Ghost (Pro) review - official managed hosting for Ghost CMS
Ghost (Pro) is the official managed hosting for Ghost CMS.
In 2021, Ghost made significant progress to help even more independent creators earn a living with memberships.
If you are a solo creator or have a business, be aware that Ghost (Pro) can handle your needs.
And in this review, I'll look into the service responsible for keeping the Foundation self-sustainable.
Let's explore what makes them a unique solution.
Affiliate Disclaimer: Some links are affiliates. This means that if you buy after clicking on one of those, I get a commission at no additional cost for you.
Tl;dr
- Official managed hosting.
- Affordable for beginners.
- Quality support.
- Prices will escalate with subscriber count.
- Ghost is cheaper than competitor platforms.
What is Ghost (Pro)
Ghost (Pro) is the official managed hosting for Ghost CMS. It is offered and managed by the Ghost Foundation.
Ghost (Pro) solves one of the biggest pain points about managing a website: the technical side.
This service takes care of installation, backups, upgrades, and adding security. Yeah, it doesn't sound funny to do any of this.
Managed hosting exists for people like me and you that don't want to deal with all that stuff.
They use DigitalOcean to host the websites and connect to Mailgun to send the posts by email.
This service has been the best way to support the development since its crowdfunding in 2013.
By knowing that stuff will work, creators can produce more content instead of diluting their attention.
This peace of mind starts at $9/ month, and it is better than using Substack.
Pros
Creating a website is easy and fast with Ghost (Pro). And the website is generated instantly after sign up for the 14-day free trial.
Yes, it's that simple.
Great support by email. If you ever run into trouble, Ghost has great support.
I had an issue with my website, and they took care of it. Yet, it took us 31 emails to find a way (if you are reading this, thank you, Sarah!).
0% commission on memberships. As you may see on the Ghost review, there is no commission for memberships on your website. This is a lot of extra money in the long term.
Beautiful themes. Even the cheapest plan allows you to pick a beautiful theme from the marketplace.
Support development. Buying Ghost (Pro) is a great way to help the future development of Ghost CMS.
Cons
It isn't intuitive to set up the custom domain. When I started using Ghost, adding a custom domain wasn't easy. I'm not an expert nor a noob, but it was hard to understand what the hell I was doing.
That said, adding a custom domain for the first time to Ghost feels daunting for inexperienced users.
Pricing depends on subscriber count. Another con is the price depending on subscribers. It means the price will keep increasing as you grow your following. Still, this is a good service, and one of the cheaper managed hosting to start.
Yet, when subscriber count grows, it's one of the most expensive options for Ghost CMS. But, even in these conditions, it's still a good deal for the quality of the service provided.
In most cases, Ghost will end up being cheaper than other options like Substack, WordPress, or Patreon. For this reason, I'm not saying they are expensive for what you get.
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Plans explained
Ghost has made good progress with the release of version 4 in March 2021.
V4 marked the birth of the Starter plan, thus making the cheapest plan go from $29/ month to $9/ month.
The Starter plan is available for websites with less than 1000 subscribers. With only 2 limitations of features:
- Only official Ghost themes are available.
- Only built-in integrations.
What counts as a subscriber? A subscriber can be a paid or free member. So, a subscriber is everyone that signs up on your Ghost website.
The Creator plan will suit most website's needs, starts at $25/ month. But, beware, this price will increase with the number of subscribers.
The Creator plan is also the cheapest plan available with custom integrations and themes.
All plans include:
- Custom domain support.
- Installation and Setup.
- Weekly updates.
- Backups.
- Automatic Security certificate (SSL).
- Worldwide CDN.
- Email support.
- Sending posts per email.
- Threat & uptime management.
The Team plan (starting at $50/ month) and Business (starting at $199/ month) complete the offering of this service.
Around July 2021, Ghost made updates to their prices and removed the number of page views from the criteria associated with the plans.
Summary
Ghost (Pro) offers fast, beautiful, and reliable websites.
With the introduction of V4 and a neat dashboard, managing a Ghost website has become easier than ever.
Also, prices have become more beginner friendlier. All this while keeping the great support and quality of the service.
The pricing is on par, if not below competitors like WordPress or Substack.
Things are easy to find, and everything has a stunning design.
With Ghost (Pro), you support the future development of great open-source software that helps creators earn a living with memberships.
Because of all this, I rate them with an A+ rating.
