domeneshop, but after the Mullenweg drama, I slowly backed away. It was so clunky, bloated, and tedious to use, I don't miss it one bit.
Write.as
First, I tried Write.as, and it was fine, but not quite right for me, and as they are US based presumably the servers are in the US too. I appreciated that even though they are a tiny team, and sometimes slow with support requests, they processed my refund promptly.
Hugo
I tried Hugo, but having to sit down with a laptop or desktop to blog was in no way encouraging me to actually blog more. So, Hugo and the like just aren't the tools I'm looking for.
micro.blog
With a bit of fiddling, micro.blog worked out OK for me. I like that they have apps, and that I can post via MarsEdit, and when they launched their micro.one plan at $1 a month, it was a no-brainer to use it while I kept looking for the perfect platform. They also offer storing some content on EU servers.
Ghost
I tried Ghost via synaps.media, but honestly found it much too complicated and bloated for my purposes. However, synaps have EU-based servers, a free trial, and great pricing. If Ghost was right for me, I'd have signed up with synaps and never looked back.
Blot
The idea of pushing a file, (almost) any type of file, into a folder, and voilà it is now on your blog was very appealing. In practice, I found it a little clunky, but would probably have become used to it quickly.
When I tried Blot1 there was no free trial which sucked a bit. I paid for a month, but ended up bowing out after a few days. There were basically three main reasons for this. I found the lack of a strong plan for the future should something happen to the dev concerning. The stance of hosting even extremist or vile content as long as it's legal in the US, put me off a bit. I want my stuff as European as possible and Blot is hosted in the U.S.
Mataroa
Mataroa is incredibly cheap, hosted in Europe, funds CO₂ removal, and is transparent about its business sustainability. It's almost perfect for my blogging needs. Almost.
Yes, the image hosting guidelines would become an issue, but perhaps I could have paid multiple account fees, or work with the dev to find some other workaround. However, the lack of tags just makes it unworkable for me.
I'm really sad about it because it has some truly delicious features like monthly auto-exports in Markdown, fantastic export support, and text/markdown import.
Bear
All of which leads me to the here and now where I'm in the process of moving to Bear. I love the manifesto, the built-in community, the simplicity, the way I can control themes and styling, the “web 1.0” feel, the tweakability should one know enough CSS and/or JavaScript.
Speaking of which, there are a few things I either don't like or wish Bear did better (or at all). Some or all of which might already be in place and I just haven't figured it out yet.
- Documentation is a little spread out, and I always want more, MOAR.
- TBH, no import kinda sucks when you've got ~850 posts to move.
- Ability to manipulate and edit tags in bulk.
- Option to have a completely empty template without the line separator, so I can use text expansion for various blog post templates without having to copy-paste content above or below it. Failing that, multiple post templates?
- Where does Bear host stuff (I had the notion it was EU, but now I'm not sure).
- More export formats à la Mataroa.
- Pricing information before signing up. (Not crucial since free accounts exist, but would have been nice while I was looking at various platforms.)
I love how generous Bear bloggers are with their helpful tips and tweaks, additions, themes, and styling. I love how different various Bear blogs look. I adore the little Bears littered about. I also really like the lifetime subscription option, which I'll avail myself of should I still feel comfortable with Bear as my home after using it for a while.
October 2025↩