How is Ghost better than Wordpress?

Using Ghost
1

Hello everyone,
I’ve been following Ghost project for quite some time, and I am big fan of the mission and the team.
I wanted to start simple free newsletter, so I tried both Wordpress where I had some experience and Ghost which I really wanted to try for some time already.

Honestly, experience was bit underwhelming, although my expectations were maybe too high for Ghost.
From looking at comparison between Wordpress and Ghost on the Ghost website I was expecting easier setup and better content creation experience for better price but find almost the opposite.

  1. Wordpress was much cheaper for me than what is on the website. Right now I am using 5$ droplet for ghost and even cheaper one click setup for Wordpress with my local webhosting provider. Not sure where 115$ average a month for Worpdress comes from. Maybe for it’s for bigger websites?

  2. Setting newsletter was more complicated. For some reason setting up through UI didn’t work for me and I wasn’t alone. In the end I’ve manually edited production config(found solution on this forum)

  3. Content creation was same or better with Wordpress. Probably because I have an experience with it, and I am doing simple content creation so didn’t get to try advanced use cases.

  4. Other Ghost advantages as Native SEO weren’t really that different as Ghost website seem to imply.

  5. Wordpress still has much bigger ecosystem, was much easier to find some nice looking newsletter theme.

Please don’t get take this as negative rant. I love Ghost mission and I am fan of CEO and team. I think Ghost just isn’t for me and I am curious how could I benefit from it more. Would really love to use it,

3

Hello @Bondra. Thank you for your comment. I guess this kind of preference mainly depends on your habits and the specific purposes of your publication. As for me, I have the opposite experience.

The Ghost editor is simple, clean and focuses on writing content where WP editor is complicated, full-of-things. I can send a newsletter with Ghost without any plugin, even without the help of MailChimp or platform like this. I collect emails. I write content. I send it to my readers. Honestly I can’t see an easier way.

And as far the WP ecosystem is concerned, 50% of it is related to products like plugins, overwhelmed themes, things-related-to-Gutenberg-or-frameworks. Ghost, of course, is not perfect. Nothing is. But, TO ME, it is, with no possible comparison, far better.

1 Like
4

Hi Bondra,
I want to share my experiences according to your questions.

  1. Ghost is open source so you also can install a 5$ droplet on digitalocean.
  2. I have also same issue related to this problem then i was created a post about that. You can find some solution there: Is there any pop-up solution to collect emails for newsletter? - #4 by simay
  3. Ghost uses markdown editor its more simple i think. Wordpress may cause some html problem while creating the content so ghost has a better editor versus wordpress.
  4. Ghost is really fast. The pages are rendered in just 1-2 sec. Wordpress is heavy so it effects your SERP on search engines. You can configure more settings on wordpress but generally you dont need to customize the seo settings on ghost.
  5. You are right about the ecosystem. You can struggle with technical or design support issues, but if you use ghost as a blog system, I don’t think you need them much. If you are using ghost for your customer, it is absolutely necessary to change. In this case, I recommend WordPress. :)
7

I have been blogging on WordPress.com for about 12 years. My main blog is a site for English teachers. I post about issues in teaching literature and composition and rhetoric. My problem with Wordpress is the new block editor and the constant coercion to use it. I do not like the current direction or culture at Wordpress. The “happiness engineers” seem particularly cranky at the moment.

Ghost looks like a viable alternative except for two, perhaps three things. 1) I often upload materials for teachers to use as .pdf or .docx files. It doesn’t look like Ghost allows that. 2) Ghost doesn’t look like it has built-in commenting. That is important for interacting about posts and materials. And 3) the Koenig editor sounds like it is cleaner and easier than the horrible Gutenberg editor, but it has “cards” which sound suspiciously similar to Gutenberg’s blocks, causing me to wonder.

So I am interested in Ghost, but the above issues are keeping me away. Are there workarounds or future developments that may address them?