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Shahed Nasser
Shahed Nasser

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DEV VS Hashnode VS Medium: Where Should You Start Your Tech Blog

This article was originally posted on my personal blog

Let me start by saying that I recommend you start a tech blog. By sharing your knowledge and writing it down, you learn more. It also encourages you to try new things so that you can write about them as well.

But if you're here then you are probably already considering it. So where should you start your tech blog? Should you use DEV, Hashnode, or Medium? Or should you consider starting a personal blog of your own, without using any of these platforms?


DEV

The charm of DEV, in my own experience, is the community. Everyone on DEV is respectful and encouraging. Whether you're a junior or a senior, you'll find your voice and place there. You can share experiences, tutorials, advice, or show off what you are learning. It's basically a "no judgment" space, which is great if you're still unsure about how to write or what to write about.

At DEV you'll also have a great source of traffic. Out of the three platforms, DEV drove the most traffic to my blog posts, and I think the reason behind that is simple yet very important: everyone is "featured" in a sense. In other platforms in general (not just the three mentioned here), veterans or big writers/bloggers might have their articles seen more. It would take you time to build your audience to then start having readers. However, with DEV, people can easily see your articles on their feed whether you have 0 followers or hundreds. The reason I find that important is that it gives everyone a chance to be heard.

I think DEV only has two drawbacks. The first is that you can't have your own blog on their platform, with your own name and customization, or with a subdomain or custom domain. The second is that their editor is fully in Markdown. So, if you're not familiar with it you might find it a hassle.


Hashnode

Hashnode is another great platform for blogging. Having a blog on Hashnode can be very similar to hosting your own personal blog. You can change the name, use a sub-domain or your custom domain, and customize the blog with so many options. You can change the colors, enable dark mode, enable newsletter opt-in for your blog visitors, and even allows integrations to Google Analytics, Hotjar, Facebook Pixel, and much more. You can almost do anything you would do in a personal blog with Hashnode.

Hashnode's editor is very easy to use. It also relies on Markdown, however, you also have a toolbar with options that you can use, so you don't really have to know Markdown to use it. The community at Hashnode is similar to that at DEV which is also a plus.

However, from my own experience, it's not easy to get much traffic in Hashnode. I'm not sure if it's because your articles aren't shown often in people's feed or which reason it is exactly, but you wouldn't generate the same kind of traffic you would at DEV. On the other side, writing on Hashnode can get you featured on daily.dev which can get people to see your article more.


Medium

Medium is probably the most famous out of the three, and not just in the technical world. Medium is a big platform that offers an easy-to-use editor, your own blog with a subdomain or a custom domain, customization to your blog from colors to the look and feels in general, and newsletter opt-in to your visitors.

Getting traffic on Medium, however, is tough. Medium prioritizes articles from big blogs on their platform or authors who are enrolled in their Partner Program. If you're neither, your articles probably won't be seen much by anyone. Another way people can see your articles is if you submit your publication to another big blog, meaning that your article appears as part of another blog, but this requires a special invite from the blog itself so that you can submit your publications. I personally have been submitting mine for gitconnected's Level Up Coding blog as I have been invited as an author on it before, and that's how I mainly get traffic on it.

Another thing is that on Medium you don't really have much interaction with others in the community. Generally, readers on Medium just read your article, and if they like it enough they'll give it "claps", but not much interaction happens (at least from my own experience).


Should You Start A Personal Blog?

Starting a personal blog definitely gives you more freedom. However, depending on the kind of CMS platform or blogging experience you are going for, there are setups and costs that you need to consider. Especially if you're still a beginner, you might find it hard to manage your own hosting.

Personal blogs have a big perk which is you have a better chance at monetizing them, but even that can take some time as it is not easy.

If you are interested in starting your own blog and you're looking for ways to do that cost-free, here are some suggested reads you can look through:

  1. The Things You Can Do For Free: The Ultimate Guide
  2. Deploy a Free Website With Jekyll and GitHub Pages

Conclusion

All 3 platforms are great choices. It mostly depends on what kind of blogging experience you are going for.

  1. If you're looking for a place where you can write freely and also interact with others in the community, start at DEV. If you're looking for a place where you can also do that with less traffic, but have more freedom, go for Hashnode. If you're looking for a platform where you can write easily and also have some freedom in your blog, go for Medium.

Top comments (22)

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areknawo profile image
Arek Nawo

I'd say start a personal blog - the best option for building a personal brand and optional monetization. Then, (eventually) cross-post your content for exposure to some or all of the platforms you've mentioned. That's what I'm doing with my personal blog and mainly Dev.to, rarely other platforms. I've recently built a tool to make technical blogging and cross-posting easier. Check it out if you're interested.

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shahednasser profile image
Shahed Nasser

Oh I’ve tried using this tool but unfortunately it wouldn’t work for some reason. Whenever I clicked on the card to start a new article nothing happened.

Starting your personal blog is definitely the best option, but it’s not always the most convenient. I also have my personal blog and I cross post on the three platforms, but for some and especially for beginners it can be a hassle. Also, as I mentioned there are so costs to take care of which is not something everyone can do.

Tbh I think hashnode can work as a personal blog, even if just in the beginning. It has a lot of options that makes your blog as similar as a personal blog can be.

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areknawo profile image
Arek Nawo • Edited

Oh, in this case, I recommend you check it out again. In the free tier, you can't create new articles but only edit the existing ones. Get into the one that's pinned, remove the whole content and go from there (up to 6000 characters with all code snippets, embeds, and images counted as one). Sorry for the confusion, it's MVP and I could have done a better job explaining this.

