--- title: Ghost Reviews meta_title: 'Ghost Reviews 2026: Details, Pricing, & Features | G2' meta_description: Filter 40 reviews by the users' company size, role or industry to find out how Ghost works for a business like yours. aggregate_rating: rating_value: 4.0 review_count: 40 scale: '5' date_modified: '2026-07-12' parent_category: name: Content Management url: https://www.g2.com/categories/content-management --- # Ghost Reviews **Vendor:** Ghost Foundation **Category:** [Web Content Management Software](https://www.g2.com/categories/web-content-management) **Average Rating:** 4.0/5.0 **Total Reviews:** 40 ## About Ghost Ghost is an open-source publishing platform designed for professional bloggers, journalists, and content creators seeking a streamlined and efficient way to publish and monetize their work. Built on Node.js, Ghost offers a modern, minimalist interface that emphasizes speed and simplicity, enabling users to focus on content creation without unnecessary distractions. Its architecture supports both traditional and headless CMS configurations, providing flexibility for various publishing needs. Key Features and Functionality: - Intuitive Editor: Ghost provides a distraction-free writing environment with a real-time preview, allowing users to compose content seamlessly. - Built-in SEO Tools: The platform includes native SEO features such as meta tag settings, automatic sitemaps, and support for structured data, eliminating the need for additional plugins. - Membership and Subscription Management: Ghost enables creators to monetize their content through integrated membership and subscription features, supporting both free and paid tiers. - Customizable Themes: Users can choose from a variety of professional themes or develop their own, ensuring their publication aligns with their brand identity. - High Performance: Leveraging Node.js, Ghost delivers fast load times and efficient performance, enhancing the user experience. - Extensive Integrations: The platform supports numerous integrations, allowing users to connect with various tools and services to extend functionality. Primary Value and Solutions: Ghost addresses the challenges faced by modern content creators by offering a platform that combines ease of use with powerful features. It simplifies the publishing process, allowing users to focus on creating high-quality content while providing the tools necessary to build and engage an audience. With its built-in monetization options, Ghost empowers creators to generate sustainable revenue streams without relying on third-party services. Additionally, its open-source nature ensures transparency and continuous improvement driven by a dedicated community. ## Ghost Pros & Cons **What users like:** - Users value the **community support** from Ghost, with helpful responses and guidance enhancing their experience significantly. (1 reviews) - Users appreciate the **excellent customer support** from the Ghost community, which helps with setup and questions. (1 reviews) - Users find Ghost's platform to be **incredibly easy to use** , with seamless installation and intuitive editing features. (1 reviews) - Users enjoy the **easy integrations** with platforms like Stripe, making setup and management seamless. (1 reviews) - Users praise the **easy setup** of Ghost, enjoying a hassle-free installation and built-in features. (1 reviews) - Integrations (1 reviews) - Simple (1 reviews) - User Interface (1 reviews) ## Ghost Reviews ### 1. Nasty Service Rep **Rating:** 0.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Khila J. | Executive Director, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 23, 2026 **What do you like best about Ghost?** I don't have anything positive to say about Ghost. **What do you dislike about Ghost?** I cancelled my Ghost.org subscription and migrated away after a customer service interaction left me genuinely uncomfortable. A rep named Jon Hickman spoke to me disrespectfully, and I can't support a company that lets paying customers be treated that way. **What problems is Ghost solving and how is that benefiting you?** I don't have any positive things to say about Ghost. ### 2. Good software for blogging **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Hien L. | Managing Member, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** September 16, 2025 **What do you like best about Ghost?** I like that Ghost is easy to use. There are almost no plugins to install or maintain as most features I use are built into the core software. Installing Ghost was a breeze. I use an SAAS cloud platform called Cloudron which helps tremendously with installing, backing up and updating to the latest Ghost version. I have Ghost run daily for the visitors on my blog. Integrating with Stripe for the subscription feature was also super easy thanks to the Ghost team. I am self-hosting Ghost, but have received a ton of support from the folks over at their community forum. Got most of my questions answered and even some features explained and helped out, and some other great advice. Couldn't have set things up or sorted it out successfully without them. I like writing in the Ghost editor interface. Simple and hassle-free. Ghost is very actively developed and well-maintained. They listen to the users to an acceptable degree, and I think there'll be more features you'll love in future. **What do you dislike about Ghost?