5 of the Best Sites for Creating an Online Journal or Diary (2023)

Are you someone who likes keeping a journal or diary? Do you find it rewarding to keep up with your daily activities or to make notes on your feelings or vacation times with family? If so, you may want to look into one of these sites in our post below, or even walk through our free guide on how to start a blog using WordPress — which can also act as your own diary or online journal.

All of these sites are journaling sites that allow users to record their daily events, make notes on various things, or record original thoughts. Each of these platforms offers something special so take “note” of the features of each one to see which one you might want to look into further.

Penzu

Penzu is a popular format to record your daily observations, write down ideas you have, or record what happens. It has a unique look and resembles a real notebook paper background that makes you feel like you are writing things down in a traditional school notebook.

There are some different diary templates that you can tap into when you use Penzu for your journals. Try out any of the following models.

• School Diary
• Work Diary
• Food Diary
• Health Diary
• Secret Diary

The school diary allows you to use Penzu for recording school events and activities and observations that you think of at school. With the notebook or paper backgrounds, these designs take you back to a time when a paper was the rule of the day. (no pun intended)

These customizable templates allow you to personalize your journal or diary in the way you want so that you can get the most out of it. Work diaries offer several options to record ideas you get at work or pen a new idea you may even want to show your boss or sales manager. The other formats allow you to record anything you want in different areas so feel free to be as creative as you want. Create poetry, keep notes on your day, or share with friends. It also allows you to have multiple diaries.

Penzu also has an app for your mobile devices so that you can update it on-the-go anytime you want. This is an excellent platform for anyone wanting to keep either a personal, school, or work journal. Also, it has “military level” privacy controls so you can feel safer with your information.

The basic version is free. You can upgrade to “Penzu Pro” for $19.99 plus per year for unlimited use and premium support.

Journalate.com

Journalate.com is a beautiful online journal that allows you to keep up with the things that are most important in your life through this easy-but-beautiful platform. With the premium version of this journal, you can upload your latest social media posts. Add images or videos and any other media you think would add to your posts.

It’s free to use, and you can keep your thoughts private or choose to share them with the world. Just be careful. Sometimes dogs get curious too!

Jrnl.com

Jrnl.com is a great way to put up a personal or professional journal to share your thoughts with the world. Or, if you prefer, keep them to yourself! There are several features users like about this platform. Some of the best ones are mentioned below.

• Timeline: Allows you to view all of your entries in one place
• All About Me: Allows you to answer hundreds of questions about your life
• Mobile: Go mobile with the mobile features that come onboard with this journal app
• Bookbuilder: This aspect allows you to create beautiful archival books
• Reminders: Reminds you when it’s time to write and lets you generate writing schedules

There are several other features included in this nifty online journaling app so check it out and see what you think. It’s a great platform to start recording your hopes and dreams, complete with media in exact living color.

Goodnight Journal

This journal platform takes a straightforward approach to online journal writing. This tool is completely free and allows anyone to log on and create a journal for free. Then you can choose to keep your journal private or share it with your social media groups or the entire world.

Choose to make your journal “public” to share it with others.

Online Journal

Onlinejournal.com is a robust online journaling platform that allows you to record your thoughts, ideas, and observations on a beautiful background, complete with digital media that you add from your computer or other sources.

Record your ideas or get creative and write an entire short story or poem! Start any journal that you want including travel journals, personal journals, a physical fitness journal, or any journal you feel like creating.

There are a lot of therapeutic benefits to starting and maintaining a journal. These online platforms make it easy to start a journal today and keep up with it year round.

Whether you want to record those critical events in your life or start the great American novel, the sky’s the limit when it comes to recording your thoughts and feelings. Check out any of these journal sites when you get a chance to give you some inspiration or even read what others have written.

An Alternative to Journal Sites

So journaling is a great idea. We know that. It helps you to relieve some stress, allows you to express your thoughts and feelings, and records important events in your life. You can use any of the platforms we talked about in this post, or you could do something else…create a blog!

That’s right. The original blogs that were created back in 2003 were all personal journals and diaries that recorded things like family vacations and personal thoughts. It wasn’t until much later that business owners started realizing the power of keeping a blog as a way to communicate directly with their client base and address important topics that their customers want to know about.

Advantages to Starting a Blog

If you are debating on whether to keep an online journal or doing a blog instead, you may want to consider these advantages of keeping a blog.

• Blogs allow you to have more customization and increase the level of creativity that you can incorporate into your blog. Using a blog platform like WordPress allows you even more of this creative freedom and customization. That’s because they have hundreds of templates and plugins that allow you to make your blog your own.
• Blogs allow you to maintain ownership of your content more than a journal does. Any content that you write immediately becomes your property under common law copyright. However, it is much easier to hack an online journal system in general than it is to do so on WordPress or a secure server on which many blogs are maintained.
• Having a blog on WordPress allows you to monetize your blog. This means that you can turn your posts and your content into money! Look into monetization options such as using YouTube or Google AdSense to generate revenue on your blog while writing about the things that matter most to you.

Journal or Blog: That is the Question!

So, which do you think is the best option for you? Using one of the online journals is nice. But if you want to get your ideas out there and promote yourself or your brand in a big way, why not just look into starting a blog on WordPress. Like a journal, it allows you to take notes on your life, post media, incorporate your social media posts, and more.

Best of all, a blog offers the kind of creative freedom and security that you will probably prefer over the long haul. It also allows you to actively build your audience and start working on building your target audience.

Look into starting a WordPress blog and see what we mean. Before long, you’ll be sharing your ideas with your adoring public.