R.e. personal blog, I'm planning to write a guide on how to start one easily with GH Pages (if it'll be successful, then I might consider doing something similar for other platforms as well).

Yeah, Hashnode might be nice for beginners, but I feel like it's a bit limited.

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shahednasser profile image
Shahed Nasser

Oh I see I didn’t know that. I should check it out again then.

Yea I did a similar tutorial in the blog post I mentioned in the article blog.shahednasser.com/deploy-a-web...

I think GH pages is a good option too

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ferluisxd profile image
Luis Vilca

Hello! It looks interesting, but I did not quite get what are the key differences between that and Notion

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areknawo profile image
Arek Nawo

You can read more on CodeWrite here:

Basically, CW is focused exclusively on technical blogging - rather than being all-in-one tool like Notion.

This means that while it doesn't have as many formatting options or embeds as Notion, it comes with features that technical bloggers would appreciate. Good example is VS Code-level editor for code blocks with built-in Prettier integration for code formatting right in CW.

Also, with simplified set of Markdown features, CW allows for pretty much all formatting options you'd normally need, while being easy to convert to formats for different blogging sites. That's how the autofilling feature for Dev.to, Hashnode, Medium, etc. is possible to be implemented.

I'm currently working on next version of CW - fixing bugs, separating the editor from the extension into dedicated web app, adding cross-device sync, collaboration features, content management and more. The end goal is the best editor for technical, code-related writing - both for individuals and teams. It'll take some more time, but I hope to get there.

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gdenn profile image
Dennis Groß (he/him)

I just started blogging recently, on dev.to.

My last post hit 210 visitors. At best I tought 10 people would read it but I was very pleasantly surprised.

I think I will stay here. Perhaps I'll have a personal home page build with NextJS at some point and include my dev.to posts through the dev.to API.

But let's see. So far I believe that this community is exactly what I was looking for.

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sriaakashs1 profile image
SRI AAKASH S

Nice Blog. Thanks for sharing

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menard_codes profile image
Menard Maranan

I only written here in dev.to, but what I noticed is that people here are more engaged, and it brings you more traffic to your blog, which makes you as a writer feel better that people are actually reading your stuff.

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hellojuninguyen profile image
Juni Nguyen

Thanks for writing this. I myself started Hashnode at first but then I switched to Medium to get more traffic. I also like dev.to a lot personally. So in the level of likeliness to me: Medium, Dev.to, then Hashnode accordingly.

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nilmadhabmondal profile image
Nil Madhab

I have made a chrome extension to easily import your medium articles to dev.to, chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/...

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typosbro profile image
Azizbek Umidjonov

Cool, found this article on DuckDuckGo & immediately hit follow button :)

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shahednasser profile image
Shahed Nasser

Thank you!

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aakash1282 profile image
Aakash Singh Rajput • Edited

Nice blog sir.
I also gone through 'global rank' and 'visits over time' of Medium, Dev and Hashnode on similerweb .com.
Medium have highest counts. : )
But can I write a blog on my website and then copy paste that blog in all three: Dev,medium,hashnode???????

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shahednasser profile image
Shahed Nasser

Yes you can. Dev has a RSS feed tool that pulls articles from your blog automatically. Medium allows you to import articles. I’m not sure about hashnode.

Also, I’ve created a tool cross-post that allows you to easily cross post your articles on dev and medium and hashnode. You can fine it here: github.com/shahednasser/cross-post

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rahxuls profile image
Rahul

Hashnode stills has some amazing features that maybe Dev.to will not add

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patelatit53 profile image
Atit Patel

Thanks for the article. I would like to know how we can monetize dev.to and hashnode? Do they support partner program like medium?

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remejuan profile image
Reme Le Hane

Hashnode and dev can be monitized via coil.com. While mediums partner program is pretty good, its very restricted at the moment as they are dependant on stripe who does not have a very wide reach.

Personally living in South Africa, there is no way to use the program, I can get in via a VPN, sign up with stripe, but without being able to verifity with a form of verification from one the country you selected you are SOL.

Medium probably has the potential to be more profitable, but at the same time, as a developer are you writting to get paid or writting to share knowledge and possible get noticed.

I tested out the MPP and in 2 weeks made $50, but can't actually get it and will be moving all my posts back to public as it was literally a test, I have a job, I don't really need to get paid for sharing my knowledge, I rather be part of the community and give away freely.

While everythign is posted on all 3 platforms, even without posting to a larger publication, I still get at least 3x the readers via medium than dev.to, however, that could be as a direct result of medium being th eonly links I share accross social media.

I am going to switch to hashnode being my primary posting platform, with dev and medium being teh reshare sites. Hashnode does have considerably more features and visually its far more appealing.

If I make a few bucks via coil, then happy days, some extra crypto, but I prefer the fact that it in order to maybe make a few bucks it does not need to be hidden behind a paywall, blocking it from being accessible to the wider community.

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shahednasser profile image
Shahed Nasser

No there isn’t. You can find an integration for hashnode, but from hashnode itself there isn’t

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sarpit2021 profile image
sarpit2021 • Edited

Thanks for the article. I'm doing with my personal blog - sabdatascientist.com

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yamanidev profile image
Mohamed Yamani

What do you think of posting originally on one platform, and cross posting on the others? Is that a smart thing to do?

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vnadkarni profile image
Vijay Nadkarni • Edited

Have you looked at WordPress vs Hashnode four a personal independent blog? Any thoughts?