** Not that I can think of right now honestly. **What problems is Ghost solving and how is that benefiting you?** Ghost makes publishing content easy. It saves me time as I don't have to maintain a lot of plugins. Instead, I can just focus on writing. Although they do offer paid Ghost (Pro) plans to make it sustainable for the team, self-hosting the software is actually free of charge. They don't take a cut even from the subscription payments. This is light on budget and sustainable to scale up for publishers. ### 3. Clean and powerful blogging platform **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Thomas V. | CTO, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 20, 2023 **What do you like best about Ghost?** Very clean editor to write posts with lots of embeddable content blocks. Powerful Admin panel with a clean overview of scheduled, published and drafted articles that work well across both mobile and web browsers. The theme gallery, both free and paid, includes some really clean templates **What do you dislike about Ghost?** There is no mobile app, and there is no built-in analytics on page visits or user behaviour since it's focussed on email. The themes look great but I'd love to be able to embed content on every page like a text-blog, embedded video or image. **What problems is Ghost solving and how is that benefiting you?** I needed a low-maintenance environment to write a blog and gather a following of readers both paid and free. The fact that I only need to worry about writing and not about uptime, updates or performance is awesome. ### 4. All-in-One Solution for Your Business Blogs **Rating:** 5.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 28, 2023 **What do you like best about Ghost?** Ghost is the perfect solution for businesses looking to create a professional blog. With easy setup and maintenance, great uptime, and lightning-fast speed, Ghost provides a seamless experience for its users. The editor is clean and easy to use, with lots of embeddable content blocks, while the admin panel provides a clean overview of scheduled, published, and drafted articles. With a range of free and paid themes available, Ghost is the perfect choice for any business looking to create a powerful, professional blog. **What do you dislike about Ghost?** The only thing I don't like about Ghost is you've to remember keyboard shortcuts for formatting your blog. There aren't many direct options to add bullets, highlights and other formatting stuff. **What problems is Ghost solving and how is that benefiting you?** We were looking for a CMS and we found Ghost to be a perfect fit for it. We've been using it since the day we started adding blogs on our site. ### 5. Ghost is great, though wasn't quite the fit for our needs **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Andrew E. | Principal Engineer, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** July 26, 2022 **What do you like best about Ghost?** The UI was pretty straightforward, as was the ability to build pages. As a headless CMS, it worked reasonably well. Pricing was reasonable too. Of the headless CMS options, I liked Ghost the best. The headless CMS API integration was pretty straightforward (I used Eleventy.js). It appears that Ghost as a site-builder also works pretty well, particularly for people who want something relatively stock instead of highly customized. **What do you dislike about Ghost?** We used Ghost as the headless CMS back-end to a static site. I wanted the ability to create more types of custom content (my client had testimonials and a number of different types of articles, as well as staff bios) with fixed fields. We were able to sort of hack our way through it with clever use of tags, but it wasn't ideal. This is not Ghost-specific, but in general with headless CMSs on a static site there's a disjunct between editing content and building the site itself -- you make the content changes in the CMS, and then you wait for the static site to rebuild, then go check your work. It's not awful, but it's an extra step. There was also some confusion on the part of my client where they expected to be able to edit the entire static site, rather than just the small number of identified dynamic pieces (testimonials, types of articles, etc.). This was a training issue, but the fact that the UI existed (and couldn't be turned off that I saw) meant it was a source of perpetual confusion. **What problems is Ghost solving and how is that benefiting you?** As we used Ghost, it would've given us a little interface with which to create articles which would then be added to the site. My client had much more specific needs (had I been on the project much earlier in the design process I would've argued for removing complexity from the design, which I think would've benefited the project significantly). I would use Ghost again, particularly if there were a team of content-writers who are churning out blog posts or articles and who wanted to be able to do that work largely autonomously (especially if they already had a really clear styleguide). The content editor is slick. I would also suggest Ghost as an alternative to Wordpress for folks who just need a place to put their site and stream of articles, especially if they're not interested in managing their own hosting. ### 6. Best Open Source Platform, Blogging and Paid Newsletter subscriptions **Rating:** 4.