Have you tried blogger?

Joey

Wix will host your website for free, but free is rarely the way to go. You'll have to settle for a website with a sub-domain and low customization possibilities. For just a few bucks you can get your own domain and any website you want.
Cheers

I would agree with HowardLynch.

It's the cheapest and best investment you'll make and if you're serious about what you're doing you will spend the pocket money to get hosting.

I would not mess about with half measures, if you are testing the waters you will get a better idea with a self hosted site-none of those free hosted affairs can provide much leverage for you-of course people have built blogging biz's on the free platforms, but it takes longer - it is either worth doing all in or not.

I would absolutely vote for wix, it's user interface is slick and easy and they really make some good-lookin websites

I also register my domain with Godaddy. They are cheap. For wordpress, I use hostforlife.eu as my hosting provider

In my opinion Wordpress is the best and there is no logical reason to look for an alternative.

There are many services that you can use that provide you WYSWYG editor like wix, weebly etc..

Wordpress.com would groom you for your own self hosted WordPress site later. Not sure why you'd avoid that, if you plan on doing "anything" online. Just my opinion, of course.

On the other hand, there are plenty of shared host companies where you could pay $1/mo to host one domain. HostRipples is one such company.

If you are testing out the waters, by using free stuff you'll never get to where you want to go. Because of the limitations.

I've used free website builders- but for the important things such as adding google analytics, removing the ads they put on your site, getting your own domain name. rather than... username.wix.com/yoursite. You have to pay anyways and it cost more than your own domain and hosting.

That's important because if someone goes to your site and it hads ads not from you, a domain name like that, and these aren't even search friendly.

And when you get free stuff they are always selling you their own products and have limited control.

Here are some free host with CPanel & 1click WP installs. The kicker on these is not a lot of storage if you intend on serving digital products from them.

000webhost.com/
one.com/ - free for a year then 1.89 per month with decent storage.

Tom

I still think Wordpress is the gold standard but another site you can look into is Jimdo. The have some nice templates and the Alexa rank is still decent.

The only way I would look beyond Wordpress however is if you were already using it, and wanted to try a different platform for look and to get a slightly different ranking.

there are a lot of alternative as WIX JOOMLA....
Also Blogger by google. It help you for ranking but I don t like templates