One platform that has gained significant attention in recent years is Ghost.

Ghost is a lightweight, open-source content management system designed specifically for bloggers and publishers.

Can Ghost CMS surpass the renowned WordPress and become the ultimate choice for bloggers? To discover the answer, you’ll need to dive into the complete article. It will depend on factors such as your blogging experience, customization needs, and monetization goals. By exploring these aspects, you’ll gain insights into whether Ghost CMS can help you grow your audience more effectively and meet your unique blogging needs.

For instance, if you plan to earn money through Ad network and affiliate programs from your blog then you will be disappointed to know that Ghost CMS does not provide an out of box integration for these features.

But if monetisation through ads is not a major concern for you then Ghost has some inbuilt SEO and membership features which should be sufficient for those who are new to blogging and more focused on writing great quality content to grow their readers base.

Let’s explore some of the advantages that Ghost CMS offers, making it a better choice over other platforms, particularly WordPress.

Pros of Ghost CMS:

Simplicity and Ease of Use

One of the major advantages of Ghost CMS is its simplicity and user-friendly interface. The platform focuses on providing a streamlined writing experience, allowing bloggers to concentrate on creating high-quality content without distractions.

Ghost’s Markdown editor offers built-in support for Markdown syntax, allowing users to write and format content easily. The editor also includes gallery and embed cards for showcasing images and embedding content from various websites.

Ghost post editor offers a variety of easy to use snippets for content creation.

Snippets can be saved for frequently used content, while custom HTML and Markdown cards provide flexibility for more complex code or minimalist writing environments. Overall, Ghost’s Markdown editor provides a range of features to make content creation more efficient and customizable.

SEO Friendly

Ghost has all the essential built-in SEO features which gives it an edge over platforms like WordPress that has to rely on third-party plugins. Here are some of the highlights:

Title and Description Meta: Semantic page titles are automatically created but you can also manually edit them in page settings.

Social Meta Data: Structured metadata is automatically added to every page for Google, Facebook OpenGraph, and Twitter Cards.

Robots.txt: Ghost automatically creates a properly formed robots.txt file linking to your sitemap and excluding system folders.

Google Sitemaps: Ghost automatically generates and links to a complete Google sitemap including every page on your site.

Tidy Markup & Attributes: All generated markup is clean and semantic, containing proper alt attributes on images and link tags for RSS feeds.

Canonical Tags: Ghost generates the correct rel=”canonical” tag for each post and page to prioritize one true link.

Automatic RPC Pings: Ghost pings external services for indexing whenever new content is published to let them know the site has been updated.

Google AMP Built-in: Ghost allows for one-click enabling of Accelerated Mobile Pages across the site for superior ranking potential in mobile search results.

Google has an in-built metadata section for SEO in post editor

Speed and Security

Ghost CMS is renowned for its exceptional site speed which in turn helps in SEO rankings. With its minimal resource requirements, the platform ensures fast page load times, providing a smooth browsing experience for your readers.

Additionally, Ghost is also secure because it prioritizes security through regular penetration testing, automatic SSL certificate configuration with Let’s Encrypt, standardized permissions and data validation.

It basically means you get the best of both these essential features without doing any research work on your end.

Membership and Subscription

Ghost provides built-in membership and subscription functionality, allowing bloggers to create gated content and offer premium subscriptions to their readers. This feature enables bloggers to monetize their content and build a loyal community of members.

It also has an integrated newsletter service to send private posts as email newsletters to your paying subscribers.

Built in Analytics

Ghost provides membership stats to track the growth and engagement of your audience, including member signups, cancellations, and revenue. Additionally, post analytics tracking allows you to monitor the performance of your content, including views, reads, and social shares, to optimize your content strategy.

Ghost analytics page for subscribed members

Ghost also offers a user-friendly integration for Google Analytics or other third-party tracking services on your website. The Analytics code can be added through the global code injection feature, which is accessible from the Ghost admin settings menu.

