With all of the blogging services available these days, it’s hard to tell which one will best suit your needs.

A quick Google search will present you with pages and pages of “top five” lists that tout the old stand-bys (WordPress, Blogger, Tumblr, etc.). It’s true that these classic platforms are pretty great, but there are plenty of modern blogging options you might like too.

The classic blogging giants have become so popular that they’ve integrated hundreds of features to serve everyone’s needs, and that isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Modern blogging services have responded with more of a minimalistic approach, offering simple tools that prove that the latest doesn’t necessarily mean the fanciest or shmanciest.

Here are five modern blog platforms that could be a great fit for your next project:

Svbtle

Svbtle is blogging with everything else stripped away. It helps you stay focused by removing all distractions from view while you’re writing. Plus, the user interface was set up for the way your brain works, so navigation feels natural. In spite of its bare-bones simplicity, Svbtle still offers personalization, branding features, and custom domain support to help you take ownership for your work.

Ghost

A former WordPress blogger came up with the concept for Ghost after deciding that he wanted a simpler alternative.

“I still think WordPress is an amazing platform, in fact I think it’s the best CMS out there. But it’s not what I want for blogging. There’s too much stuff everywhere, too much clutter, too many (so many) options getting in the way of what I really want to do: publish content.”

Ghost was developed to be the ideal platform for “just blogging.” It allows you to preview your post as you write and has more straight-forward options for publishing. Also, Ghost is an Open Source software that you can modify and redistribute as you please. It’s meant to encourage people with different skillsets to help grow and evolve the platform.

Posthaven

Around this time last year, Twitter acquired and promptly shut down an up-and-coming blogging platform called Posterous. It’s founders launched Posthaven to rescue all the old Posterous blogs and promised to keep the new platform alive forever.

The most interesting thing about Posthaven is its pledge to never be acquired, so that you’ll never have to move your content to another service. Instead of being venture-backed, Posthaven is user-supported with a five dollar monthly fee. If you stop making payments, you will no longer be able to add or edit, but Posthaven will continue to host your content.

Postach.io

If you’re an Evernote user, you might just love Postachi.io. It allows you to post content to your personal blog directly from Evernote by simply creating a note and tagging it “published.” All you need is an Evernote account and a domain name.

Postach.io has some simple, Tumblr-inspired themes that can help get your blog looking great. There are some other customization options as well, but it helps if you know a little about HTML and CSS.

We like the idea of an Evernote-powered blogging platform, since many bloggers draft their posts in Evernote prior to publishing anyways. Plus, we are suckers for .io domans. That’s just cool.

Jux

UPDATE: Jux has shut down as of November 2014

Jus is a relatively small blogging platform that truly challenges the way we traditionally think of blogging. It’s similar to Tumblr in some ways, posting most recent content first and in descending order, but the visual presentation is quite different.

Each Jux blog post stands independently with its own beautifully designed page layouts. The pages are presented in 100% full screen with high-resolution images, which is perfect for showcasing photos. Jux is a great option for artists looking to share a multimedia portfolio, or if you just want to make a really eye-catching blog.

You can use any of these blog platforms with your Hover domains. Of course, if you need a hand adjusting your DNS settings, our customer support team is happy to help get you going.

Let us know what you think if you decide to give one of these services a try! And don’t forget to submit your awesome new site to Domain Of The Month once its up and running.