Writing comes first.
A blog is its words. Every page puts the writing first, every feature has to help you write it down, keep writing or be read, and whatever needs explaining is kept to one page instead of filling the screen. Fewer steps, fewer settings, fewer words about the product.
People decide what rises, not an algorithm.
The front page is ordered by readers' likes and by time, with every rule published. No one's feed is tailored, nothing is boosted by hand, and no one can pay for a better place, Pro included. The rules
No machine ranks your words.
No AI ranks or rewrites what you write, or what readers write back to you. One automated check, with its thresholds and every decision public, keeps spam and abuse off the front page; it never changes the order, a post it keeps off stays on your blog, and when you ask, it looks again with a higher bar. A reader's reply reaches you as they sent it; you decide what to do with it.
We trust readers and writers.
Readers choose how to follow you and can hide a blog they don't want to see. You choose what your blog shows. We set quiet defaults and no pop-ups, and when something goes wrong, a person sorts it out.
No ads, no selling data, no tracking.
No ad slots, sponsored posts or paid placement. Nothing about writers or readers is sold or shared for marketing. Visit counts use no cookies and never store an IP address.
Your writing is yours.
Export your blog as a folder of Markdown and bring it back as it was. Your list exports too, and old links keep working. Your blog tells AI companies not to train on it unless you choose otherwise; search engines and AI answers that link to you are welcome.
Made to last.
I write on Bearletter myself, every day, and it stays for as long as I keep writing. No investors and no pressure to grow: it is small, cheap to run and paid for by writers. You can back up everything at any time, and download your whole blog as a ready-made website with its images: host it yourself if you ever want to.