Ghost Pro Vs Self Hosting

If you have read the article so far and been hugely impressed by the in-built features of Ghost then I want to touch briefly and explain to you about the two hosting options available to set up your Ghost site which is Ghost Pro vs Self Hosting.

Ghost Pro is a paid managed hosting provided by ghost.org starting at $9/month (annual plan) whereas Self Hosting is an option where you can download the open source version of Ghost and host it at your preferred VPS like DigitalOcean, Linode, Netlify etc.

Ghost pro has some serious advantages over self hosting like speed and security, CDN and site backups, automatic updates and integrated email newsletter service which is hard to overlook if you prefer simplicity and want to get started with your new blog as soon as possible.

Ghost pro vs self hosting features comparison

However, if you want greater control over customisation for your blog and don’t mind digging into complex technical documentation of Ghost which in my opinion can be a far challenging experience than using WordPress, then sure enough you can make the choice of self hosting.

Cons of Ghost CMS:

Monetisation Limitations

• Limitation of Ad & Affiliate Programs: Ghost CMS does not have built-in features specifically designed for managing ad placements or affiliate programs.To monetize your blog through advertisements or affiliate marketing, you may need to rely on external integrations or custom code implementation. For example, placements of ads are only possible in header or footer sections of a blog post as per default layout of Ghost CMS. To place ads anywhere else will require technical changes to the theme on a Self Hosting plan.

  You can check this article for more info about Adsense integration in Ghost.

• No built-in Marketing Page features: Ghost CMS primarily focuses on content creation and publishing, lacking built-in features for creating dedicated marketing pages. If you require extensive marketing functionalities such as landing pages or lead capture forms, you may need to explore third-party tools or custom development.

Example of an ebook marketing page

• Stripe Dependency: Ghost CMS relies on Stripe as its primary payment gateway for handling subscriptions and membership payments. While Stripe offers robust features and supports multiple currencies, this dependency on a single payment provider may limit your options if you prefer alternative payment processors.
• No native E-commerce: Ghost CMS does not provide native e-commerce capabilities, meaning you cannot set up a fully functional online store directly within the CMS. If you plan to sell products or services, you will need to integrate with third-party e-commerce platforms or explore custom solutions.

Post Writing Limitations

• No post version history: Ghost CMS lacks a built-in version history feature, which means you won’t have an automatic backup of previous versions of your posts. It’s recommended to manually create backups before making significant changes to your content.
• No hierarchical tags: Ghost CMS does not support hierarchical tags, so you cannot create a parent-child relationship between tags. This can make organizing and managing multiple tags for different topics more challenging, especially if you have a diverse range of content.
• NoFollow links: There isn’t a built-in editor option or shortcut to easily add the rel=”nofollow” attribute to links, which is important for certain SEO practices and to indicate to search engines not to follow that specific link for ranking purposes. You will have to use an HTML card snippet for adding such links.

Few Themes & Customisation Option

While Ghost CMS offers a theme marketplace with a selection of pre-made themes, the choices are relatively limited compared to other platforms. If you are looking for a vast variety of ready-to-use themes, Ghost CMS may not offer as many options to suit your specific design preferences.

Also, after installing a theme you won’t get many options to customize it as you will be limited to the configuration settings provided by the theme developer.

No Plugins Ecosystem

Whether you love it or hate it, WordPress offers some great free plugins that can greatly enhance your blogging experience with customizable options. In contrast, Ghost focuses on integrations with third-party applications, often necessitating the creation of separate accounts on those services to access features which are not native to Ghost.

Ghost third party integration apps

Conclusion

Ghost CMS embraces a minimalistic design philosophy, ensuring that your blog looks clean, elegant, and professional. The simplicity of the default themes and the ability to write quality content easily make Ghost an attractive option for bloggers who prioritize a fast and efficient website.

However, Ghost may not be an ideal choice for everyone.

