Ghost Free Plan Review: Is There One At All?

Ghost’s “free plan” is one of the most misunderstood things in the blogging world. People hear “open source” and expect something like WordPress’s free tier — limited features, forced ads, that sort of thing. What you actually get is the entire Ghost platform, no strings attached, as long as you’re willing to host it yourself.

What Is the Ghost Free Pricing Plan?

Here’s something that trips up a lot of people: Ghost doesn’t really have a “free plan” the way you’d expect. The managed service, Ghost Pro, starts at $18/month — no free tier, no trial period (well, 14 days if you count that). But here’s the kicker: the actual Ghost software? Completely free. Open source. Download it, install it on your own server, and you’re good to go.

This isn’t like Substack where you get a free account and they take 10% of your earnings. With Ghost, you’re either paying for someone to handle the technical stuff (Ghost Pro), or you’re rolling up your sleeves and doing it yourself.

When you self-host, your only costs are whatever hosting provider you choose — usually $5-20 a month — plus your domain and Stripe’s payment processing fees. No platform cuts, no surprise charges when you hit arbitrary member limits.

A Quick Overview of Ghost and Its Features

Ghost is what happens when developers get fed up with bloated CMSs and decide to build something that just… works. Built on Node.js (which basically means it’s fast), it’s laser-focused on publishing and memberships. No ecommerce plugins, no page builders, no “would you like to install our premium cache optimizer?” popups. Just writing, publishing, and managing subscribers.

The latest version, Ghost 6.0, added something pretty cool — ActivityPub integration. Sounds technical, but it means you can publish once and have your content automatically show up on Mastodon, Threads, and other federated networks. Plus, they finally built in analytics, so you don’t have to wrestle with Google Analytics just to see if anyone’s reading your stuff. 

The editor uses this card-based system that’s surprisingly intuitive — drop in images, embed videos, add buttons, whatever. And the best part? You own everything. Your content, your subscriber list, your data. No wondering if the platform will change its terms tomorrow.

What Do You Get with the Ghost Free Plan?

When you self-host Ghost, you get… everything. Seriously. The same software that powers massive publications runs on your $5 DigitalOcean droplet. No “upgrade to unlock custom themes” nonsense. No member limits that mysteriously appear at 500 subscribers. Your server’s resources are the only ceiling, and honestly? A basic VPS can handle way more than you’d think.

The beauty of self-hosting is you’re not playing by anyone else’s rules. Want to modify the core code? Go for it. Need to integrate with some obscure service that Ghost doesn’t officially support? Write a custom integration. 

The API is completely open, the database is yours to query, and if you want to add a feature that Ghost’s team would never build — well, that’s the freedom of open source. You can even switch out the default SQLite database for MySQL or PostgreSQL if you’re into that sort of thing.

Key Features of the Free Plan

Full Publishing Suite

The editor in Ghost is one of those things that just feels right once you use it. It’s got this card-based system where everything — paragraphs, images, embeds — is its own little block. But unlike some other block editors (looking at you, WordPress), it doesn’t feel like you’re fighting it. 

Type slash to bring up options, drag stuff around if you want, or just write in Markdown if that’s your thing. Everything gets stored as JSON, which sounds nerdy but basically means your content is portable and future-proof.

You get all the publishing features right out of the box. Schedule posts for 3 AM if you’re that kind of person. Add multiple authors to articles (great for guest posts). Set custom excerpts, featured images, the works. And here’s something neat — the preview actually shows you what your post will look like.

Revolutionary, I know. But after years of “preview” buttons that show something completely different from the published version, it’s refreshing.

Membership and Monetization Tools

This is where Ghost really shines compared to cobbling together a WordPress membership site. Everything’s built in. Free members, paid tiers, custom pricing — set it up however you want. Connect Stripe (which takes about 5 minutes), and you’re ready to charge for subscriptions. Monthly, yearly, whatever pricing model makes sense. And Ghost takes exactly 0% of your revenue.

The member management isn’t just functional — it’s actually good. You can see who’s signing up, what they’re reading, which posts convert free readers to paid subscribers. Want to give someone a complimentary subscription? Two clicks. Need to run a Black Friday sale? Built right in.

No wrestling with plugins, no compatibility issues, no wondering if that discount code system is going to break after the next update.

Newsletter and Email Marketing

Ghost treats newsletters as a first-class citizen, not an afterthought. When you publish a post, it can automatically go out as an email. Or not — your choice. You can segment your audience (free vs. paid, new vs. longtime subscribers), customize email templates, set up welcome sequences. The kind of stuff that would cost you $50+/month with ConvertKit or Mailchimp.

Now, you do need to bring your own email service. Most people use Mailgun — first 1,250 emails free each month, then it’s less than a dollar per thousand after that. Way cheaper than dedicated email marketing platforms, especially as you scale.

And since you control everything, there’s no arbitrary sending limits like “you can only email 1,000 people on the starter plan.” Your email service determines your limits, not Ghost.

What’s Missing in the Ghost Free Plan?

