Ghost
The best tool here for a business built on a newsletter and a site: memberships, paid subscriptions and email sending are native, Ghost takes 0 percent of subscription revenue, the code is MIT and the JSON export moves between Ghost(Pro) and self-hosting without conversion. Publisher is $29 a month on annual billing or $35 billed monthly at 1,000 members. What to know: there is no contact form at any tier, pricing rises on an audience slider in US dollars, support is email only, and the foundation that runs it is a Singapore non-profit that left the UK in 2016.
How we testGhost is run by the Ghost Foundation, a company limited by guarantee registered in Singapore since 2016, when it moved from the UK over HMRC and VAT MOSS friction; its constitution says it can never be bought or sold and reinvests all revenue, about $11 million a year from Ghost(Pro) hosting. John O'Nolan and Hannah Wolfe founded it in 2013; the team is fully remote. We found no Russian or Chinese link. A separate venture-backed retail company also called Ghost is unrelated.
Prices are in US dollars with no pound view and no VAT statement, read on 16 September 2026 from a page whose prices move with an audience slider. At the default 1,000 members, Starter is $15 a month on annual billing or $18 monthly with one staff user and no custom themes; Publisher, the plan we score, is $29 or $35 with three staff users, custom themes, paid subscriptions, three newsletters and webhooks; Business is $199 or $239 with fifteen staff users and priority support. Slide to 50,000 members and Publisher becomes $208 or $249. Every plan includes a custom domain and a Fastly CDN, there is no free hosted plan, and Ghost takes nothing from membership payments beyond Stripe's own fee. Self-hosting is free under MIT on a server from about $10 a month, or roughly £20 to £25 for a comfortable one.
The Koenig editor is a card-based writing tool, not a page builder; design happens in theme settings, with custom Handlebars themes from Publisher upward. Posts, tags, scheduling, authors, RSS, five fixed staff roles, "advanced SEO tools" and internationalisation are on every plan. What is missing for this category's buyer is a form: Ghost has no native contact or lead-capture form and no plugin system, so submissions need a third-party service. The read-only Content API and the Admin API make it a capable headless source; Zapier and n8n are gated to Publisher. There is no official MCP server, only community projects. Ghost(Pro) runs on DigitalOcean in Amsterdam behind Fastly with weekly automatic updates and a published DPA; there are no SOC 2 or ISO claims and the 99.9 percent SLA is Custom-plan only. Export is a JSON file of settings, users, posts, pages and tags plus members as CSV and the theme as a zip, and it imports into any Ghost. Support is email, with priority on Business and no phone. Trustpilot is 2.5 on 16 uninvited reviews, too small to weigh; Capterra shows 4.7 on 52.
Not yet tested by Saaskly: assessed on published pricing, vendor documentation, the vendor's own help centre and status pages, and third-party reviews.
Pros
- +Memberships, paid subscriptions and newsletters are native, Ghost takes 0 percent of revenue, and the same MIT software runs on Ghost(Pro) or your own server
- +Clean JSON export plus members as CSV and the theme as a zip, importable into any Ghost; weekly automatic updates on Ghost(Pro)
- +A non-profit owner that cannot be sold, a published DPA, webhooks, Zapier and a read-only Content API for headless use
Cons
- −No contact or lead-capture form at any tier and no plugin system; a business site needs a third-party form service
- −US dollars only, VAT unstated, and the price climbs an audience slider, so "Publisher" is $29 or $249 depending on where you set it
- −Email support only, no SLA below Custom, no official MCP server, and a card editor rather than a page builder
Pricing
Minimum commitment: $29 ($29/mo × 1 seat × 1 months). The least you can spend before walking away; excludes numbers, minutes and add-ons.
Publisher (up to 1,000 members)
$35/mo · month-to-month
$29/mo on an annual commitment
Month-to-month costs 21% more
- ✓$29 a month on annual billing, $35 billed monthly at the default 1,000 members, USD, VAT not stated (read 16 Sep 2026). 3 staff users, custom themes, paid subscriptions with 0% Ghost fee, 3 newsletters, webhooks, Zapier. Price rises with the audience slider: $208 or $249 at 50,000 members. Custom domain and Fastly CDN on every plan.
Business (up to 10,000 members)
$239/mo · month-to-month
$199/mo on an annual commitment
Month-to-month costs 20% more
- ✓$199 a month on annual billing, $239 monthly. 15 staff users, 10 newsletters, priority support. Starter $15 or $18 with one staff user and no custom themes. Custom plan adds a 99.9% SLA, SSO and invoicing. Self-hosting is free under MIT.
