Ghost vs. WordPress: What is The Best CMS for Bloggers?

When choosing a platform on which to build or re-establish a blog or meet the needs of a growing audience, you need flexibility and customization. Many hosted platforms promise it, but few deliver.  

Enter self-hosted software and our two subjects – Ghost and WordPress. Though both come with a learning curve (sometimes steep) and a more significant time commitment than hosted options, having complete control over development, growth, and monetization ensures you create a blog built for the long term. A blog you genuinely make your own and not the paint by numbers options offered elsewhere.

Ghost and WordPress acquit themselves exceptionally well when it comes to blog building. But they do so for entirely different reasons.

Ghost’s introduction to the blogging landscape came in 2013 via a Kickstarter campaign. Its central purpose is to offer an open-source, self-hosted platform that focuses solely on blogging and publishing. Ghost also wants to ensure the process is as simple as possible.

In other words, if you’re looking to build a fully-formed website or ecommerce store, Ghost is not your solution. Ghost founder John O’Nolan, who at one time was a significant WordPress contributor, states as much:

“The idea for Ghost began … wondering what a new, modern version of WordPress would look like if it was focused solely on publishing.

Ghost achieves this by providing only the tools and features necessary to maximize your content creation efforts. It is nothing more and nothing less than a blogging platform. 

While that commitment to its niche user base limits any broader ambitions, Ghost users appreciate the singular focus. Professional writers and general content creators alike have flocked to Ghost for this very reason.

Ghost offers two versions of its platform, the original self-hosted Ghost and the hosted GhostPro.

If you’re in the blogging or website building space (and really, even if you’re not), you know of, about, or have used WordPress. According to some estimates, WordPress serves as the underlying software for 43% of all websites currently on the web. That list includes many of the most well-known and highly trafficked sites across the globe.

Created in 2003 by Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little, WordPress’ primary goal was to replace a defunct piece of blogging software. For nearly 20 years, WordPress has evolved from that singular initiative to being the go-to choice for anyone wanting to establish a viable web presence.

WordPress is a genuine all-in-one solution, a content management system, blogging and publishing software, website builder, and eCommerce store builder. You can use it to create the most elementary of blogs, to a multi-faceted company home page or expansive webstore.

While many users still tap WordPress for its blogging capabilities, its primary draw is for those who may have grander ambitions. A user might want to start with a straightforward blog but later establish a more prominent web presence. WordPress is designed for precisely that.

There are two versions of the platform – the self-hosted WordPress.org and the hosted WordPress.com.

We noted it earlier, but one of the more interesting aspects of comparing Ghost and WordPress is that the development of Ghost was inspired mainly by the WordPress platform. It doesn’t want to be everything that WordPress has become but instead remains true to the WordPress platform’s original purpose. It’s no accident that the team behind Ghost bill it as the fast, modern WordPress alternative.

Upfront Costs and Hosting 

Both solutions are open-source software that requires you to secure self-hosting and a domain name. While the initial software download is free, those latter two items are not.

Domains cost anywhere from $10 to $15 annually. Depending on the service, hosting costs run anywhere from a few dollars a month to $20 or more. The platforms are comparable in this regard, with one major exception

One of the central differences between Ghost and WordPress is the requirements for hosting each platform. WordPress is about as universal as it gets. Any web host can accommodate WordPress. One of the most popular is Bluehost, one of WordPress.org’s preferred web hosts.

Ghost hosting can prove challenging for a user to pin down. The underlying technology powering Ghost is Node.js. It’s fast and modern Javascript, but it’s also not widely supported by hosting companies. One group that does is Digital Ocean, a partner of the platform.

There’s not much separating the two platforms here, but WordPress has the edge as a more universal platform.

Ease of use

The key to great software is how easy it is to navigate, use, and complete your intended tasks. When building a blog, that translates into how quickly you can set up and begin posting.

Though it’s a widely used platform, there is a considerable learning curve for those unfamiliar with WordPress. Much of your initial success will depend on how quickly you acclimate to everything that WordPress throws at you. You have a ton of options, choices, and decisions to make. 

WordPress then doubles down with themes, widgets, and a dizzying array of plugins, including free and premium options. All of these make your site look better and run smoother but can overwhelm some.

The good news is that once you grow accustomed to the interface, WordPress is easy and intuitive to manage. But based on its breadth alone, though, it is always an ongoing process.

By its very nature, first-time users will find Ghost more accessible. Its narrower focus on creating and publishing content translates to fewer options and overall clutter. 

The interface is clean and uncomplicated, and simple to navigate. The color-coding of icons is a particularly nice touch. Overall, Ghost’s dashboard feels modern, which helps its cause over WordPress, which favors it’s functionally almost to a fault.