If you are looking for a platform that offers an extensive range of built-in features and comprehensive support for various blogging needs, you may need to explore other options.

Consider your specific goals and preferences before deciding if Ghost CMS is the right fit for your blogging needs.

Perhaps you are a WordPress blogger who found the platform a bit complex and technical to use and looking for a simpler alternative.

Maybe a regular business owner who wants to create a new website using an open source CMS and wondering if Ghost CMS is the right choice.

Well, don’t be confused, for I shall lift the veil of mystery surrounding Ghost CMS and enlighten you with its wondrous and some spooky secrets err.. I mean limitations.

Let’s dive in and learn more about Ghost CMS.

What is Ghost CMS?

Ghost is an open-source content management system (CMS) designed specifically for bloggers and publishers. It provides a minimalistic and distraction-free environment for creating and managing online content.

Unlike traditional CMS platforms, which often include complex features and functionalities, Ghost CMS focuses primarily on simplicity, writing experience, and performance.

Ghost provides a clean and simple interface for its dashboard overview

Ghost also offers a built-in membership and subscription feature that seamlessly integrates with its newsletter service.

As a Ghost site owner you can restrict certain pages and offer different subscription plans for your website, allowing visitors to sign up and become members. Members can access exclusive content, engage with your community, and enjoy personalized experiences on your site.

With newsletter service you can send customized email newsletters to your members whenever a new post is published on your site.

Let’s look at some of the features and advantages of Ghost CMS in detail.

Features of Ghost CMS?

Focus on writing and content creation

Ghost provides a delightful writing experience with its full-screen editor and deep integration of Markdown. Authors can focus on their content without distractions, thanks to Ghost’s clutter-free interface.

Additionally, Ghost provides access to a vast collection of high-quality images from Unsplash and allows customization through custom HTML and other snippet cards.

Theme Marketplace

Ghost CMS offers an exclusive theme marketplace where you can find a diverse selection of beautiful pre-made themes for free or commercial use. You can access this marketplace under the settings and easily download any theme with 1-click install process to enhance your Ghost website.

SEO-friendly

One of the main advantages of Ghost CMS over other platforms like WordPress is that it has SEO features directly built into its core, eliminating the need for third-party plugins. It generates clean and semantic markup, including alt attributes and RSS feed links.

The platform automatically generates Google sitemaps, adds structured data for search engines and social media platforms, and creates a proper robots.txt file.

With Ghost, you can customize page meta, define custom URL structures, and benefit from automatic RPC pings to notify external services about updates and new content availability.

Fast and lightweight

Ghost places a strong emphasis on performance, recognizing its significance in search engine rankings. With speed at its core, Ghost is a modern application that outperforms WordPress by up to 20 times, as verified by independent tests.

It also provides support for Google AMP Pages which boosts the site potential to rank higher in mobile search results.

Content Gating

Ghost includes a content gating feature that allows content creators to restrict access to specific articles, posts, or sections of their website. Content gating helps content creators monetize their work, build a community, and provide a more personalized experience to their audience.

In Ghost, you can restrict certain posts for members only

Built-in membership and subscription features:

Ghost offers a comprehensive membership system that enables seamless member signup, allowing visitors to access protected content by providing their email address. With recurring subscriptions powered by Stripe integration, authors can easily convert members into paying customers across 135 supported currencies with 0% payment fees.

Ghost also provides convenient features like import/export of members, webhooks for syncing with external services, email newsletters, detailed member stats, and efficient member management tools, including labeling, note-taking, and impersonation for quick member support.

Built in Analytics

Ghost provides easy to use integration for Google Analytics or third party tracking service for your website. The Analytics code can be added using the global code injection feature, which can be found in the Ghost admin settings menu.

