Trial is over... Being forced to pro... Probably wont do it

Using Ghost
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Evaluated platforms for a basic blog site. I wasn’t going to expect much traffic as the blog was very niche. It was more just to get the content out there for the benefit of others. Decided to give Ghost a try based on the marketing materials and ability to have a trial. According to the trail documentation: the account was supposed to go pro ($15/mo) after the trail. I enabled analytics because I want to see if it reached anyone at all (SEO, etc). Added a custom domain (through 3rd party) and then cross linked it from our main site.

After a couple weeks I get an email that trial has expired; that I need to manually come over and upgrade to pro otherwise content will be deleted in 2 weeks. “ok, ok, ok, settle down. I’ll get over there and fix it… jeeez, it’s the holidays…”

Finally am able to attend to this matter and, low and behold, the custom domain is no longer working (looks like disabled from Ghost’s end). Ok, probably an oversight. Log into the dashboard and I am greeted with ONLY an upgrade screen (can’t see content, cant see analytics, just upgrade nag). BUT the nag screen WILL NOT ALLOW THE 15/mo because I have analytics enabled…. And I can’t turn it off (cause nag screen wont allow me to see anything in dashboard). So I’m now forced to do 29/mo?!? For a niche blog site that will have almost no visitors!?! The kicker is I just wanted to start the 15/mo plan right away but it forced me to do the trail. I thought “ok, what can the harm be of the trail, it’ll just auto-convert, so it should be hands off”. NOPE!

Sorry Ghost…. This sort of hostage situation is not sitting well. I’m thankful I used a 3rd party to register the domain as I’m afraid how screwed I would have been with this if I had paid through you. If I could see my analytics and see at least 1 person in the 2 week time period (even if it was from my own user base off my site) I would have gladly subscribed to pro long term; hell, 15/mo is swallowable for a few months as an experiment. But this?!? Domain is down, can’t access my content, can’t even see the result of the trial. Yeah, I’m out.

Before the cognitive dissonance all chime in with how awesome Ghost is, I’ll finish with: I acknowledge that I may not be the target user group. I’m not looking to get rich with a blog. I just want to get some info out there for others to use (I believe in freedom of information). BUT this form of conversion funnel is aggressive and off-putting. I’m a software engineer by trade (senior full stack), and I know the cost of hosting, infra, etc. I have lots of stuff out on AWS and Azure. 15/mo is corporate fluff! My usage would barely scratch a free tier on AWS. But I know I am paying for support, upgrades, maintenance, and above all profit for the Ghost management. I still would have been ok with that if the conversion funnel wasn’t such a hostage situation. If I can’t see how well things did from the trial, then what’s the friggen point of a trial?!? I can’t even look at how SEO did… Anywho…. I’ll probably just look at the alternatives list again and maybe do something self hosted. Claude and I can spend a couple hours and get something workable on a new org in AWS. Or maybe one of the alternatives I can just pay for without being held hostage so soon/quickly. Oh well, you live and learn!

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Most people here can’t help you, since this is a community forum. (I don’t work for Ghost either.)

Emailing support at support@ghost.org would be the way to go.

It definitely doesn’t work like that. Ghost.org doesn’t auto-charge you at trial end. You should have been able to click the upgrade button at any point— it’s not necessary to let the trial lapse.

I’m guessing you can’t choose the starter plan because you have analytics on, but if you can’t turn it off, I’m sure support will want to know about that.

Tangent; I’m guessing you missed the bit about Ghost Foundation being non-profit and Ghost.org hosting paying for further development of the open source product?

I’m not a marketer and don’t know all of their thinking on pricing, but I’m guessing they’ve decided that they can’t do a very cheap plan in a sustainable way, or that it isn’t their target segment. I’ve helped a lot of larger sites with subscriptions move to Ghost, and they often end up saving a lot of money. But yes, you could put your hobby blog somewhere cheaper, particularly if you don’t need subscriptions or newsletters or care about owning your own content and brand and subscriber data.

If you want to stay on the Ghost platform, you could have a look at Magic Pages or Synaps Media. A lot of smaller, hobby, and unmonetized blogs end up there. Or since you’re technical, a VPS or Pikapods.

1 Like
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I appreciate the reply. I wasn’t looking for any help from the community or from Ghost staff; I was mostly looking to expose my opinion in a way where Ghost staff could get feedback from folks when they evaluate their target users and determine pricing.

Just wanted to touch on a few points you made:
re: Ghost Foundation being non-profit
Their status was revoked in 2022 (you can find it on irs.gov). And even if they were still in good standing, I don’t see being a non-profit as always being synonymous with “good intent”. There are plenty of profitable non-profits out there (the directors just can’t take money from the business directly). I formed a non-profit (makerspace) here in Wisconsin in 2022, and we are still growing. Learned early on that just being a “non-profit” doesn’t mean your a “charity”. The main thing the IRS looks for when evaluating you as tax-exempt (non-profit) is that you have a mission statement that serves some community AND that you, as an executive, aren’t taking money out of the business (profits go towards expenses, even if that expense is just paying your salary).

I was looking at Magic pages just a few min ago and it seems reasonably priced! Specially for what Im after. I was also looking down the self hosting rabbit hole and determined hugo+netlify+cloudflare or hashnode or Ghost on AWS Lightsail could work also.

Again, I want to say that I appreciate your reply. it’s good to see the community is supportive of it’s members.

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The best way to get in touch with Ghost is to send them an email at support@ghost.org. And I’m curious about why you look at IRS, since the company is not based in the US?

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They are a globally distributed remote company. If they want to be tax exempt in the US, and receive grants from US foundations, and get donations from US based donors, and much more, they need to be registered with the IRS. So looking there for their current status seemed apt