Let’s be real — self-hosting isn’t for everyone. When something breaks at 2 AM (and something will eventually break at 2 AM), you’re the one fixing it. No support team, no “we’re looking into it” status page. Just you, your terminal, and whatever troubleshooting skills you’ve picked up along the way.

You become responsible for everything Ghost Pro handles automatically. Security updates? That’s on you. SSL certificates? Better set up auto-renewal or enjoy your “connection not secure” warnings. Backups? Hope you remembered to set up that cron job. And when a post goes viral and your server starts melting? Well, that’s a fun learning experience about scaling web applications.

Restricted or Limited Features

Managed Services and Support

Ghost Pro customers get actual humans who respond when things go wrong. Email support for basic plans, priority support if you’re paying more. Some even get dedicated account managers. Self-hosting? You get Stack Overflow and the Ghost forum.

Sometimes that’s enough. Sometimes you’re three hours into debugging a database connection issue, and you really wish you could just email someone who knows what they’re doing.

The community is actually pretty helpful, but they’re volunteers. They might not respond immediately. They definitely won’t wake up at midnight to help you. And if you’ve somehow corrupted your database (ask me how I know this is possible), you better hope someone else has made the same mistake and documented the fix.

Advanced Infrastructure Features

Ghost Pro includes a bunch of infrastructure niceties that sound boring until you need them. Global CDN? They’ve got it. Your site loads fast whether visitors are in Tokyo or Toledo. Self-hosting? You’re probably serving everything from a single server location unless you want to set up Cloudflare or another CDN yourself.

Same story with the new Social Web features. Self-hosters get 100 free ActivityPub interactions per day through Ghost’s hosted service. After that? You need to self-host that too, which means Docker, docker-compose, and probably a weekend of head-scratching. Staging environments, one-click rollbacks, automatic scaling — all the stuff that makes Ghost Pro “just work” becomes your responsibility to implement.

Hidden Costs and Limitations

The “free” self-hosted option has a funny way of adding up. Sure, the software costs nothing. But then you need hosting ($5-20/month for basic, more if you want something reliable). Email service (Mailgun’s free tier disappears fast). Maybe a CDN subscription. Definitely some backup solution — learned that one the hard way.

But the real cost? Time. So much time. Setting up Ghost takes an hour or two if you know what you’re doing. Then there’s maintenance — updates, security patches, performance tweaks. Troubleshooting weird issues that only happen on your specific setup. Learning enough about Linux, nginx, Node.js, and MySQL to not completely break everything. 

If you bill your time at even $25/hour, you’ll burn through Ghost Pro’s monthly cost pretty quickly. And that’s assuming nothing goes seriously wrong.

Who’s the Ghost Free Plan Perfect For?

Self-hosted Ghost works brilliantly if you’re already comfortable with servers. Maybe you’re a developer who spins up VPS instances for fun. Or you’ve got other projects running on a server and adding Ghost is trivial. For you, self-hosting is a no-brainer — total control, no recurring fees beyond hosting, and honestly? Kind of fun to tinker with.

It’s also perfect if you’re starting something experimental. Not sure if your newsletter will take off? Don’t want to commit to monthly fees? Throw Ghost on a cheap server and see what happens. You can always migrate to Ghost Pro later if things get serious. Students, hobbyists, people learning web development — self-hosting Ghost is actually a great way to learn modern web infrastructure without huge stakes.

How Does the Ghost Free Plan Compare to Paid Plans?

*You pay your email provider directly
**Ghost doesn’t publish exact limits but they’re included

Feature Comparison

On paper, self-hosted Ghost and Ghost Pro run identical software. Same editor, same membership features, same everything. The difference is in all the stuff around the software. Ghost Pro is like buying a car from a dealership — warranty, service plan, someone to call when it makes weird noises. Self-hosting is buying the same car but doing your own maintenance.

Performance is where things get interesting. Ghost Pro’s infrastructure is optimized specifically for Ghost. Global CDN, caching, database optimization — it’s all dialed in. Your self-hosted setup? Might be faster, might be slower. Depends entirely on your technical chops. 

I’ve seen self-hosted Ghost sites that absolutely fly because the owner knew exactly what they were doing. I’ve also seen ones that crawl because someone followed a tutorial from 2019 and never updated anything.

When It Makes Sense to Upgrade

The math on upgrading is pretty simple. Once your publication makes real money — let’s say $1,000/month — the $18-29 for Ghost Pro becomes a rounding error. Why spend Sunday afternoon debugging nginx configs when you could be writing? Or spending time with actual humans?

There’s usually a specific moment when self-hosters know it’s time. Maybe your site goes down during your biggest traffic spike ever. Maybe you realize you haven’t updated Ghost in six months because you’re afraid of breaking something. Or maybe — and this is the healthy reason — your publication has simply outgrown your desire to manage infrastructure. 

You want to focus on content, not servers. That’s when Ghost Pro starts looking really, really attractive. The peace of mind alone is worth it. Your site goes down? Someone else’s problem. Need to scale for viral traffic? Happens automatically. Want to try new features? They’re already set up and working.