I am looking to create videos similar in style to this:
As you can see, it is a style of animation which appears more basic than most of the videos created through Blender. There are no models, for example, just subtly animated diagrams and a voice-over. Is Blender right for this, and if it is not can you recommend another free software?
I really appreciate your guidance.
Not really. You could but then you’ll have to learn blender and that takes time and frustration. Look into 2D animation software that have effects built in.
Most professionals today maybe do those with Premiere and After Effects. You need to purchase them from Adobe. There is also 30 days trial version available. Find some tutorial and you have 30 days to finish your project. 
Yes Blender is a software to do that. I did a quick youtube “search Motion graphic in Blender” and i found this one more straight to the point to get you started https://youtu.be/SXYYj8BaaE4
You can do them in blender technically, but you have to be patient…
Honestly you should just invest in Adobe After Effects and Premier if you plan to make money out of it. Hitfilm is a pretty neat (and cheap) alternative.
If you just do it as a hobby and don’t want to spend any money on it then I guess you can use Blender but I wouldn’t recommend using a 3D software for exclusively 2D work.
You could also try using Natron (http://natron.fr/) but I haven’t personally used it so I don’t know how well it fares for pure video editing.
As stated before, Blender could be used, but I don’t recommend it for pure motion graphics work. For that use After Effects, or Hitfilm. I don’t really know of any other software (free or paid) made for that specific purpose. Natron has it’s focus on compositing, so doing motion graphics on it would be equally frustrating as with Blender.
Just use the trial versions to learn how to do a basic title animation and a transition between 2 scenes. With that exercise you’ll be able to know which software will fit you best for this purpose.
I’ll add my voice to the rest. No, if this is what you want to do, Blender is the wrong choice. After Effects is what you want to use. The student price for Creative Cloud is a bargain.
Blender is a tool that is specifically geared toward a three-dimensional “world.” What you have here is a presentation that consists entirely of two-dimensional things, and lots of effects such as fade-outs, moving along paths, and so on. As others have said, this is a world that’s well-occupied by commercial tools which can, in fact, do the whole task soup-to-nuts. (It’s a limited task, compared to what Blender does, but they do it very well, and there’s a strong demand by people who are happy to pay for it.)
Yes, it costs an annoying amount of money … but, then again, everything from Adobe winds up costing “an annoying amount of money.” Which would be even more annoying except for just one thing: “the damn thing works.” Works well, in fact. You can crank-out a piece like this one, basically in an afternoon.
Synfig Studio is probably the closest for Open Source. Unfortunately, Synfig is tough to figure out on your own, and there wasn’t much training material available last time I looked into it.
For something specifically like that, which is just basic tweens, I’d probably use Flash.
There is nothing in the video the OP posted that can’t be done in Blender. Set the view to orthographic, switch to a top or front view and you’ve got your “2d” environment. The graphics are just shapes and clipart. Map the clipart to a plane object. Animating fades and simple linear movements is not difficult.
The big issues you will have in Blender are the same issues you’ll have in other software: lack of knowledge of the software, planning, and timing. You will have to learn the basics of the Blender interface, how to add objects, edit objects, very basic materials, animation basics, rendering basics, etc. You will have to storyboard the entire thing and you’ll need to have all of the audio recorded in advance, especially if the final video needs to be a certain length. You don’t want to have to keep adjusting the timing of things. The pre-recorded audio locks the timing of everything.
To learn more about how to do this in Blender, or any other suitable software, search youtube for “Kinetic Typography tutorials”. You’ll also find that a lot of KT involves 3d graphics and camera moves. There are several KT tutorials available for Blender. If you’re an absolute beginner, everything will involve a considerable learning curve no matter which software you chose. For some KT, it’s definitely better to use AfterEffects. However, this is only when you’re starting to do some really fancy things. It’s not that it couldn’t be done in Blender, it’s simply a matter of having to do things manually.
You can use Blender to create videos like the one you posted. You just need to learn some things (not all things) about the subject, kinetic typography, and about whichever software you choose to use. Good Luck, and have fun!
Ehm where do you make your 2D art with ?.
If i were you i would simply use Krita or stock images, and then use a simple image to video editor, there are many of them.
Blender could do that virtual dub could do it, windows movie maker could do it.
And there is no need for adobe after effects, even if you create such movies for a living (which i kinda doubt). Also software used for dpowerpoint presentations can be recorderd to create this.
On the other hand, you might find Blender to be lots of fun, would take a little bit of time sure.
But like anyone, you start with google to find youtube’s on how to create 3d texts.
And then soon you create 3d text, maybe with all kind of effects that blender has to offer.
Explosions, fire, physics etc. If you have some time Learning Blender i highly recommend.
My sentiment was simply that, while Blender “can” do this or just-about anything … it does not strike me as being the best tool for this particular job. In a world where time is (always …) money, Blender’s workflows might be laborious in doing what ought to be a very trivial task.
Now … the moment that you want to do anything three-dee, that assessment rather dramatically changes. While these “other” tools have some kind of sort-of support for 3D-ishness, “it generally sucks large” 
because it was grafted-on as a marketing afterthought to what is not, in those applications, “a fundamentally three-dee world view.” You can do “a spherical-looking ball bouncing above a flat world,” but that’s about the extent of it. Whereas, Blender is, “start to finish, soup to nuts, a fundamentally three-dee” application.
“Tools for the job …”
That specific video you linked to could probably be done with animated Powerpoint (Impress is an open-source alternative, part of the OpenOffice suite) but if you want to do more complicated stuff, then yes, AfterEffects is something to consider.
Blender would be overkill in my opinion.
Blender will drive you nuts doing corporate stuff like that.
Hitfilm 3 Express is free and does offer many features
It simplifies on most things Blender is capable of, in this case text and image movement.
Although baking proxies takes forever in it for some reason.
i agree, I would suggest PowerPoint or similar.