Ghost Paid

Who should skip it?

Anyone who needs a store, complex page layouts, or a plugin ecosystem. Ghost has no shop and its page builder is modest. Teams that need multiple contributors with granular permissions also hit the Pro ceiling fast; Business starts around $50 a month.

Quick Summary

• Ghost is open source and can be self-hosted for free; managed Starter is about $9/month.
• Paid memberships and Stripe billing require the Pro plan at about $25/month.
• It has no plugin system, which removes a common security risk but limits customization.
• At $250+/month in subscription revenue, Ghost Pro is cheaper than Substack’s 10% cut.
• No store and limited permissions — it is a publishing tool, not a business suite.

Ghost vs Substack: which is cheaper?

Ghost Pro costs $25 a month for paid memberships and takes 0% of revenue; Substack takes 10%. Break-even is at roughly $250 a month in subscription revenue. Below that, Substack is cheaper and you get free email delivery. Above it, Ghost wins by an increasing margin — a $3,000/month newsletter saves about $275 a month.

Who should skip it?

Anyone who needs a store, complex page layouts, or a plugin ecosystem. Ghost has no shop and its page builder is modest. Teams that need multiple contributors with granular permissions also hit the Pro ceiling fast; Business starts around $50 a month.

Quick Summary

• Ghost is open source and can be self-hosted for free; managed Starter is about $9/month.
• Paid memberships and Stripe billing require the Pro plan at about $25/month.
• It has no plugin system, which removes a common security risk but limits customization.
• At $250+/month in subscription revenue, Ghost Pro is cheaper than Substack’s 10% cut.
• No store and limited permissions — it is a publishing tool, not a business suite.

Use Cases

1. A paid AI newsletter with monthly subscription tiers at $5 and $15.
2. A company blog that also sends a weekly digest to an email list.
3. A documentation or changelog site on a custom theme.
4. A self-hosted blog for a developer who does not want plugin security patches.
5. A headless CMS feeding a Next.js marketing site through the Content API.

Ghost vs Substack: which is cheaper?

Ghost Pro costs $25 a month for paid memberships and takes 0% of revenue; Substack takes 10%. Break-even is at roughly $250 a month in subscription revenue. Below that, Substack is cheaper and you get free email delivery. Above it, Ghost wins by an increasing margin — a $3,000/month newsletter saves about $275 a month.

Who should skip it?

Anyone who needs a store, complex page layouts, or a plugin ecosystem. Ghost has no shop and its page builder is modest. Teams that need multiple contributors with granular permissions also hit the Pro ceiling fast; Business starts around $50 a month.

Quick Summary

• Ghost is open source and can be self-hosted for free; managed Starter is about $9/month.
• Paid memberships and Stripe billing require the Pro plan at about $25/month.
• It has no plugin system, which removes a common security risk but limits customization.
• At $250+/month in subscription revenue, Ghost Pro is cheaper than Substack’s 10% cut.
• No store and limited permissions — it is a publishing tool, not a business suite.

Product Highlights

Editorial flow beats WordPress. Write in Markdown, set a post as email or web-only, preview the email, publish. Substack is more polished out of the box but you do not own the audience list or the domain.

Pricing has a cliff. Starter at $9 a month cannot run paid subscriptions at all — no Stripe connection. The moment you charge readers you are on Pro at $25 a month, and email is capped around 2,000 subscribers before you pay more.

Self-hosting needs a Linux box. Ghost-CLI installs on Ubuntu with MySQL, and you own updates. Most people underestimate that after two years.

Use Cases

1. A paid AI newsletter with monthly subscription tiers at $5 and $15.
2. A company blog that also sends a weekly digest to an email list.
3. A documentation or changelog site on a custom theme.
4. A self-hosted blog for a developer who does not want plugin security patches.
5. A headless CMS feeding a Next.js marketing site through the Content API.

Ghost vs Substack: which is cheaper?

