Open-source publishing platform with built-in newsletters and memberships
Ghost is an open-source publishing platform with newsletters, memberships and paid subscriptions built in. You can self-host it or use the managed Ghost(Pro) service. A read-only Content API lets it work as a headless back end.
Ghost is an open-source publishing platform for blogs, newsletters and paid memberships. It has been around since 2013 and says it is independent and funded by its users. The code is on GitHub. You can run it yourself or use Ghost(Pro), the official managed hosting.
Authors write in Ghost's own editor, which has cards for galleries, video, audio, files and bookmarks. Themes control the front end. Newsletters, memberships, paid subscriptions and analytics are built in, and Ghost takes 0% in transaction fees. A read-only REST Content API lets Ghost serve posts, pages, tags, authors, tiers and settings to another front end.
Strengths
Watch out for
What each plan costs and what the bill is counted by: seats, sites, usage or a one-off license. The bottom of each card shows what you pay on top.
$18 per month, billed yearly
Billed yearly. The bill also depends on member count.
Solo publishers starting a site with an email newsletter
Costs extra
$29 per month, billed yearly
Billed yearly. The bill also depends on member count.
Publishers who want paid subscriptions and custom themes
Costs extra
$199 per month, billed yearly
Billed yearly. The bill also depends on member count.
Larger publications with bigger teams
Costs extra
Custom
Price on request.
Organizations that need SSO, an SLA or unlimited staff
Costs extra
Prices checked See current prices on the vendor's site
Free, included in the cheapest plan, on a higher plan, or enterprise only. Open a feature to compare it across every platform.
