WriteFreely

What is WriteFreely?

WriteFreely is an open source blogging platform that strips writing back to the words. You get a distraction-free Markdown editor with auto-save, clean reader-friendly pages, and no feeds, likes, or notifications. It’s built in Go as a single static binary, and it federates over ActivityPub so people can follow your blog from Mastodon and the wider fediverse.

What is WriteFreely best for?

Writers who want a calm, self-owned place to publish — bloggers, journalers, and small communities who care about plain text, privacy, and reach without ads or engagement mechanics. It suits people who’d rather own a domain and a lightweight server than post into someone else’s algorithm, and who like that readers on the fediverse can follow along.

What can WriteFreely do?

• Write in a distraction-free, auto-saving Markdown editor with no social clutter
• Federate posts over ActivityPub so Mastodon, Pleroma, and Plume users can follow your blog
• Host multiple blogs from one account, including anonymous ones with no visible link between them
• Run as a single lightweight Go binary — small enough for a Raspberry Pi
• Store data in SQLite (built in), MySQL, or MariaDB
• Organize posts with hashtags and pin pages as static, always-visible content
• Publish in 20+ languages with right-to-left script support
• Sign in via OAuth 2.0 with third-party providers

Where does WriteFreely fall short?

• No built-in memberships, paywalls, or paid newsletters. Unlike Ghost or Substack, the self-hosted software has no native way to charge readers or run a subscriber email list — you’d bolt those on separately or move to the paid Write.as hosting.
• Minimalist by design, with little to extend. There’s no plugin ecosystem or theme marketplace. You customize with CSS, but if you want rich layouts, membership tiers, or a CMS with lots of moving parts, WriteFreely deliberately isn’t it.
• Federation is read-oriented. Fediverse users can follow and boost your posts, but WriteFreely is a publishing tool, not a full social network — interaction and commenting are intentionally thin.

Is WriteFreely free?

Yes — WriteFreely is free and open source under the AGPL-3.0 license, so you can self-host it at no software cost and only pay for your server (a small VPS is enough). If you’d rather not run it yourself, the makers offer managed hosting through Write.as, where the Pro plan is about $6/month billed yearly ($9 monthly) and Team plans start around $25/month.

What does WriteFreely replace?

WriteFreely is a self-hosted alternative to Medium and, for the writing side, Substack. It covers the same publish-your-writing-to-the-web job without ads, tracking, or a platform that owns your audience — though it doesn’t replicate Substack’s built-in paid subscriptions, which stay a gap unless you use paid hosting.

FAQ

Is WriteFreely open source? Yes. It’s licensed under the AGPL-3.0, a strong copyleft open source license, and the full source is on GitHub.

Can I self-host WriteFreely for free? Yes. The software is free; you only pay for the server it runs on. It’s light enough to run on a Raspberry Pi or the smallest VPS tier.

Is WriteFreely a good Medium alternative? For writers who want a clean, ad-free, self-owned blog, yes — and it adds fediverse reach Medium doesn’t have. It’s less suited to anyone who needs Medium’s built-in audience and discovery.

What do I need to run WriteFreely? A server that can run its Go binary and a database — SQLite works out of the box, or MySQL/MariaDB for larger setups. No heavy runtime or extra dependencies are required.