Medium is the most popular blogging platform on the internet. It was one of the first blogging platforms to focus on simplicity and readability.
Over the years, the platform shifted from advertisements to paywalls. Currently, Writers can choose to put their articles behind a paywall, earning money when members read them. Over time, more writers have opted in, making a subscription increasingly necessary to access the content you find through search or social media.
You could argue that Medium needs to make money one way or another, and that's fine. It's a venture-backed business with hundreds of employees.
But when readers pay and writers earn, a new problem emerges.
Blogging was meant to present your ideas, stories, and thoughts to the world with no filters. A good article has a clear incentive. The more obscure an article's incentive, the harder it is to read.
You would think that writers on Medium have a clear incentive. They write because they enjoy writing. But that's not the full story. When there's money involved, writers become more incentivized to earn it. They will do that with whatever brings more traction, not necessarily what's more quality and meaningful.
This shows up in specific ways. Writers optimize headlines for clicks rather than clarity. Articles get padded with filler to increase "read time," which Medium uses to calculate payouts. Listicles and hot takes dominate because they generate engagement. Deep, thoughtful pieces get buried because the algorithm rewards volume and recency over substance.
Medium's Partner Program pays writers based on member reading time. That creates a direct incentive to write what gets clicks from paying members, not what's genuinely useful. Technical tutorials, niche topics, and personal essays — the kinds of writing that made blogging great — get less visibility because they don't drive the engagement metrics Medium optimizes for.
This is why money and writing should be separated. You can make money by writing, that's totally fine. But it shouldn't be the starting point. It should come as the end result.
Money hijacks the potentially meaningful interactions between people
Jasun Ether, The Beasts of Success
Readers also suffer. No one likes paywalls. You find an article through a search engine, click through, and hit a paywall after three paragraphs. Medium shows you a limited number of free articles per month, then locks you out entirely. The reading experience is interrupted by constant prompts to subscribe.
Good writers do not corrupt their writing with money. They write to express their thoughts. And they make money eventually from their writing.
Pluma fixes this by providing an excellent experience for writers so they can focus on writing. While giving everything for free to readers.
No paywall, ever. Every article published on Pluma is free to read. Readers never hit a wall, never get prompted to subscribe, and never need an account. The writing speaks for itself.
Your content, your control. Medium owns the distribution. Your article lives at medium.com, styled in Medium's design, surrounded by Medium's recommendations. On Pluma, your blog lives at your own subdomain or custom domain. The focus stays on your writing.
Built for more than prose. Medium's editor handles text well but falls short for technical writers. Code blocks have no syntax highlighting. There's no math rendering. Tables are limited. Pluma's block-based editor supports code blocks with syntax highlighting in 190+ languages, LaTeX math rendering, responsive tables, and blockquotes — all as first-class components.
Writers can also subscribe to access features like newsletters, custom domains, analytics, and more.
Our priority is writers. We value the writer's work and we value good writing.
It's up to the writer to decide ways to monetize his work if he wishes.
Medium has a built-in audience of millions of readers. If you're starting from zero and want immediate visibility, Medium's recommendation engine and publications can put your writing in front of people who are already browsing for content. That discovery network is something no standalone blog provides on day one.
If your goal is to earn directly from your writing, Medium's Partner Program pays writers based on member engagement. You don't need to build your own monetization strategy. You write, people read, and Medium pays you. The amounts vary widely, but the mechanism is there and it's simple.
Medium also has strong social features. Claps give readers a way to react without commenting. Responses create threaded discussions under articles. Publications let you join editorial teams and reach established audiences. If you want a social writing community, Medium provides one.
For writers who want the simplest possible path to publishing prose — no configuration, no decisions about design, no thinking about hosting — Medium's minimal interface gets the job done. You write and hit publish. But you accept the trade-offs: no ownership, no customization, and a paywall between your readers and your work.
vs Ghost · vs WordPress · vs Substack · vs Bear Blog · vs Hashnode · vs Blogger