I also found Pagecord which is from Edinburgh, UK. The price, according to what I found, used to be US$20/year, now it’s 29 which is still cheaper than the two I mentioned.
There are more options but I don’t want to test more atm.
Of the three options, Bear Blog has the longest history of 5 years. Both Bear Blog and Pagecord are solo businesses, from Herman in Cape Town and Olly from Edinburgh. Pika is from a small team Good Enough in the US with 6 persons who have had experiences with online services from small team communication (Jelly) to contact form like Letterbird.
Bear Blog
Bear Blog has its roadmap and Herman did think deeply about his services like not selling to VC, and aiming for longevity. Although it’s still in thinking stage, the blog service has been at least five years, and I believe the trust is building.
The main website looks so simple but there are variety of themes to choose, and the code-based interface, although many may not love it, empowers users a lot of opportunities to make their own. Once you build it, you won’t continue spending time to choose this and that. The blog interface is not bad indeed.
Yes, it’s also Markdown based, and the editor is not WYSIWYG, but makes us easy to copy and paste from Markdown apps like Obsidian and iA Writer.
As he is living in Cape Town, where the price level is comparatively low, the current price of US$5/month, $49/year with $189 lifetime should be fair to both.
Pika
Good Enough is an interesting company. The team is able to build good branding, easy-to-use blog platform and various nice services, while they once published paper zines before, making me think some of them are illustrators or artists.
The company size and nature is like Shiny Frog from Italy who owns Bear note taking app. Although they are different, they are both creating something playful!
The blog is WYSIWYG while supporting pasting from Markdown. You can also drag and drop from apps like Obsidian. They don’t have roadmap but they have their own records of what they improved, like embedded YouTube and even Apple Music playlists.
Besides playful and happy experiences, the team has their strengths to integrate their services into the blog, like Letterbird contact form, and guestbooks allowing visitors to doodle. Currently you don’t need to pay extra.
I believe they can provide two-factor authentication because they already made one on Jelly.
The service started beta at the end of 2023 and launched in early 2024, which has much shorter history compared to Bear Blog. It’s also difficult to tell if they will create an ecosystem that encourages or requires users to pay more, like what Squarespace is doing to ask people to add newsletters and upgrade; and we will never know if there will be VC or acquisition. But what is sure is the team is phrasing out their accounts on major social media like X and Threads, keeping Mastodon, Bluesky and LinkedIn.
Pagecord
It’s an indie service like Bear Blog. Login every time needs authentication through email. Editor is WYSIWYG without any Markdown support (Note: I emailed him and he said he was building it. Beta stage). They don’t have monthly subscription but yearly $29 which is competitive with Pika and Bear Blog at this moment, but they increased their price once from 20.
I also took some time to find out the background when they only said they are independent. In the main page there is a link from Olly, who creates Pagecord, and you will find his name after registration.
Pagecord has been developed since Mar 2024, just two months after Pika but seems it isn’t as popular as Pika. The paid plan includes image attachment, custom domain, favicon, brand removal, analytics.
There should be the similar image gallery like Pika, and pages but you can’t choose any to be your home page (yet?)
Wrap up
I am a person who stress transparency and background, as these information allows me to determine if the service is trustworthy, although they won’t guarantee the future.
Bear Blog is easy to understand because Herman has much documentation about that, and the time (five-year history) can tell a bit. While Pika has the foundation and experience from their other services to make their blog services great and neat. I think Pagecord can be more transparent.
Account security (and emailed to the owners), as of 2 October 2025
As Bearblog and Pika do not have 2FA (2-factor authentication), I emailed them if they have plans to implement.
Pika replied “a few people have asked for 2FA, so it is something we’re keeping in mind as a possibility in the future. However, we don’t have any immediate plans to implement it.”
I just emailed Bear so I will have to wait.
As Pagecord has already had email verification every login (just type the username and email so that the platform sent an email for users to click the link provided, no password needed), which for me may not be as ideal as 2FA but is better than just name and password which can be hacked, I emailed Olly, the owner, about the possibility of Markdown and branding removal. He said Markdown is in beta at this moment because under the hook the blog is in the form of HTML. Branding removal is possible in the paid plan although the website didn’t say.
I haven’t got any replies from Bear Blog! Herman, the owner replied on 2 October. Check here!