Ghost Pro costs $25 a month for paid memberships and takes 0% of revenue; Substack takes 10%. Break-even is at roughly $250 a month in subscription revenue. Below that, Substack is cheaper and you get free email delivery. Above it, Ghost wins by an increasing margin — a $3,000/month newsletter saves about $275 a month.

Who should skip it?

Anyone who needs a store, complex page layouts, or a plugin ecosystem. Ghost has no shop and its page builder is modest. Teams that need multiple contributors with granular permissions also hit the Pro ceiling fast; Business starts around $50 a month.

Quick Summary

• Ghost is open source and can be self-hosted for free; managed Starter is about $9/month.
• Paid memberships and Stripe billing require the Pro plan at about $25/month.
• It has no plugin system, which removes a common security risk but limits customization.
• At $250+/month in subscription revenue, Ghost Pro is cheaper than Substack’s 10% cut.
• No store and limited permissions — it is a publishing tool, not a business suite.

Ghost is an open-source publishing platform. It gives you a blog, an email newsletter and paid subscriptions on one Stripe connection, without plugins. Self-hosting is free; the managed Starter plan runs about $9 a month, and a paid-membership site needs Pro at $25 a month.

What is Ghost?

Ghost launched on Kickstarter in 2013 as a nonprofit alternative to WordPress. It ships as a Node.js application with a Markdown editor, a members database and Stripe integration. No plugin folder exists — a deliberate choice that removes the security and performance problems that come with third-party add-ons.

The trade is real: if Ghost does not do something natively, you write it yourself or run it elsewhere.

Product Features

• Newsletter: send posts as email to free and paid tiers; the editor has a card specifically for email-only sections.
• Memberships: free signups, monthly or yearly paid tiers, gated posts and a member portal page.
• Stripe billing: connect a Stripe account and Ghost handles checkout, receipts and refunds — no other billing tool.
• Theme marketplace: official themes with a Handlebars templating layer; custom themes are plain HTML and CSS.
• Content API: a JSON API for headless frontends, plus native integrations for Slack, Zapier and analytics.
• Multilingual and AMP: AMP output and per-language variants were finished in 2025, though translation of themes is manual.

Product Highlights

Editorial flow beats WordPress. Write in Markdown, set a post as email or web-only, preview the email, publish. Substack is more polished out of the box but you do not own the audience list or the domain.

Pricing has a cliff. Starter at $9 a month cannot run paid subscriptions at all — no Stripe connection. The moment you charge readers you are on Pro at $25 a month, and email is capped around 2,000 subscribers before you pay more.

Self-hosting needs a Linux box. Ghost-CLI installs on Ubuntu with MySQL, and you own updates. Most people underestimate that after two years.

Use Cases

1. A paid AI newsletter with monthly subscription tiers at $5 and $15.
2. A company blog that also sends a weekly digest to an email list.
3. A documentation or changelog site on a custom theme.
4. A self-hosted blog for a developer who does not want plugin security patches.
5. A headless CMS feeding a Next.js marketing site through the Content API.

Ghost vs Substack: which is cheaper?

Ghost Pro costs $25 a month for paid memberships and takes 0% of revenue; Substack takes 10%. Break-even is at roughly $250 a month in subscription revenue. Below that, Substack is cheaper and you get free email delivery. Above it, Ghost wins by an increasing margin — a $3,000/month newsletter saves about $275 a month.

Who should skip it?

Anyone who needs a store, complex page layouts, or a plugin ecosystem. Ghost has no shop and its page builder is modest. Teams that need multiple contributors with granular permissions also hit the Pro ceiling fast; Business starts around $50 a month.

Quick Summary

• Ghost is open source and can be self-hosted for free; managed Starter is about $9/month.
• Paid memberships and Stripe billing require the Pro plan at about $25/month.
• It has no plugin system, which removes a common security risk but limits customization.
• At $250+/month in subscription revenue, Ghost Pro is cheaper than Substack’s 10% cut.
• No store and limited permissions — it is a publishing tool, not a business suite.