• 31 Dec, 2025 *

Experience of the writer

It’s hard to qualify myself.

I’ve been writing on the internet for close to seven years now. But most of that time has been spent as a novice, and only more recently, as an amateur.

I began writing because I was bad at it. My writing was full of sentence fragments, misplaced or absent commas, and the worst offender: sometimes it was boring. I HATED how my writing represented me as a person.

Intelligence has always been a difficult topic. Historically, I’ve always scored high on tests and received good grades. Even in college. But grammar and writing have always been a hammer to the finger.

These days, I feel like I have an okay understanding of grammar. Now I’m working on making the actual content more engaging and formatted in a way that makes sense.

So why do I think I should even be writing this?

Because there are people out there like me who no longer want to be. Maybe sharing my experiences can lead them to finally coming out and learning the joy of expressing themselves through writing.

Anyways–That’s enough to understand where I’m coming from when I write this comparison.

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Reviewing Write.as

Write.as is an interesting one. The functionality is very similar to Bear Blog, but the way it handles certain things is actually quite obtuse.

The writing experience—is complicated

The actual writing portion is very similar to how Bear handles things. It comes with a Markdown-first editor, or a standard word editor being rolled out more recently.

The page for writing is extremely minimal. You are presented with nothing but a white page, a blinking cursor, and a button to go back at the top left.

There’s not much to remark on, as there is literally not much to remark on. It’s an editor that gets the job done.

Something that is odd, though, is how they handle drafts. You can’t simply save a draft post; you need to publish it to your “anonymous” account and turn off the discoverability of that post.

It gets really confusing because if you have more than one blog with them, it mixes all of them into one single pot. Then you need to find what you’re looking for in the sea of drafts, and when you finish, you need to move it over to your blog of choice.

It’s actually quite annoying and feels like a patch for a system that wasn’t made to accommodate this.

Customization

The default white background and black serif text is the default theme for Write.as. It is also the only theme that you get. All customization must be handled by the user with their custom CSS box.

I think the worst offender here is that they do not give you any pointers on how they wrote the HTML, so you are required to spend needless hours in the browser inspector to customize the site to your liking.

They have a forum where you can search hundreds of posts from other users asking questions, but honestly, that sucks. I shouldn’t have to do that.

Another thing that is burdensome is the platform they offer for comments on your pages. They have something called “Remark.as,” and if you put a snippet on each of your posts, it will lead to Remark.as where a reader can comment.

The ridiculousness of this is that:

• It doesn’t show up on your blog page (this could be a positive for some people).
• It requires a full-blown account on Remark.as to even make a simple comment. I’m talking “verify your email” levels of friction. No one is doing that.
• Its integration doesn’t even feel like an official product.

Overall, it just feels dead on arrival to me.

How does it handle images? (Snap.as)

Quite possibly the most annoying thing is adding images to your posts. Think if the Bear media button didn’t exist and you had to go to an entirely different website to even try it. After you log in, you still need to upload the image, copy the link it spits out, format it in a Markdown-friendly way, and repeat for any subsequent image in your post.

This is maddening.

It also does zero to optimize your image when you upload. This could be seen as a plus for some people, but if you upload a picture that’s in the megabytes, that thing is going to chug when you load it up on your website. Forget it if you have more than one.

Overall, I hate this system. It’s annoying and convoluted. I believe they made it to focus on your writing, but if I want to share an image, it actually kicks the writing to the curb while I deal with this mess.

Some miscellaneous features

They do have a few features that I feel I should still mention, but my interaction with them was minimal, so I’ll instead just list them out here as it shows in their dashboard:

• RSS feed
• eBook Download–readers can download your blog and tagged posts in the EPUB format.
• Email subscriptions–Let readers subscribe to your blog via email, and optionally accept private replies.
• Federation–Allow others to follow your blog and interact with your posts in the Fediverse.

