Ghost is an open-source platform for publishers to create and distribute content. It's similar to blogging, but more focused on businesses that want a professional platform with tools for audience growth: newsletters, advanced analytics, and membership tiers.
You can host Ghost yourself since it's open source, or pay a monthly fee for managed hosting through Ghost(Pro). Managed hosting starts at $9/month for the Starter plan, $25/month for Creator, $50/month for Team, and $199/month for Business. These prices increase as your member count grows.
The cost can grow quickly as your audience scales. At some point it may be more cost-efficient to self-host, but then you're managing servers, databases, and updates yourself. Self-hosted Ghost is free, but it runs on Node.js and requires a server with specific versions of Node, a database (MySQL), and reverse proxy configuration. It's not a one-click setup. You're responsible for SSL certificates, backups, updates, and server security.
For a business, this is a manageable trade-off. For a casual writer, it's too much overhead. You want to write and have your work accessible on the internet.
Pluma isn't designed to grow your business or manage large audiences. It's a simple, focused platform for writing quality articles that readers will enjoy.
You choose how to use it. If you build a following, you can use analytics to understand your readers and send newsletters on your own terms. You're in control of when and what you send.
Pluma is for writers who want to publish their work without managing servers, paying high hosting fees, or dealing with the complexity that comes with running a publishing business.
Zero operational overhead. Ghost is powerful, but even the managed version requires you to think about infrastructure: choosing a plan, managing integrations, and configuring your instance. Self-hosted Ghost adds server provisioning, SSL certificates, database maintenance, and Node.js version management. With Pluma, you sign up and write. There's nothing to install, configure, or maintain.
Dramatically lower cost. Ghost's managed hosting ranges from $9 to $199 per month depending on features and member limits. Even the cheapest Starter tier costs more per month than Pluma's Pro plan, which includes analytics, newsletters, and custom domains. Pluma's free plan lets you publish up to 20 articles at no cost. Pro is $5/month. Max is $20/month. Ghost's free self-hosted option requires you to pay for and manage your own server, which typically costs $5-15/month for a VPS before you factor in your time.
Better developer writing tools. If you write technical content, Pluma has an edge with syntax-highlighted code blocks in 190+ languages and built-in LaTeX math rendering. Ghost's editor handles code blocks but without language-specific highlighting by default — you need to add a theme integration or custom code injection with Prism.js to get syntax highlighting. Math rendering requires similar workarounds. On Pluma, both work out of the box. See our full developer blogging features breakdown.
Simpler content model. Ghost supports pages, posts, tags, authors, tiers, offers, and custom routing. That's powerful for a publication, but it's overhead for a personal blog. Pluma has articles, and that's it. Write, publish, share.
Clean, portable content. Pluma stores your articles as Markdown and lets you export them as Markdown files or PDF. Your writing stays in a universal format. Ghost stores content in its own JSON-based format (Mobiledoc or Lexical, depending on version), and while it offers JSON export, converting that to plain Markdown or another format takes work.
Ghost excels when you need a full publication platform. If you're building a membership business with paid subscribers, offering multiple newsletter tiers, or running a multi-author publication, Ghost's feature set is purpose-built for that use case.
Ghost also offers complete design control through its Handlebars-based theme system. If matching your brand identity at the template level matters, Ghost gives you that flexibility. Pluma intentionally doesn't. The design is clean and consistent, like a minimalist blogging platform should be.
If you need native paid subscriptions — where readers pay you directly through your Ghost site — Ghost handles that with built-in Stripe integration and membership management. Pluma doesn't offer reader-facing subscriptions.
If you're comfortable managing servers, self-hosted Ghost is free and gives you full control over your data and infrastructure. For developers who enjoy infrastructure work, this can be appealing. You get the same feature set as Ghost(Pro) without the monthly hosting fee.
vs Medium · vs WordPress · vs Substack · vs Bear Blog · vs Hashnode · vs Blogger