Websites using Ghost

Okay, let s break down Ghost, a popular open-source headless CMS, covering its overview, revenue model, alternatives, pricing, and customer care:

Ghost Overview

• What it is: Ghost is a free and open-source platform designed primarily for creating and managing online publications like blogs, newsletters, and membership sites. It s known for its clean, minimalistic interface and focus on writing and publishing content.
• Key Features:
  • Headless CMS: Ghost acts as a back-end content management system, allowing you to deliver content to any front-end you choose (website, app, etc.). This means you have full control over how your content is displayed.
  • Built-in Membership and Subscription Management: Integrated features to create and manage different membership tiers, collect payments, and offer exclusive content to subscribers.
  • SEO-Friendly: Designed with SEO best practices in mind, helping your content rank well in search engines.
  • Email Newsletter Integration: Makes it easy to send email newsletters to your subscribers.
  • Developer-Friendly: Offers a robust API, allowing developers to customize and extend functionality.
  • Markdown Support: Uses Markdown for writing, providing a simple and efficient way to format content.
  • Themes and Customization: Offers a variety of pre-built themes and allows for extensive customization using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript.
• Target Audience: Bloggers, journalists, independent publishers, content creators, and businesses looking for a powerful and flexible platform for content marketing.

Revenue Model

Ghost is a bit unique as it has two different sides to its revenue.

1. Open-Source Software: The core Ghost platform is free to download and use. This is the open-source side of Ghost. Users can self-host the software on their own servers, but this will require development skills.
2. Ghost(Pro): Ghost Foundation also has a hosted platform, named Ghost(Pro), which is its primary revenue source. Ghost(Pro) handles all of the technicalities of the server setup and upkeep, and it is sold on a subscription based model. This is a completely managed service.

Alternatives to Ghost

Here are some alternatives to Ghost, categorized by their primary use case:

• For Blogging/Publishing:

  • WordPress: The most popular CMS, very flexible and has a massive ecosystem of themes and plugins.
  • Medium: A platform for publishing and reading articles. Has a built-in audience and monetization tools, but less control over branding.
  • Substack: Primarily focuses on email newsletters, also includes blog functionality.
  • Write.as: A simple, minimalist blogging platform with a focus on privacy.

• For Headless CMS:

  • Strapi: Another open-source headless CMS with a focus on API flexibility.
  • Contentful: A popular SaaS-based headless CMS with enterprise-level features.
  • Sanity: A powerful headless CMS with a real-time collaborative editor.

• For Membership/Subscription:

  • Patreon: A popular platform for creators to offer membership tiers and receive recurring payments.
  • Memberful: A membership platform that integrates with various CMS platforms.
  • Teachable/Thinkific: Online course platforms that also offer membership capabilities.

Pricing

• Self-Hosted (Open Source): Free to download and use, but you are responsible for hosting costs, server setup, maintenance, and backups.
• Ghost(Pro) (Managed Hosting):
  • Offers several plans, based on:
    • Number of Staff Users: The amount of people who can administer the back end.
    • Number of Members: How many users can subscribe to your content.
    • Number of Subscriptions: The amount of different types of member levels your have.
  • Starter plans generally offer basic features for smaller publications.
  • Higher plans unlock additional features like priority support, advanced customisation, more user and members etc.
  • Pricing ranges from ~$11/month for the starter plan, up to ~$399/month for their enterprise plan.

Customer Care Details

• Self-Hosted Users:
  • Community Support: Active community forums and discussions where users can ask questions, share knowledge, and get help from other Ghost users and developers.
  • Documentation: Extensive documentation available online.
• Ghost(Pro) Users:
  • Email Support: Direct support from the Ghost team, with varying priority depending on your subscription tier.
  • Live Chat Support Some of the higher tier plans offer Live chat support.
  • Help Center: Access to a comprehensive help center with articles and tutorials.
  • Priority Support: Offered to higher-tier customers.

Key Takeaways

• Ghost is a powerful platform: especially for publishers wanting control of their content and branding.
• Self-hosting requires technical skills: so you might consider Ghost(Pro) if you do not have that skill set.
• Flexibility and Customisation: the platform offers incredible flexibility and customisation to the end user, on both the front end and back end.
• Focus on Writing and Publishing: The platform is designed with a focus on these core features and is an excellent choice for those who need that.
• Free Open-Source software: If you want to run Ghost for free, you can do so at the cost of time and development skills.
• Paid Subscription Model: If you need help getting your Ghost instance going then you can pay for the Ghost(Pro) service.

Hopefully, this gives you a detailed overview of Ghost. Do you have any more specific questions about Ghost or any of the alternatives?