They also maintain an open-source program (though it’s been slowing down as of late) called WriteFreely. It’s an open-source version of Write.as, but it is a bit lacking in features currently.

Once you do finish writing and publish, you don’t have to worry about it going straight into the void. Write.as has a similar feature to Bear for discoverability, where you can view recent posts of other users. There is not an upvote button or anything.

The community there is actually quite interesting. Many of them feel like writers, or people of great wisdom. I’ve actually had a few interactions with people that reached out over email. The interactions were always very kind and supportive, while being quite cordial.

There do seem to be some people that interact over Remark.as, and it seems to work for them. You can almost guarantee it isn’t a bot that is reaching out to you, because the sign-up is kind of convoluted and you must be a paying member to get one. So, I guess that adds some merit to their Remark.as system.

Overall, I’d say that the community is a great asset for the site.

Briefly, the cost

I hate putting in the actual cost of things because it usually dates your entire post. I will however break that rule, because I believe it could still be a helpful ruler to judge the service if it goes up or down.

The cost of Write.as is $9 USD for one blog. It’s actually quite expensive when comparing to other similar blogging platforms. They do allow you to add as many blogs as you’d like for an additional $1 USD a month for each.

What do I think about Write.as

If you just want a clean, no-frills interface and don’t want to worry about customization, this could be for you. Ideally, you’d also not share many pictures. With the eBook download, I could even see this being a great platform for authors of a web series, or someone drafting out the pages of their book in a public manner.

This is not me. I want a corner of the internet to myself, with all the niceties that come with that. I want to customize it to make it mine, share as many images and (YouTube) videos as I want, and have the freedom to integrate things into my site as I see fit. I also want it to be easy to write.

If you fit the description of the first paragraph, or don’t see the workflow issues I mentioned as problems, you might be happy with the product.

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Reviewing Pika.Page

Pika.page is actually fairly new. It has a cute style with the promise of being able to carve out your own slice of happiness on the Internet.

The writing experience—is EXCELLENT

I have to admit, Pika’s writer is by far my favorite of the bunch. It supports Markdown while also having an excellent set of writing tools available at the click of a button. It even replaces “- -” with an em dash automatically. This is a top-tier feature.

It’s simple and easy, with a lot of modern features and UX. There are also options to change how the text is presented—something I haven’t seen in many other places, like “centered” and “right-justified.”

All of the tools are also available with standard keyboard shortcuts. For instance, to toggle bold all you need is Ctrl + B. It makes writing such an effortless experience.

Media upload is simple. You just drag the image where you want, or click the upload button (similar-ish to Bear), and you have an image on your post. It doesn’t have a way to manage the media you upload, but it does allow you to just drag and drop whatever you want. They also state that they optimize the image to load better on your site, but they aren’t explicit on what that means. It seems to work though.

Saving a draft is as simple as clicking a button, which saves it in its own segregated “drafts” section.

If you’re having issues thinking of something to write, they have a “generate prompt” button. It’s not AI; they are human-generated prompts suggested by the community, mixed in with the creator’s.

There is also a toggle that lets you decide if you want to send this particular post out as a newsletter. This is truly an awesome feature for me because some of my site is something I call a “websploration” series. The websploration series are posts where I share links or videos to unique, interesting things I find around the internet. I usually only include a brief description, and it would feel spammy if these were sent to my poor subscribers.

Being able to choose what is important enough to share is an excellent feature.

The feature that I love the most about Pika’s editor is that it renders it all like it would look when published in real-time. That truly is a top-tier feature. It saves time when creating something; you can easily click on the idea you thought was good 30 seconds ago and change it back to something more reasonable without leaving the page.

Customization is—Very Good

Pika also gives you the ability to customize your pages. The themes they provide are far simpler than the ones provided by Bear, mostly amounting to changing the color to pleasantly aesthetic choices. These do also come with their own font choices, which are nice, but the overall layout does not change.

