What is Ghost: an editor, a newsletter and a member list in one codebase

Ghost is open source publishing software released by the non-profit Ghost Foundation, which John O Nolan started in 2013 after a Kickstarter campaign. One codebase carries the writing, the email newsletter and the paying member list, so a publication is not three plugins pretending to be one system. Anyone can download that code and install it on their own server, and the plans on this page are the managed hosting the foundation sells for it. The entry plan cannot charge readers at all, paid subscriptions begin one plan up, staff logins go from one to fifteen, and the vendor takes no share of member revenue at any size.

The business model is unusual enough to state twice. A non-profit gives the software away and charges for running it, which is why the pricing page reads like a hosting bill rather than a licence.

The member scale, both billing cycles and every stop we could reach on the slider are worked through on what a Ghost publication costs as it grows.

Ghost features by plan: the editor, newsletters, memberships and themes

The design column barely moves here, because there is barely a design column. What the tiers differ by is publishing capability: whether readers can be charged at all, how many people hold a login, and whether a theme of your own may be installed. The single most consequential row is the second tier, which is where a free newsletter becomes a business.

Every cell holds a number rather than a tick. Drag the grid sideways on a phone.

Two checks decide this purchase, and neither is about the rate. First, ask whether you intend to charge readers, because the entry tier cannot take a payment from a member at all and no setting turns that on. Second, count the people who need to publish under their own name. Logins run one, three, then fifteen, and the third writer arrives at $35 a month while the fourth arrives at $239. Everything else follows from those two answers.

The grid answers two questions and no others: whether the publication can charge, and who is allowed into the editor. Everything else it lists is the same on every tier.

Ghost limits: staff logins, the member scale and the self-serve ceiling

Ghost publishes almost no quotas of the usual kind. There is no page count, no storage figure and no bandwidth line. What it counts is people, on both sides of the publication.

Put together, the ceilings say the software has no opinion about the size of your site and a firm one about the size of your list.

One figure moves this bill more than the tier does, and it is not the cycle. It is the member count. Paying yearly takes the entry to $15, a smaller cut than most of this category offers, because the plan is already priced by audience rather than by pages.

Ghost in 2026: the rates hold while the member scale is read in full

Rates held between passes. What grew is how much of the member scale we could read off the slider ourselves.

One thing in our own notes still argues with itself and we are not going to guess our way out of it. One line says the entry tier holds any number of members. Another says the entry tier is withdrawn above its own ceiling, and a third has it as the only self-serve option left past a hundred thousand. Those cannot all be true, so the flat entry rate is the part we will stand behind and the fate of that tier at the top of the slider is the part we will not.

Who should use Ghost: newsletter writers, paid publications and teams

The buyer question here is unusually clean. Everything depends on whether readers are an audience or a business, and on how many people hold the keyboard.

Readers or pages: that single question sorts every case above. Ghost is excellent when the readers are the business and awkward when they are an audience you happen to have. Work out which you are before the tier question comes up at all.

Ghost alternatives: WordPress.com, Squarespace, Tilda, Super and Typedream

The products around this entry rate are not competing for the same work. Most of them sell a website with pages to fill, and this one sells a publication with readers to bill, so the rates land near each other by accident. The spread runs $4.50 to $97, which puts the median at $19. One of the six opens at $10.50, then the strip goes quiet until $15. The lone figure at the bottom is a managed WordPress account. Everything above it clusters within a few dollars of this entry, which tells you the rate is not what separates these products from one another.

Typedream

Launch$20/mo+$2 vs entry

Typedream opens $2 over this door with a Notion-style editor aimed at landing pages and link pages. Fast to stand up, thin on everything that happens after publication. Ghost is the opposite trade in both directions.

Strikingly

PRO$20/mo+$2 vs entry

Strikingly is $2 above and builds single-page sites quickly. It is the right answer for a launch page and the wrong one for an archive. Nothing in it counts members or delivers email to them.

Squarespace

Basic$19/mo+$1 vs entry

Squarespace sits $1 over this entry and sells the site as the product, with memberships available and a percentage taken from them. The comparison is about what you are building. A publication with a homepage or a business with a blog.

Super

Personal$16/mo-$2 vs entry

Super turns a Notion workspace into a published site for $16, which suits writers whose archive already lives there. Charging readers is not part of the offer. Take it when publishing is the whole job and billing never becomes one.

