Hello,
I plan to install Ghost on a Hetzner Cloud CX23 instance (Intel or AMD vCPU 2, 4 GB RAM, 40 GB SSD).
Ubuntu will be installed automatically — is that correct?
I will get SMTP mail service from Namecheap, which will provide SMTP details. Once I enter this information into the admin panel, will the mail services work smoothly?
Could you please direct me to the setup guide after these steps?
You can probably pick which distribution you want. That’s pretty standard anyway.
Setting up outbound SMTP doesn’t involve the admin panel. You’ll set that in your config file or docker variables. I’d be careful that what you’re buying from Namecheap does what you want – I’m not familiar with a product from them that does transactional SMTP, but they do sell email inboxes…
How To Install Ghost - Ghost Developer Docs - choose Ubuntu and follow along with those directions. Or choose Docker and follow those directions.
Maybe worth to mention; you can’t send newsletters with SMTP configuration. You will need to use Mailgun for newsletters. If you plan to send newsletters and signup Mailgun, you can use it for transactional emails as well, so no need to buy an email service for that (unless you plan to use that email as your inbox)
Thanks for the clarification! The setup process seems a bit complicated to me — I’m wondering if it might be easier to just get hosting directly from ghost.org instead. I haven’t decided yet. What would you recommend?
Even though I provide a managed Ghost hosting service, still I want to share my honest opinion:
There are valid use-cases to self-hosting Ghost, but if you just want to focus on the content you will create, then definitely it doesn’t worth to waste your time with many technical terms. With one of the managed hosting services, you can start writing your article in minutes, and you will not have any question marks about performance, storage, setup Mailgun, ActivityPub, Tinybird (for analytics), update Ghost, backups…
Just pick a good managed hosting service and start your publication. You can move to self-hosting in the future anyway, if you will need.
Check ghost.org, magicpages.co or synapsmedia.com and pick one that fits with your needs. You will not regret. 
You can read more of my thoughts here Where to host your Ghost site?, but the TL;DR version is that I don’t personally think that self-hosting is for everyone. It’s great if you have technical skills or want to learn them, and don’t mind being frustrated, and know enough to make backups, and check that they work before they need them, and know enough security not to get into trouble. If that’s not the case, you might very well be happier in managed hosting. While some people do save money by self-hosting, if you don’t have enough technical ability to troubleshoot it when it gets messed up (and it’s when, not if), you will eventually hit a problem that causes you to either waste a ton of time trying to solve it, or to hire in help, and either way, that’ll offset any savings to be had by self-hosting.
I may be biased. I mostly only hear from self-hosters when they’ve messed something up and need help. 