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Ajay R. | Content Manager, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** January 09, 2022 **What do you like best about Ghost?** Ghost CMS is the best alternative for WordPress. I love their modern UI. Admin dashboard is very minimal and easy to manage. Ideal for news or blogging site. Ghost also gives some popular services integration like Zapier, Slack, AMP, Disqus, Google Analytics, Typeform, Buffer, Codepen, Github, Paypal, Stripe, and more. Installation and configuration are very minimal and very simple to use and manage users. I love Ghost CMS features. **What do you dislike about Ghost?** In my opinion, there is nothing to dislike, because I used blogging and I enjoy it. Perhaps, If someone using a WordPress alternative and want to use WordPress, then It not completely possible. You won't find any plugins for Ghost CMS like WordPress has its own directory, Ghost CMS has custom integration features but for that, you have built your own integration, and you will need coding to knowledge. **Recommendations to others considering Ghost:** Just want to do clean blogging, without focusing on design, then Ghost CMS is for you. Ghost CMS comes with Modern UI designs. **What problems is Ghost solving and how is that benefiting you?** Using Ghost CMS for our blog, we don't have to customize from scratch, and Ghost is a perfectly built Blogging platform, Managing Newsletter is way more easier than other CMS platform. ### 7. Ghost Starter | The good & the mediocre **Rating:** 3.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Neil G. | Assistant Professor, Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** November 16, 2021 **What do you like best about Ghost?** I want to make sure readers know I'm reviewing the BASIC Ghost Pro package ($9/month). I love the blogging interface it makes writing a wonderful distraction-free experience. The Stripe integration for email subscriptions is also great. IN fact, the entire user management system is intuitive, very easy to use, and has made managing my email newsletter subscription list very easy. I'm comparing this to my experience using WordPress, which is far more cumbersome. (It seems to me that WordPress has turned into an everything and the kitchen skin content management system. Ghost is still a very simplistic way to blog and manage ONE email newsletter.) In short: If you want to use Ghost as a blog & email newsletter I'd say the basic plan is well worth the money. **What do you dislike about Ghost?** At the basic level, you don't have search as a feature! I've emailed Ghost and asked why a feature as basic as search is not included in the basic product and they told me that to get that feature I'd ned to upgrade to the next level which is $25/month. Without search it makes it difficult to find ol blog posts/emails that have been sent out, which I think is a real pain. Another thing I dislike is that you only have three subscription levels: Paid subscribers can pay either a monthly fee, or a yearly (annual) fee. Then there are free subscriptions. I think it would be nice if Ghost offered the possibility to sell a lifetime subscription and/or quarterly subscriptions. Finally, I send out three different email newsletters. I was hoping I could allow users to choose which ones they'd like to subscribe to through Ghost, but that is not possible. (I currently use Ghost for my main email newsletter, and Convert Kit for the remaining two.) I wish Ghost offered the ability to run more than one email newsletter via their product. **Recommendations to others considering Ghost:** If you want to use Ghost as a simple basic blog (without searchability) then the basic product is a good buy. However, if you want/need a search featurethen it is simply not worth it. **What problems is Ghost solving and how is that benefiting you?** The problem I'm solving is having one main site that people can use to see most of the content I create. Ghost has provided a good product that has allowed me to build a good "one-stop" place on the web for people to find and sample my content. Additionally, it is a great archive for the things I produce. (As I said above, if it had the search feature it would be 98% perfect!) The benefits I've seen using Ghost Pro (Basic) are increased productivity, and no time spent tooling around with upgrades. ### 8. Good Open Source All in one Blogging Tool. **Rating:** 4.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Information Technology and Services | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** April 15, 2022 **What do you like best about Ghost?** I like that it is open source and has both versions available where you can self-host or just sign up for their cloud service. Also, I like that it is an all in one solution for bloggers which comprises a publishing platform, a newsletter management system and many other essential integrations required for a modern blog. **What do you dislike about Ghost?