According to a study by Content Marketing Institute, 81% of respondents said their businesses view content as a core business strategy. And 69% rated their proficiency with content technology as intermediate, advanced, or expert. Clearly, both content and the tools used to create and manage it are important.

The question is: What are the best content creation platforms for you? Let’s walk through some of the top options—free and paid.

The best paid content creation platforms

Got room in your budget for content creation tools that can improve your efficiency or content quality? If so, here are some of the top platforms to consider.

GatherContent

Our platform, GatherContent, centralizes many aspects of content creation. It allows your team to:

• Create custom templates for the different types of content you create (e.g., case studies, blog posts, and social media posts)
• Embed style guidelines into the editing environment to help writers and other contributors
• Create content briefs so all contributors have the necessary background information and game plan for each piece of content

Plus, you can assign content to the right team members and even collaborate in real time.

Top features:

• Content Templates: Make sure all content creators stick to your pre-determined formats for content
• Real-time content collaboration: Speed up feedback and approval stages of your content workflow
• Content Guidelines: Embed your style guide and key reminders into the content editor

Pros:

• GatherContent is secure and cloud-based, so you can access it safely anytime as long as you have an internet connection
• GatherContent is a straightforward platform, allowing your team to get up to speed on how to use it quickly
• You can integrate GatherContent with many other tools, including WordPress, Slack, and content management systems like Gatsby

Cons:

• There’s not currently a way to get a bird’s eye view of all GatherContent projects
• Some users would like around-the-clock access to customer support

Pricing: We offer a 14-day free trial with plans starting at $99 per month from there.

Jasper

No matter what type of written content you produce, AI writing assistant Jasper can help you create it much faster. You can write blog posts, marketing emails, video scripts, and more up to 10 times faster than usual.

Top features:

• Templates: Fill a few key details into a template of your choice and Jasper will generate unique content
• Commands: Give the artificial intelligence custom instructions on what to write
• Recipes: Reusable collections of commands to help you write any kind of content from press releases to novels

Pros:

• All content generated by Jasper is unique, and the quality of the writing is higher than most AI writing tools
• Jasper integrates with Surfer, Grammarly, and Copyscape to improve your content production process
• Jasper has a Chrome extension so you can create content on the go

Cons:

• Learning to write efficiently with Jasper can take time
• There’s no free version

Pricing: Jasper has two plans, which start at $29 and $29 per month.

Clearscope

Is search engine optimization (SEO) part of your digital marketing strategy? If so, having a platform like Clearscope handy is smart. For one, it helps you identify content topics worth trying to trank for. But it can also help you size up the competition and optimize the content you create.

Top features:

• Editor: Get content recommendations, see what terms, themes, and questions to include in your content, and get a content grade
• Term Map: See how thoroughly competing content covers a topic so you can create comprehensive content and capitalize on gaps
• Competitors: Get an overview of competitor rankings on desktop and mobile, word counts per page, and content grade

Pros:

• Clearscope is one of the most intuitive, easy-to-use content optimization tools available
• If you need to allow freelance content writers or others access to the Clearscope editor, you can use Guest Mode
• Google Docs and WordPress integrations are available

Cons:

• There’s no free plan, and the current plans may not work for low-volume or low-budget content producers

Pricing: Clearscope has plans priced at $170 and $1,200 per month. There’s also an Enterprise plan with custom pricing.

Ceros

Creating interactive content is a solid way to spice up your marketing and boost customer engagement. But what if now all of your teammates “get” design? Ceros has a suite of tools designed to bring designers and non-designers together. With it, you can collaborate to make any digital touchpoint interactive (from reports and resource hubs to landing pages and pitch decks).

Top features:

• Studio: Create interactive content via a rich freeform canvas where you can import files, embed content, and more
• Editor: Allow non-designers on your team to customize content without negatively impacting the design
• ChartBlocks: Turn raw data from spreadsheets into shareable, eye-catching visualizations with no code

Pros:

• Markup allows you to collaborate with your team by commenting directly on websites, videos, images, design files, and more
• Inspect generates all assets and code styles for you, so you don’t have to bug your designers for access to design files
• You can see and share real-time previews of your digital content experiences across different device layouts

Cons:

• The platform can take time to learn, especially if you’re not very experienced with interactive design
• According to some users, Ceros is on the expensive side

Pricing: You’ll have to request a demo for pricing info.

The best free content creation platforms

Now, for some incredibly helpful platforms that you can use for free. All of them have paid plans that get you access to additional features, but they also have free versions.

BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo is a helpful platform for identifying hot topics and top-performing content formats. Not to mention gathering and analyzing competitor insights and developing your content strategy. You can even use it for finding influencers who would be a good fit to collab on content with you.

