Micro.blog

What Micro.blog is

Micro.blog is a blogging platform for people who want their writing to live at their own domain name. The company's site says it offers "easy blogging at your own domain name for short posts, full essays, photo blogs, and email newsletters," with cross-posting to other networks and a community around it. It is a publishing tool rather than a drag-and-drop app builder, so the "build" here means a blog, a photo blog, a podcast or a newsletter. The reader it fits is an individual writer, photographer or podcaster, and a founder who wants a personal site that outlasts any one social network. The pages say Micro.blog was founded by Manton Reece in 2017, and that he has also written a book called Indie Microblogging. They do not name a headquarters or country.

What you build and how

The company describes blogging as "at the heart of Micro.blog." You can write short microblog posts or long-form posts, run a photo blog, or publish a podcast. The homepage adds email newsletters to that list. The site's own summary of the feature set is "Themes, categories, photo hosting, standalone web pages, drafts, scheduled posts, and more," and it adds that you can "use as little or as much as you want." Its homepage line is "Small name. Huge number of features," paired with a "streamlined UI," so the features you do not need stay out of the way.

The data layer is the blog itself. Your posts live at your domain, and the IndieWeb page explains why that matters: "By using your own domain name with Micro.blog, you own the URLs and can migrate away from Micro.blog without breaking links to your posts." That is the platform's answer to lock-in, and it is the most concrete portability claim on the pages. The company ties its design to IndieWeb principles, which it summarizes as open standards, data portability, domain names for your web identity, and connecting to other platforms.

Several named standards carry the rest of the product. Each one is a way to build on top of a blog without touching the editor.

• Micropub is the native posting API. The company says apps and scripts can use it to create new blog posts, upload photos, save drafts, save bookmarks and edit posts. In practice that means a third-party writing app, or a short script you write yourself, can publish to your blog.
• Webmention handles replies across websites. When you reply to a post on an external blog, Micro.blog can send your reply to that blog via Webmention, and it can receive replies from other sites so they show up in your mentions.
• Microformats describe how metadata is included in your posts, and the company states that all of its built-in themes support them. Webmention and other standards read that metadata to get details about a post.
• Microsub is an API for retrieving the timeline and posts in Micro.blog. It can be used instead of or alongside the JSON Feed-based API, so an app can work with more than one platform.
• IndieAuth is described as a variation of OAuth where you sign in with your own domain name. Third-party apps can use it to sign in without registering on Micro.blog first.

Cross-posting follows the POSSE idea, which the page spells out as Publish on your Own Site, Syndicate Elsewhere. The site states that upgrading your subscription adds cross-posting of your blog posts to Threads, Bluesky, Mastodon, Medium, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Flickr, Nostr and Pixelfed. So you write once, and the posts travel to 9 named destinations while the original stays on your domain.

The fediverse is a separate piece. The company says Micro.blog is part of the fediverse, so when you post to your blog, your posts and photos are also sent to followers on Mastodon and elsewhere. It is explicit that this is not a Mastodon clone. It leaves features out on purpose: no likes, no boosts, no trending tags. The stated reason is that it is "not a popularity contest" and not "a space where outrage goes viral." With your own domain, the company says your fediverse handle could be @yourname@yourblog.com, so your identity is tied to your name and not to someone else's server. The flow is described in 3 steps. You start with a new blog post, followers see it on Mastodon, and replies appear back on your blog. The pages add that you can even curate those replies, which matters if you would rather not display everything that comes back.

For the person writing, there are native apps for iOS, Android and macOS. The company's phrase for the whole product is a platform "rooted in blogging with a layer of social features, built for the open web." For the person reading, the result is an ordinary website at the writer's domain, optionally followed from Mastodon or another fediverse account.

What the pages say about plans, limits and support

The pages held for Micro.blog include no pricing page. They list no plan names, no prices, no free-plan or trial terms, and no limits on posts, photos or storage. The only commercial detail is on the IndieWeb page, where cross-posting to the 9 networks above is tied to upgrading your subscription. If you are budgeting, treat the price as something to read on the company's own pricing page, which the navigation links to alongside Sign in and Sign up.

No compliance claims appear: nothing about SOC 2, GDPR or HIPAA. No customer counts or user counts appear either. What the company does publish is a support footprint. The footer links to Help forums, Email help, News, About, IndieWeb and Service status, so there is a public forum, an email route for help, and a status page for outages.

On openness, the company's wording is specific. It names Micropub, Webmention, Microformats, Microsub and IndieAuth, and it says the platform follows "the principles and protocols of the IndieWeb." The pages do not say the Micro.blog software itself is open source or self-hostable, and they do not name a license. The portability being claimed is about your domain and your URLs, so that is what a reader should rely on.

Who it suits and who it does not

Micro.blog suits a solo writer, a photographer or a podcaster who wants a personal site on a domain they control. The IndieWeb pitch is strongest for someone who has watched a social network change its rules and does not want to rebuild an audience from scratch. A founder who wants a plain, durable blog with a newsletter attached, and who wants posts to appear on Mastodon, Bluesky and LinkedIn without copying them by hand, is the natural fit. A developer who likes open standards gets Micropub, Microsub and IndieAuth to build against, so custom posting tools are realistic.

It is a deliberate choice about social design too. If you want likes, boosts and trending tags, the company says it left those out on purpose, so a growth-by-engagement strategy will fight the product.

There are caveats. The pages describe publishing for an individual, with no mention of approval chains, role-based permissions or editorial workflows. A newsroom or a company marketing team with many writers should confirm those points with the company before committing. Cross-posting to the 9 networks needs a paid upgrade, and the pricing is not on the pages held here. It is also not a page builder or an app builder: you get themes and standalone web pages, not a drag-and-drop canvas for custom layouts, and no database or automation layer is described. For a blog, a photo blog, a podcast or a newsletter at your own address, though, the combination of owned URLs, open protocols and fediverse reach is the whole point of the product.