Writefreely by writefreely

A clean, Markdown-based publishing platform made for writers. Write together and build a community.

writingpublishingbloggingweb-applicationgoactivitypubfederationbetawritefreelymarkdownwriters
Verdict 73/100 health $4.13/mo cheapest, hetzner 3/5 setup difficulty Last release 8 months ago

Self-host Writefreely on hetzner CAX11 for $4.13/mo.

Health score
73 /100
6-dim composite
Self-hosts from
$4.13 /mo
hetzner · CAX11
Difficulty
3 /5
External DB / setup
GitHub stars
5.1k
373 forks

About Writefreely

From the project's README at github.com/writefreely/writefreely. Lightly cleaned for readability; for the full source see the upstream repo.

WriteFreely is a clean, minimalist publishing platform made for writers. Start a blog, share knowledge within your organization, or build a community around the shared act of writing.

Health score breakdown

6-dimension composite. See methodology for formula and weights.

activity
69
maturity
100
community
82
security
85
sustainability
88
adoption
33

Adoption signals

Real-world usage data, pulled from each registry. The bigger the numbers, the more battle-tested the project.

SignalValueSource
GitHub stars 5.1k github.com/writefreely/writefreely
GitHub forks 373 github.com/writefreely/writefreely

Release & maintenance

Is this project actively maintained, or about to die? Check the recency of last commit and last release.

Project age9.1 yearssince Apr 2017
Last commit5 days agoMay 2, 2026
Releases shipped27last: 8 months ago
Security policySECURITY.mddeclared by maintainers
Funding links2declared by maintainers

Self-hosting cost across providers

Detected requirements: 4GB RAM, 40GB disk minimum. Cheapest plan per provider that meets the requirement.

ProviderPlanSpecsMonthly
hetzner CAX11 2c · 4GB · 40GB $4.13 USD Deploy →
vultr VC2 1c · 1GB · 25GB $5 USD Deploy →
linode Nanode 1GB 1c · 1GB · 25GB $5.12 USD Deploy →
digitalocean Basic Regular 1GB 1c · 1GB · 25GB $6 USD Deploy →

Security advisories

1 known advisories tracked via OSV.dev. Most recent: CVE-2025-24337.

What people say on Hacker News

Ready to self-host Writefreely?

Spin up a hetzner CAX11 (4GB RAM, 40GB disk) for $4.13/mo and follow the project's official install docs.

Data last refreshed May 7, 2026.

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Frequently asked questions

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