You can also even add a background if you’re aiming for that indie-web retro aesthetic.

Custom CSS

Unlike Write.as, Pika does offer a list of CSS classes in their manual. That at least gets you up and running if you want to customize your site.

Unfortunately, unlike Bear, you are not editing the actual CSS stylesheet. They give you a box labelled “Custom CSS.” So any override you want to perform must be done with the use of the !important flag after most lines.

This is kind of annoying because you’re essentially doing double work building your own CSS stylesheet on top of theirs. I guess it could be worse, though.

Additional editing features

You can also make your blog look like a list of titles or a stream of posts with the simple click of a button. Changing whether your homepage is the standard default blog or a custom one is as simple as clicking a button.

They also have multiple different shortcodes to build your pages. For instance—you can make a page with a list of a certain amount of your posts as a preview. You can also make a list of tags that cater to a specific category. So if you’re making a music page and want to list all of the posts (or a few) that are labelled “music,” you can build that easily right into the page.

Overall, great customization, but the CSS editing could be better.

Cool Miscellaneous Features

The Guestbook is easily my favorite of the bunch. Not only can you sign someone’s page or leave them a message, but you can also draw a simple little square picture. All of these require approval to be shown, but it’s really cool seeing what other people have drawn for you.

They can even link their website, or just a name if desired. You can also edit these if needed before making them public. This is honestly a killer feature for me. It adds something to the site. This is a top-tier feature.

Integration with their Letterbird contact sheet. Having a free contact form that doesn’t share your email with the contactor gives great peace of mind. It’s easy to set up, and I don’t really have any complaints on their free tier.

The UX of the site is honestly so great. Everything is logically laid out, clean, and easy to set up, without all the fluff and web design weighing it down. It feels like you have the modern features you’ve come to know without all the extra crap you’d expect.

So you wrote this kick-ass post, in this kick-ass editor, and it’s going to change the world? Nah, man. It’s going to die on your little island.

There isn’t such thing as a community on Pika. At least in the sense that you can be discovered or share with other users. Apparently, this is a change as of January 2025, but today—there is not a way to reach anyone but the ones that stumble upon your site naturally.

I can tell that there are people who are deeply enthusiastic about Pika, and most users have a communal mindset of making each site built there a “fun” and “happy” place. Unfortunately, there isn’t a place for these communal mindsets to commune. Leading to the sad state we find ourselves in today.

Maybe one day there will be a piece to finish this nearly complete puzzle. For now, coming across that random Pika page with a cool drawing guestbook will have to suffice.

How much does Pika Cost?

Pika costs $6 USD for one blog. I wouldn’t call it cheap, but the amount of value for that one blog is incredible. You get a ton of features, good looks, and easy writing.

Who is Pika for?

I think Pika is an incredible value at the $6 price point. The amount of usability and thought put into your experience is laid out clearly. This is an excellent place for writers of all kinds. You make the site function exactly as you’d desire.

For people who value community and discoverability above all, this may not be the place for you. Right now, there isn’t a built-in feature to get discovered. So unless you already have a following, or you don’t mind broadcasting elsewhere, you may just find yourself on an island with Wilson for company.

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Reviewing Bear Blog

This is the newest of the bunch to me. I find it fascinating that it has its own manifesto, and I love the words I read inside of it. The promise of a simple place to garden and store your writings is such a beautiful sentiment in the current landscape.

The writing experience—is decent

The writing really doesn’t get in the way of anything. Honestly, there isn’t much to get in the way of. Of the bunch, this editor is the simplest in terms of how it looks, but there are great quality-of-life additions like dragging and dropping an image directly into the box. It also seems like Bear will automatically optimize the image to render quicker on your site.

While I appreciate not having to write my posts in raw HTML, I do find myself missing some of the shorthand work of toggling bold on or off on the fly to save time. Maybe this is a workflow issue, and I just have a preference towards one. It’s totally possible, but remembering all the Markdown commands does take up some of my mental bandwidth when I really want to be focusing on my writing.

