Medium is great for writers because it's a content hub just like Youtube and it can actually pay out as well.
However, it's terrible for readers. The dynamic loading of images is mediocre on anything but a fiber connection, the web pages are slow and the pay wall is an instant turn-off. Even if you get into the free experience, half your screen is covered by banners and side bars.
I think Medium is great for a specific audience: Medium readers. Some people like to browse Medium and the blogs it hosts and for those people, the setup is perfect. For anyone who doesn't like to browse Medium but rather gets linked to it occasionally, it's an awful experience.
Personally, I prefer plain old websites. You don't need a domain and a server, throwing something into Github/Gitlab Pages is more than enough. You can set up a whole CI/CD system for static site generation or write a document in Word and export it to HTML if that's what you want. You'll need to rely on platforms like HN and Reddit to get new people to discover your site, though, but from what I've been recommended on Medium, the articles that get attention seem to be very SEO-optimized and not very technical. Listicles and terribly written blog spam that just repeats the same basic information in several ways get a lot of attention. There are also opinionated articles about subjective things (UX design etc.) that only exist for the author to make their preferences known to the world; there are great articles on there that reference sources and research, but it's not what I see pushed on the website because outrage clicks and reactions from people disagreeing are worth more than people consulting the website for information.
If you want something easy and hosted, WordPress still has a free tier. Your options are very limited but if you care about the content more than building a specific look and feel, they're fine.
However, it's terrible for readers. The dynamic loading of images is mediocre on anything but a fiber connection, the web pages are slow and the pay wall is an instant turn-off. Even if you get into the free experience, half your screen is covered by banners and side bars.
I think Medium is great for a specific audience: Medium readers. Some people like to browse Medium and the blogs it hosts and for those people, the setup is perfect. For anyone who doesn't like to browse Medium but rather gets linked to it occasionally, it's an awful experience.
Personally, I prefer plain old websites. You don't need a domain and a server, throwing something into Github/Gitlab Pages is more than enough. You can set up a whole CI/CD system for static site generation or write a document in Word and export it to HTML if that's what you want. You'll need to rely on platforms like HN and Reddit to get new people to discover your site, though, but from what I've been recommended on Medium, the articles that get attention seem to be very SEO-optimized and not very technical. Listicles and terribly written blog spam that just repeats the same basic information in several ways get a lot of attention. There are also opinionated articles about subjective things (UX design etc.) that only exist for the author to make their preferences known to the world; there are great articles on there that reference sources and research, but it's not what I see pushed on the website because outrage clicks and reactions from people disagreeing are worth more than people consulting the website for information.
If you want something easy and hosted, WordPress still has a free tier. Your options are very limited but if you care about the content more than building a specific look and feel, they're fine.