Ghost vs Substack
Thinking of swapping Substack for the open-source Ghost? Here’s the honest trade-off.
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What you give up vs Substack
- 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
What you gain
- • Full data ownership — self-host Ghost on your own infrastructure.
- • No per-seat SaaS bill (Substack: a 10% cut of your subscription revenue).
- • Open-source code you can audit and extend (MIT).