Bear having a media button is really quite useful. Maybe you’re writing and you want to reference an image from a previous post. Unfortunately, the device you find yourself writing on doesn’t have that image stored on it. With a media collection, you can easily retrieve a link and insert it straight into your post. I personally can’t say I was that bothered by Pika not having one, because I typically use my Nextcloud to retrieve anything not on my device, but it is a welcome addition.

I also LOVE that you can have a default template for posts. Pika didn’t have this option, and it was unfortunate, honestly. So much time is saved from just booting up your new post page and not having to worry about the framework of it all. This is a top-tier feature.

The image preview is a bit more clunky than the one at Pika, but this is still a great solution, and renders it exactly as you would see it on your site.

Customization is—EXCELLENT

With Bear, you are treated like royalty. The amount of themes and layouts out of the box is phenomenal. If I didn’t have such a love for being frustrated, so many of these themes would be great to just set and forget. They really are that good.

The royalty treatment doesn’t stop there though. Bear just gives you the entire CSS stylesheet. It gives you the keys and says “go crazy.” No guessing why that stupid element looks like that; you have pure transparency and can see why.

I haven’t messed with it yet, so I can’t speak to it, but I’ve read you can add JavaScript and mess with the header and footer directives on your site. If that’s true—holy crap, what a feature.

Something that does kind of limit this power is that the community and Bear seem to value text on the page with minimal distractions. So with all this power come social limits. You could ignore them, of course, but it’s just something to note.

It really feels like I should be saying more, but them giving you crazy awesome themes and their actual stylesheets is so good. Bear’s customization? This is a top-tier feature.

Since I’m the least familiar with Bear, I can’t say too much about the community with a nuanced take.

From everything I’ve seen though, it seems like a tight community with a wide variety of thoughts, feelings, and a communal love for Bear.

Having an upvote button is actually awesome. It lets you know that somewhere out there, someone read your post and thought it was pretty cool. It’s quite a feat to have a ranked top section in the days of AI taking over everything. While the discover feed has posts about AI, it at least seems that real people are discussing it, and it’s not just slop.

Having a communal place for all of my thoughts to go is probably my favorite feature of Bear. Knowing that someone at least even saw the title of my post really brings something to the writing experience.

Even though I write mostly for me, at my heart I want to be a curator. I want to share things that I think are fun, interesting, and unique with people. Simple as it is, or even if I never get an upvote, I’m still happy knowing someone saw it. Knowing that really makes it feel like it exists. This is a top-tier feature.

Bear’s Pricing—GREAT

Bear Blog costs ~$5 USD for up to 10 blogs. That’s awesome value when you throw in the customization features. You could have 10 unique sites for different things. That is great value.

Who should use Bear?

People who value discovery and a community above all should just hop on Bear. I think Bear could be for most people: the Markdown is universal, stock themes are excellent for dialing in your style, and the customization features are extensive. Getting multiple blogs for the same price as one on Pika is also awesome, and great for people who like to segregate their thoughts or themes into separate spaces. Bear is especially fitting if you are a text-first person.

You may not like Bear if you prefer a standard editor. The use of Markdown isn’t hard necessarily, but it does make you build the formatting of your site in a way that almost feels "from scratch." If you like great UI/UX, I’d also see arguments for choosing somewhere else. Also, if you like to have a bunch of images in every single post, it could feel a bit difficult to manage, because you’d have to build the CSS stylesheet to handle them in a way that’s satisfactory for you.

Overall thoughts

I wouldn’t call any of these bad options. Bad for me—absolutely. The differences between them seem to show how many different needs there are in this space. I think there is room for all of them.

As for me, I think I’ll stick to Pika for my main thing at commentingon.xyz, and save Bear for the posts that I think will actually bring value to people’s time and are worth sharing with the community.

#review.