** There isn't much to dislike about this tool. But I still believe that if you want advanced customizations you need to get a bit technical which isn't the case for WordPress. Also, there are a lot of important integrations which are available but those can't be compared to the millions of plugins available for Wordpress.org users. **What problems is Ghost solving and how is that benefiting you?** Very lightweight blogging platform which is available out of the box with essential integrations which are required to run a blog or a website these days. Backend is very quick and responsive too. ### 9. The worst platform if you're switching from Wordpress **Rating:** 0.0/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** Verified User in Computer Software | Small-Business (50 or fewer emp.) **Reviewed Date:** June 20, 2022 **What do you like best about Ghost?** The editor is clean but again, not if you are writing blogs with a lot of content on a daily basis. **What do you dislike about Ghost?** Absolutely no plugins, no developers working on making it better. I've used Wordpress before and how much would I pay to just go back to it. The plugin support, the developer community is great. Ghost is the absolute worst. If you're a non coder like me, looking to make your blogs look better, say goodbye to your sleep! **Recommendations to others considering Ghost:** Please, please do not use it please! **What problems is Ghost solving and how is that benefiting you?** Nothing. Literally nothing. I could not emphasize it enough how much I hate this platform. ### 10. Outstanding for what it is **Rating:** 2.5/5.0 stars **Reviewed by:** James H. | Chairman **Reviewed Date:** May 31, 2022 **What do you like best about Ghost?** Beautiful editor - so much better than WordPress. **What do you dislike about Ghost?** It's strictly a blogging platform. Difficult to do any kind of page design outside the templates, at least in my experience. The updating process is also a bit funky, if you ask me. **What problems is Ghost solving and how is that benefiting you?** For me, they solved the problems of having to deal with WordPress add-ons, themes, etc. They are adding a lot of features but most don't directly help me. ## Ghost Discussions - [What is a ghost drive?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-a-ghost-drive) - [How does Symantec Ghost work?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/how-does-symantec-ghost-work) - [What is a ghost image for software?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-a-ghost-image-for-software) - [What is the use of Ghost software?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/what-is-the-use-of-ghost-software) - [Free version?](https://www.g2.com/discussions/ghost-free-version) - 1 upvote - [View Ghost pricing details and edition comparison](https://www.g2.com/products/ghost/reviews/ghost-review-7224990?section=pricing&secure%5Bexpires_at%5D=2026-07-13+06%3A49%3A44+-0500&secure%5Bsession_id%5D=bc314118-091d-412e-b982-5eb5c94b824c&secure%5Btoken%5D=255e29c3cc24d73cd5b719f0b9a1deb13d6b212d35ca4b1cb5d1b63cafd77f25&format=llm_user) ## Ghost Integrations - [Stripe Payments](https://www.g2.com/products/stripe-stripe-payments/reviews) ## Ghost Features **Content** - Content Authoring - Rich Text Editor - Versioning - Plug-ins/Widgets/Apps - Approval Process - Content Scheduling - Asset Management - Internal Search - Content Repository **Content Creation** - Content Creation Tools - Content Curation - Buyer Personas - Content Management **Publishing** - Automated Publishing - Multi-language - AR/VR Capability **Platform - Owned Media** - Subscription Management - Analytics - Monetization - Integrations - Distribution **Design** - Breadth of Pre-Built Templates - Mobile - Branding/Themes - Customization **Optimization** - SEO - A/B Testing - Dashboards & Reporting - Audience Targeting - ROI Reporting **Development** - Image Management - Reuseable Content - Unlimited Environments - Form Builder **Agentic AI - Owned Media** - Autonomous Task Execution - Multi-step Planning - Cross-system Integration - Adaptive Learning - Proactive Assistance - Decision Making **Platform** - User Community - SEO - Flexible Navigation Structures - User, Role, and Access Management - Enterprise Scalability - Internationalization - Dashboards and Reports - API / Integrations **Logistics** - Customizable Templated Workflows - Internal Communication - Version Control - Editing and Approval Tools - Distribution Features - Integrations & APIs - User, Role, and Access Management **Analytics** - Personalization - Content Performance **Agentic AI - Web Content Management** - Cross-system Integration - Natural Language Interaction **Agentic AI - Headless CMS** - Cross-system Integration ## Top Ghost Alternatives - [Sanity](https://www.g2.com/products/sanity/reviews) - 4.7/5.0 (902 reviews) - [Contentful](https://www.g2.com/products/contentful/reviews) - 4.3/5.0 (311 reviews) - [Butter CMS](https://www.g2.com/products/butter-cms/reviews) - 4.6/5.0 (203 reviews)