Host WriteFreely without installing anything
A Markdown editor, an RSS feed and a blog people follow from Mastodon. No statistics, no comments: that is the point, not an oversight.
Starting at €4.99/month
Introduction
WriteFreely installed, updated and backed up by us, on a machine in France. You install nothing and configure no server: the application is online a few minutes after you order, under your own name.
The plan that suits it is App Essentiel at €4.99/month incl. VAT — 2 GB of memory. WriteFreely is a binary written in Go with a light database behind it: at rest it consumes almost nothing. The memory is therefore not for the software, it is to absorb the day a piece travels — an article picked up on Mastodon or in a newsletter brings a few thousand reads in an hour, and that is the only moment you are glad to have headroom.
WriteFreely speaks ActivityPub: your blog has an address people can follow from Mastodon, and every post lands in your readers' timeline without them creating an account with you. Alongside that, a plain RSS feed and a link to share are all it takes. One detail that matters before choosing: WriteFreely does not host images. You insert them by URL, from a Nextcloud share or a Piwigo gallery — it is a tool for text, and it says so plainly.
What managed hosting changes
An editor that does nothing else
A blank page, Markdown, a keyboard shortcut to publish. No toolbar, no block to pick, no notification blinking away: what stays on the screen is the text.
A blog people follow from Mastodon
WriteFreely speaks ActivityPub. Your blog has an address that can be followed from the fediverse, and each post appears in your readers' timeline — no account to create, no app to install.
RSS, pinned pages and several blogs
Every blog has its RSS feed and its pinned pages for an "about" or a legal notice. One account can hold several: a public blog, another for drafts or for a separate project.
Your writing leaves as Markdown
The export returns the posts as text files. Nothing is locked into a proprietary format: what you write stays readable in any editor, ten years from now.
Why hand it over rather than install it
Someone who wants to write, not to run a site
No theme to choose, no plugin to watch, no dashboard to learn. Open the page, write, publish — and do it again next week.
A public notebook with no audience to watch
No view counter, no comments to moderate. You write without checking whether it works, which is sometimes the only way to keep writing.
An author publishing a serial
One post per chapter, an RSS feed for loyal readers, and a followable address for those who already live on the fediverse.
A charity keeping a logbook
Dated, readable, exportable write-ups — that do not depend on a platform which might close or change its rules overnight.
A professional publishing field notes
A domain of your own, text that search engines can find, and no advertising block between the reader and the point.
Hosted in France
In our own infrastructure in Nouvelle-Aquitaine, which we operate ourselves. Your writing stays with you, and the person on the phone speaks your language.
Frequently asked questions
Yes, but WriteFreely does not host them: you insert them by URL, from a Nextcloud share, a Piwigo gallery or any storage space. That is a design decision, not a temporary limitation. If your publishing rests mainly on visuals, Ghost or WordPress will suit you better; if it rests on text, having no media library to look after is a relief.
Three ways: the RSS feed, the blog address followed from a Mastodon account, and the plain link. There is no built-in newsletter engine; if you want to send your pieces by email, Listmonk sits alongside and reads your blog's RSS feed.
WriteFreely imports text and Markdown files, which covers the common case. A WordPress or Medium export needs a conversion step into Markdown first — tools exist for that, but there is no one-click import from those platforms. Budget an evening for a hundred articles.
Nothing. You choose the application, fill in the fields it asks for — often an email address and a name — and it goes online. Access arrives by email with the address and the credentials.
Yes, they are part of the service. Federation is the sensitive part: fediverse servers evolve together, and an instance three versions behind eventually stops being seen by the others.