Decap CMS vs Ghost
| Tagline | Git-based open-source CMS for static site generators | Modern open-source publishing platform for blogs and newsletters |
| Category | Blogging & CMS | Blogging & CMS |
| Replaces | Contentful, WordPress.com, Squarespace | Substack, Medium, WordPress.com |
| GitHub stars | 18k | 54k |
| Language | JavaScript | Nodejs |
| License | MIT | MIT |
| Self-host difficulty | 2/5 Easy | 3/5 Moderate |
| Deploy options | Manual Docker | Docker Docker Compose Manual |
| Managed hosting | ||
| Last updated | 1 month ago | 5 days ago |
| View repo | View repo |
Where each falls short
The honest trade-offs — what you give up with each, versus the proprietary tools they replace.
Decap CMS
- Requires Git provider OAuth for authentication; self-hosted auth needs extra setup
- Media handling and large asset management is limited compared to full CMS platforms
- Community momentum slowed after the fork from Netlify CMS
Ghost
- Membership and newsletter features require Stripe integration for paid tiers
- Plugin/theme ecosystem is much smaller than WordPress
- No built-in e-commerce beyond memberships and paid newsletters
- Self-hosted email delivery needs a transactional email provider (Mailgun, Postmark) configured separately
Bottom line
Choose Decap CMS if you want the lower-effort setup; choose Ghost for the larger community and ecosystem. Ghost has seen more recent development. Open each guide below for deploy steps and the full feature gap.