Tilda

Personal$15/mo-$3 vs entry

Tilda opens $3 below and sells a block library for building pages that look designed. There is no member list and no newsletter engine in it. The two products overlap on the word website and nowhere else that matters.

WordPress.com

Personal$10.50/mo-$7.50 vs entry

The managed WordPress.com door sits $7.50 under this one and answers a much wider brief: pages, plugins, a shop if you want one. In exchange you maintain all of it yourself, forever. Ghost refuses that surface deliberately and is smaller and calmer for it.

People leave Ghost when the thing they are building turns out to be a website after all, or when a growing free list starts costing money it does not earn. The six below catch both cases, and the ones that win here win on page structure rather than on publishing. The full ranking sits on the website builders category page.

Is Ghost worth it in 2026: our verdict on the open source publishing tool

Verdict · Ghost · August 2026★★★★★★★★★★CE 4.2/5

On yearly billing Ghost enters at $15 a month, four dollars under the $19 median of the twenty-one builders we price it against. The gap is real and almost meaningless, because everything else on that list charges for a website and Ghost charges for an audience. Two publishers who both pay $29 today can be two hundred dollars apart within a year, decided entirely by whose list grew. That is not a defect. It is the product being honest about what it meters, in published steps you can read in advance, which is more than the flat-rate builders can say about their renewal letters.

The number that actually decides Ghost is the zero. Ghost takes no share of member revenue, and against platforms that keep ten percent, the arithmetic turns quickly: a publication clearing $2,000 a month from five thousand subscribers would hand a ten-percent platform $200 every month, while Ghost's Publisher rate at that size is $63 on yearly billing. The subscription costs more than a builder; the business costs less. Below meaningful revenue that logic inverts, and a hobby list with three hundred free subscribers is paying audience-tracked rates for tracking it does not need. Buy Ghost when the list is the business. Until then the flat-rate builders next door are cheaper for a reason.

what drives this invoice

• member count: the same plan moves through six published stops between $29 and $274, and crossing a stop is the only event the bill responds to.
• staff logins: one, three, fifteen. The fourth writer costs $204 a month, and no audience size changes that.

when not to buy Ghost

• You need a second writer on a small list: Starter holds a single staff account, and the fix is a $17-a-month tier step, not a seat.
• Your list grows faster than its revenue: the bill tracks subscribers whether or not any of them pay you.
• You want a website with pages, a store, or a portfolio: Ghost meters none of that because it is not built for it.
• You are approaching a hundred thousand members without a quote in hand: past the last stop, nothing about your next bill is published.

what it does well

• The vendor takes nothing from member revenue, which is rare enough in this business to be the whole reason many publications are here.
• Publishing, email delivery and paid membership are one system, so nothing breaks because two plugins disagreed about who owns the subscriber.
• The software is open and self-hostable, which turns the exit from a rebuild into a server move and quietly caps how badly a future rate change can hurt.
• The scaling stops are published in advance, so a publication can read the figure it will pay at twice its current size before it gets there.
• The entry rate does not move with the size of a free list, which makes the cheapest tier a genuine home for a newsletter rather than a trap.

where it gets in the way

• Nothing on the entry tier can take money from a reader, and nothing on it hints at that until you go looking for the setting.
• One staff account at entry and three above it, with no seat sold separately, so a second writer always costs a whole tier.
• Once you leave the entry tier, the bill follows subscriber count whether or not those subscribers pay you anything.
• Past a hundred thousand members the published figures stop and both scaling tiers become a phone call.
• Two stops on the vendor's own slider went unread on our pass, so the member scale we show has gaps we have not filled.
• The entry tier stops at its own member ceiling and does not scale past it. Above a hundred thousand members the two tiers that do scale stop publishing a rate at all, and the only route left is a conversation with the vendor.

The figures again

• Entry $18/mo, $15 on annual billing · verified August 7, 2026
• Number 11 of 22 by entry rate, $1 over Wix and $1 under Squarespace
• The member scale stop by stop, both cycles and the point where the figures stop are worked through on what a growing Ghost list actually costs

the rate tableEvery stop we reached on the member slider, the tier steps between them, and the point past which nothing is published.total costWhat a publication pays across a year as the list grows, set against what a platform taking a percentage would have charged.moving inWhat survives a move onto Ghost from a blog or a builder, and which parts of the old site have no home here at all.searchHow Ghost publications behave in search, what the software handles by default and what it leaves to the theme.

signed Oleh Kemmethod: live price list, dated recordverified August 7, 2026tracked since June 2026