Ghost: Self-Hosted Publishing Platform

Ghost is a modern, open-source publishing platform built for professional bloggers, journalists, and content creators who want to build audiences and monetize their writing. With over 51,000 GitHub stars, Ghost is the leading open-source alternative to WordPress for content-focused websites. It combines a clean writing experience with built-in newsletters, memberships, and paid subscriptions.

Self-hosting Ghost gives you a professional publishing platform where you own your content, your audience data, and your revenue — no platform fees, no content restrictions, and no algorithmic interference.

Key Features

• Distraction-free editor with rich media embeds, cards, and markdown support
• Built-in newsletter system with email delivery and subscriber management
• Membership and paid subscription support with Stripe integration
• Customizable themes with Handlebars templating and a full theme marketplace
• SEO-optimized output with structured data, sitemaps, and canonical URLs
• Native integrations with Zapier, Slack, AMP, and social platforms
• Content API (REST and GraphQL) for headless CMS and JAMstack workflows
• Multi-author support with roles, permissions, and editorial workflows

Why Self-Host Ghost?

Keep 100% of your revenue. Ghost's managed hosting charges based on subscriber count. Self-hosting eliminates the platform fee entirely — Stripe's standard processing rate is your only cost. For a membership site with thousands of subscribers, this saves hundreds of dollars monthly.

Own your audience. When you self-host, your subscriber list, email addresses, and membership data live on your server. You are never one policy change away from losing access to the audience you built.

Full theme and integration control. Self-hosting lets you install custom themes, modify Ghost's source code, add custom integrations, and configure email delivery through your preferred SMTP provider. No restrictions on customization.

Content freedom. Self-hosted Ghost has no content policies or platform moderation. You publish what you want, when you want. Your content exists on your server and cannot be taken down by a third-party platform decision.

System Requirements

Resource	Minimum	Recommended
CPU	1 vCPU	2+ vCPUs
RAM	1 GB	2 GB
Storage	10 GB SSD	30 GB SSD
OS	Ubuntu 22.04+	Ubuntu 24.04

Ghost runs on Node.js with a MySQL database. The baseline memory footprint is modest, but resource usage increases with traffic volume and newsletter send frequency. For sites with heavy traffic, additional CPU ensures responsive page delivery.

Getting Started

The fastest way to deploy Ghost on your VPS is with Docker Compose through Dokploy. Our step-by-step deployment guide walks you through the full setup, including persistent storage, environment configuration, and SSL.

Deploy Ghost with Dokploy →

Alternatives

• WordPress — The most widely used CMS with a massive plugin ecosystem and theme library
• WriteFreely — Minimalist, federated blogging platform focused on distraction-free writing
• Plume — Federated blogging engine built on ActivityPub for decentralized publishing
• Publii — Desktop-based static CMS that generates fast, secure websites

FAQ

How does Ghost compare to WordPress? Ghost is purpose-built for publishing and is significantly faster out of the box. It includes built-in memberships and newsletters that WordPress requires plugins for. WordPress offers more flexibility through its vast plugin ecosystem, but Ghost provides a more focused, streamlined publishing experience.

Can I migrate from WordPress to Ghost? Yes. Ghost provides a WordPress migration plugin that exports your posts, pages, tags, and images into Ghost's import format. The migration preserves content and basic metadata, though some WordPress-specific plugin functionality will not carry over.

Does Ghost support membership and paid subscriptions? Yes, natively. Ghost has built-in member management with free and paid tiers, Stripe integration for payments, and email newsletter delivery. You can gate content behind membership tiers and manage your subscription business directly from the admin panel.

How do I send newsletters with self-hosted Ghost? Ghost sends newsletters through its built-in email system. For self-hosted instances, you configure an SMTP provider like Mailgun, Postmark, or Amazon SES. Ghost handles subscriber management, template rendering, and delivery tracking.

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Recommended VPS Providers

Looking for the best VPS to run Ghost? Read our Best VPS for Ghost guide — we compare top providers for performance, pricing, and reliability.

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App data sourced from selfh.st open-source directory.