Import & Export

Ghost provides you with full ownership of your content. All content can be exported at any time, without notice. Multiple tools are also available to import content and images into Ghost from other platforms like WordPress, Tumblr, Medium etc

Security

Ghost prioritizes security through regular penetration testing of its codebase and infrastructure. It automatically configures SSL certificates with Let’s Encrypt and enforces standardized permissions and data validation.

It also employs strong password hashing, SQL injection prevention, brute-force protection, and dependency management for overall security and integrity.

Ghost Pro vs Self Hosting

If you have ever tried WordPress and you understand the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org then Ghost pro vs Self Hosting is kind of similar.

Ghost Pro is an official managed hosting service provided by creators of Ghost CMS, whereas the self hosting option means you can download the open source version of Ghost CMS and host it anywhere you want.

But there is a catch.. unlike WordPress which is built on PHP programming language and supported by many cheap hosting providers, Ghost uses Node.js and therefore its hosting options are limited and a bit expensive. Not to mention Node.js as a programming language is a bit difficult to learn and adapt, so you won’t be able to find development support for customizing themes for Ghost as easily as for WordPress.

Ghost Pro has some additional benefits over self hosting like site security, hosting performance, regular updates and integrated email newsletter service.

Ghost pro vs self hosting features comparison

In my opinion, if you are a content creator who is just starting out, then go with Ghost Pro. This way you can focus on writing great content, building your audience and not be worried about technical aspects of managing your site. 9 times out of 10 this option will serve you well for most use cases.

Once you have more than say 1000 subscribers and can invest a bit of time and money into development and self managed hosting then you can look to host your Ghost site on DigitalOcean or Cloud servers like AWS, Google Cloud etc. It will help you save cost over higher pricing models of Ghost Pro.

Limitations of Ghost CMS

Lack of Marketing Page

If you want to promote and sell a certain product like Ebook on your site, then it’s not possible to create an attractive landing page with a countdown timer and other features to drive sales for it.

Simple Header Navigation

I find it one of the major limitations of Ghost CMS. There is no default option in Ghost settings to group multiple pages in a multi level dropdown. This may impact user navigation and experience to find all content topics on your site. Basically you can only list limited topics in your main navigation without impacting the design of your site. Perhaps in future updates of Ghost CMS this issue may be fixed.

Limited Theme customisation

Theme customisation options are very basic and limited to changing color, font styles and background images of certain sections of your site as provided by theme developer. In order to edit HTML, CSS of a theme you will need to consider a self hosting plan.

Customisation options for a default Ghost theme under Settings > Design

No Media Management

There is no admin page in Ghost to view and manage all the media that you upload to your site. Also you cannot resize an image within a post after upload. Therefore, you have to ensure that all images you upload must be optimized and of proper size.

Blogging Limitations

When it comes to writing post content Ghost CMS has a few limitations which includes:

1. The text editor doesn’t have version history so it’s recommended to create backups before making changes.
2. You cannot create a child tag under a parent tag. If you like writing articles on many different topics then it may pose difficulty to manage them and it may appear disorganized in the admin backend.
3. Lack of markdown interface for adding nofollow links: If you want to create nofollow links for SEO purposes, you will need to use HTML code snippets.

Costly Development Support

If you are not a technical user and want to customize certain sections of your Ghost site on a self hosted plan then finding a reliable development support for your Ghost site can be bit expensive (compared to WordPress) due to Node.js programming and handlebars templating engine.

Final Conclusion: Who should use Ghost CMS?

Ghost CMS is primarily recommended for content creators and publishers who are looking for a clean and minimalist website design to build their audience and monetise their content through subscription. If you have been writing articles for Medium then you will find Ghost to be a better choice in terms of features and content ownership.

If you are a blogger who wants to write articles for their blog but also earn money through ads or affiliate programs then Ghost has certain limitations which you need to be aware of. Check this article

For other business owners who are looking for a general website to promote their services or products, Ghost is not recommended due to its limited design and layout options. I will suggest considering WordPress or other website builders like Wix, Squarespace etc for their business needs.