Specifications
| Rating | 3.2 |
| Shape | Developer CMS |
| Scored plan* | $29/mo annual · $35/mo monthly (Publisher) |
| Month-to-month | $35/mo (+21%) |
| Free plan | None |
| Visual editor | No |
| Custom code | Full theme code |
| Blog | ✓ |
| Forms | No |
| Commerce | Not offered |
| Memberships | Included |
| Multilingual | Included |
| SEO controls | Full |
| API | ✓ |
| Headless | ✓ |
| MCP server | No |
| Export your site | Full |
| Open source | ✓ |
| UK or EU hosting | ✓ |
| Owned in** | Other |
| Russian or Chinese link | None found |
| Phone support | No |
| Trustpilot (reviews) | 2.5 (16) |
| Scored plan name | Publisher |
| VAT basis | Excluding VAT |
| Licence | Free open source (MIT); Ghost(Pro) subscription |
| Self-hostable | ✓ |
| Vendor hosting | ✓ |
| Free trial (days) | 14 |
| Entry plan | $15/mo (Starter) |
| Top plan | $199/mo (Business) |
| First-term promotion | No promotion; price scales with an audience slider (Publisher $208 a month at 50,000 members) |
| Monthly price only at checkout | No |
| Domain free first year | ✓ |
| Domain renewal | Custom domain included on every plan; registration terms not captured |
| Transaction fee | 0% |
| Editor seats | 3 included |
| Page and item limits | Unlimited posts and pages; 1,000 registered members on Publisher |
| Storage and bandwidth | 100 MB file uploads on Publisher; bandwidth not metered |
| Reference hosting | Self-hosting on a 2 vCPU / 4 GB VPS at about £20 to £25 a month; Ghost says from $10 |
| Price changes | Not captured |
| Editor | Koenig card-based editor; design through theme settings and custom themes |
| Switch template after launch | ✓ |
| Form submissions | No native forms; third-party service needed |
| Scheduling | ✓ |
| Roles and approvals | ✓ |
| Bookings | No |
| AI site generator | No |
| AI content tools | No |
| Accessibility tooling | No |
| Redirects | ✓ |
| Structured data control | ✓ |
| Image optimisation | ✓ |
| CDN included | ✓ |
| Injected scripts | Not confirmed |
| Performance | Fastly edge on Ghost(Pro); no CWV data published |
| Payment providers | Stripe only, connected to your own account, 0% Ghost fee |
| UK VAT handling | No |
| Webhooks | ✓ |
| MCP server note | Community servers on GitHub only; feature requested on the Ghost forum |
| CRM integrations | HubSpot and ActiveCampaign in the integrations directory |
| Zapier or Make | ✓ |
| App market | About 150 integrations in Ghost's directory; no plugin system |
| Export note | JSON of settings, staff, posts, pages and tags; members as CSV; theme as zip; imports into any Ghost |
| Import tooling | JSON importer; WordPress migration reported as rough |
| Domain transfer out | Not applicable |
| HQ | Singapore |
| Owner | Ghost Foundation (non-profit, cannot be sold) |
| Founded | 2013 |
| Data location | DigitalOcean, Amsterdam; Fastly CDN; no region choice |
| Link evidence | None found |
| Governance | Non-profit company limited by guarantee; moved from the UK to Singapore in 2016 over HMRC and VAT MOSS friction |
| GDPR tooling | No |
| SOC 2 | No |
| ISO 27001 | No |
| Status page | ✓ |
| Major incident on record | No |
| Incident note | All systems operational with a phishing warning active on the status page |
| Live chat | No |
| UK support hours | Email; priority on Business; no phone |
| Security updates | Weekly automatic updates on Ghost(Pro); you update self-hosted |
| Community | 55,300 GitHub stars; active forum |
| Support channels | Email, Help centre, Forum |
*Scored plan: the business plan the score is set on (the cheapest plan with a custom domain and no vendor branding, contact forms, basic SEO controls and room for a fifty-page site; for a managed WordPress host, one production site with staging and daily backups), per month on annual billing at the renewal price, then per month billed monthly where that is offered, in the currency the vendor shows a UK visitor on the research date. Developer CMSs show the licence plus a stated reference hosting cost. See each profile for the VAT basis, first-term promotions and what the plan above adds.
**Owned in: where the company that owns the vendor answers to. A US-owned vendor is subject to US law (including the CLOUD Act) wherever the site is hosted. "Russian or Chinese link" records ownership, management or engineering links found on the research date, with the evidence on the profile; Saaskly marks these down in the score by editorial rule and says so.
Researched and drafted with AI assistance; reviewed and approved by Tim Meredith. How we use AI
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