We are evaluating Ghost for a large project in which we need to have a section of our site that is a sort of ‘blog’, with curated articles, which we want users to be able to comment on.
The site will be built in NextJS and we need to integrate the blog seamlessly into the rest of the site.
We are evaluating whether to host ourselves, or go through GhostPro hosting, and want to make a recommendation of pros/cons to the client.
What’s your experience been? As far as I can see, one major advantage of GhostPro is that it offers relatively straightforward integration (instructions) for services such as Discourse, Commento, etc. There are clear examples given
One major disadvantage is having to rely on themes (I’ve posted another question about this)
Aside from the price, which in our case would be $200/month I presume, what other advantages/disadvantages do you see?
Thanks for any help! We´ve been reading through the site documentation, and have some sense of the pros/cons (Ghost(Pro) - Official managed hosting for Ghost), but would appreciate any further info or opinions.
Just FYI, these instructions are not specific to Ghost (Pro). Most of the stuff you can do with Pro can be done using self hosting. What you’re getting with Ghost (Pro) is managed hosting of the Ghost platform from the creators of it.
To my opinion, the main (and, to be honest, the only) limitation of Ghost pro is the fact that you can’t have all the users you want. So, it’s perfect for small teams (2-3), but as soon as you want to open your blog to guests posts, you should consider self-hosting (or Valet). IMHO.
We have a detailed overview in our docs (link below).
There’s an easy litmus test which covers most cases: if the person maintaining your Ghost install values their time at $25/hour or more, Ghost(Pro) will almost alway work out as much better value. Otherwise, it’s probably cheaper to spend your own time on managing servers.
Valet, mentioned above, is also an option for people looking for automation on their own infrastructure.