As far as publishing a post, both Ghost and WordPress offer similar experiences. Ghost, however, has its limits. Unlike WordPress, if something is lacking with Ghost’s approach, you may not have the option to improve it.

Customization

That flexibility to adjust the WordPress platform to fit your need is a big reason for its success. Anytime WordPress is part of a comparison, it’s unfair to use customization as one of the criteria – the platform cannot be beaten. If you don’t like something in WordPress, it’s a good bet you can change it. 

To be sure, the WordPress customization catalog features over 55,000 plugins, more than 4,000 themes, and countless widgets and integrations. The level of customization borders on the absurd and is one of the key reasons WordPress is so popular – you can truly create any website. 

Ghost has its own customization options, just nowhere near the volume of WordPress. Overall, there are over 90 themes available from the Ghost repository. Additional functionality comes in the way of more than 100 integrations. You can also adjust several other settings and visuals, including fonts, logos, menus, and templates. Yet all will pale to the sheer volume of adjustments found on WordPress.

In this regard, Ghost is much like a standard hosted platform. You can customize, but only within the boundaries of the software’s single-minded focus. With WordPress, you don’t have to make such compromises.

Blogging and Publishing

A vital component of both platforms is their ability to take the guesswork out of creating and publishing content. WordPress started as pure blogging software before evolving into the behemoth site builder of today. Ghost aims to recreate the niche “best at what you do” focus of WordPress’ early days.

It’s not surprising then that Ghost has the more potent software from a writing and publishing standpoint. The functionality focuses on making your work stand out online. The platform is fast responsive and utilizes Markdown as its central formatting tool.

If you’ve never used Markdown before, there is a bit of a learning curve, but it’s not steep. Once you get the hang of it, you’ll notice a definite improvement in the flow of your writing. 

Therein lies the whole goal of Ghost’s platform – to simplify your blogging so you can do more of it. There’s an impressive suite of SEO tools built directly into the software and includes auto-generated canonical tags, automatic XML sitemap creation, Facebook open graph tags, Google AMP support, and URL optimization, to name a few

For all of its standout qualities, WordPress can seem cumbersome if all you want to do is blog – an 18-wheeler compared to Ghost’s compact SUV. WordPress is a noticeably slower platform. It also uses a WYSIWYG editor, an excellent tool for novices but can bog down the writing process as your portfolio grows. Native SEO is virtually non-existent.

Of course, all of the above is changeable through plugins, which is where you fully realize the power of WordPress. It can be both a blessing and a curse. WordPress is the better option if you don’t mind the extra steps of “building out” your blog. If all you want to do is blog and publish, Ghost is a better choice.

Monetization

Similar to customization, few platforms offer the income-earning options of WordPress. You can use your WordPress blog to display ads, sell memberships and subscriptions, insert affiliate links, accept donations, offer digital goods or downloads, or create an online store and sell physical goods.

Plugins take your money-making endeavors even further. The free WooCommerce plugin is arguably the best of any ecommerce solution currently available. It’s supported by its own bevy of extensions that further enhance the already powerful tool.

Given the extent of WordPress plugins, you have plenty of options for how to approach your monetization. 

Technically speaking, you can do most of the above with Ghost. Natively, however, the platform’s ecommerce centers on selling subscriptions or memberships, either to your blog or access to specific content. 

The dashboard features a prominent income tracker and includes simple tools to help you control access to various pieces of content. Aside from affiliate links, generating revenue on Ghost requires using integrations.

Apps like Google AdSense, Gumroad, BigCommerce, and Shopify extend your blog’s income potential, but it’s less intuitive than the WordPress approach.

Once again, that circles back to why you’re using the software. You can use Ghost to post ads, sell products, or digital downloads, but the membership approach should be your central focus. With WordPress, you can generate revenue in many ways without jumping through any extra hurdles.

Before we render a final verdict, it’s worth noting that both Ghost and WordPress offer hosted versions of their respective software – GhostPro and WordPress.com.

Ultimately, you get the capabilities of each piece of software without having to host, update, and manage the site by yourself. There’s more support behind the hosted platforms as well.

Hosted versus self-hosted comes down to the bandwidth you possess in crafting your blog. If complete control is essential and you want to have a hand in every aspect of your blog, self-hosting is the way to go. If you want to keep your focus on the site itself without the stress of the technical details, you’ll be happier with the hosted option.

WordPress.com is the less expensive of the two options, though Ghost provides more of the platform’s feature set in its two lowest price tiers. There is a scaled-down free option with WordPress and a 14-day free Ghost trial.