Top features:

• Content Ideas Generator: Get evergreen and trending ideas, topics inspired by questions your audience asks in relevant forums, and more
• Content discovery: Discover the top-performing content by time period, social network, content type, domain, or author to inform your strategy
• Content Analyzer: Enter a topic, brand, or URL to see the most shared content and identify influencers who may be interested in collaborating on content

Pros:

• BuzzSumo is an efficient way of doing content research and finding potential content collaborators
• You can see the social shares, backlinks, and influence of the piece of content you’re viewing thanks to the Chrome extension
• BuzzSumo has monitoring features for getting notified early of industry news, rising trends, and so on

Cons:

• The user interface could be more user-friendly
• Due to the price, BuzzSumo may not be a justifiable expense for smaller organizations with limited content needs

Pricing: Besides its free plan, BuzzSumo has paid options priced at $99, $179, and $299 per month. Enterprise plans are also available on request.

Grammarly

We all know there’s more to executing a content marketing strategy successfully than just churning out a lot of content. There’s a good deal of quality assurance needed, one aspect of which is self-editing. Grammarly is one of the top tools for catching mechanics errors (grammar, spelling, and punctuation). And ensuring that your writing is clear and serves its purpose in general.

Top features:

• Grammar Checker: See suggestions for fixing mechanics mistakes, simplifying complex sentences, and more
• Style Guide: Customize Grammarly’s recommendations to match your style guide
• Tone Detector: Make sure your writing comes across in the right way so it can have the impact you want it to

Pros:

• Grammarly helps ensure that your content is understandable and builds your credibility
• The Chrome extension autocorrects obvious mistakes like typos to save you time
• Grammarly is available on mobile (iOS and Android), within various browsers, and on both the Windows and Mac operating systems

Cons:

• Grammarly occasionally makes incorrect suggestions and sometimes misses mechanics errors
• The web and desktop apps sometimes give slightly different suggestions than the Chrome extension

Pricing: Grammarly has a fairly generous free plan. Its paid plans are $12 and $15 per member per month.

Semrush

Especially if you consistently produce SEO content at a high volume, Semrush can be a valuable platform. Its keyword research and content optimization features, in particular, help with planning content and ensuring that it’s high-quality.

Top features:

• Topic Research: Find hundreds of content ideas based on which topics are most popular, questions your audience is asking, and so on
• Organic Research: Analyze competitor rankings so you can create a plan to outrank them with your content
• Organic Traffic Insights: Integrate Semrush with Google Analytics to cross-reference your site’s organic performance data and discover “not provided” keywords

Pros:

• Semrush has keyword, competitor, and market data, so it’s a great platform for strategy and content planning
• Semrush’s Content Marketing Platform features SEO content templates, an SEO writing assistant for optimization, and a plagiarism checker
• Thanks to the API, you can integrate Semrush with various other tools you use, including Google Data Studio

Cons:

• Many of Semrush’s tools seem similar, so it can take time to learn their differences and use cases
• Semrush isn’t cheap, so it’s best for organizations that are serious about content and search engine optimization

Pricing: Semrush has a free plan and paid plans starting at $119.95 per month.

Canva

Online graphic design tool Canva makes it possible for just about anyone to create engaging visual content. That includes videos, social media posts, infographics, reports, worksheets, and more. Whether you want to create visuals to complement your written content or create lead magnets, you can—even if you have little to no design experience.

Top features:

• Templates: Check out thousands of templates for inspiration and modify them to make them your own
• Magic Resize: Make sure your content looks great in any size without having to recreate it for each channel you want to use it on
• Built-in social sharing: Press “publish” on your content without having to download it and publish it from another tool

Pros:

• You can export your designs in various formats, including PNG, JPG, and PDF
• Canva has over 4 million free stock photos, videos, graphics, and audio clips, as well as over 1,000 fonts
• For consistency, Canva has several brand management features, including brand kits, brand templates, and more

Cons:

• When on the free plan, it can be frustrating to filter past the many designs, fonts, and other elements that are only available on paid plans
• One user pointed out that “the paid edition lacks many of the features found in specialized programs that cost the same as Canva's monthly subscription”

Pricing: Canva has a great free plan and paid plans starting at $12 per month.

Advice for choosing content creation platforms

Joshua Feinberg, who has more than 20 years of content marketing experience and who co-founded SP Home Run, gave this advice:

"Develop a consistent set of criteria you use to evaluate content creation software. This way, whenever a SaaS vendor approaches with something interesting, or even more likely, your boss, sales team, or client requests that you prioritize looking into a new tool, you don't have to reinvent the wheel."

Joshua Feinberg

Co-Founder and CEO, SP Home Run

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As for what criteria to use, Joshua recommends adding these questions to a spreadsheet:

• Does the software integrate with your existing investments in other adjacent SaaS tools and social media platforms?
• What does it cost, with the number of users and/or clients/projects you'll need to support?
• Are there bulk import and export capabilities that allow you to work more efficiently?
• Are there any artificial capacity limits that may hamper your ability to scale usage across your company?
• Is there self-paced training and certification programs that make it easy for you and your team to train on the software?
• What security features are included? (For example, are there granular levels of permissions/roles and multi-factor authentication?)

You can then record these key details for each platform you’re considering in the spreadsheet. This will make it easy to compare and contrast your options.

No matter what kind of written content you’re creating, GatherContent is worth your consideration. As mentioned, you create templates and embed guidelines that help with the actual content production. But you can also collaborate on and manage content projects with ease.