Ghost vs Craft CMS for publishers: reader revenue or custom build?

The short version

Pick Ghost if your money comes from readers. According to the vendor’s documentation, free and paid members, tiered access, Stripe payments and email newsletters are part of the same product, and Ghost takes 0% of the revenue a publication generates. It is MIT-licensed, written in JavaScript on Node.js, and built for articles and pages.

Pick Craft CMS if your content is not just articles: series, contributors, events, sponsored sections, each with its own fields. Craft gives a developer a clean-slate content model and Twig templates, and editors get a form shaped to each job. It also needs that developer, and its Team and Pro editions carry a per-project licence.

The deciding trade-off is scope against flexibility. Ghost is a finished publishing tool with a deliberately small surface. Craft is a toolkit that fits a newsroom’s shape exactly, at the price of build time. Read the full profiles for Ghost and Craft CMS first if you are new to either. Both assessments here come from vendor documentation, not from an install of our own.

At a glance

Editorial workflow

Ghost has five staff roles. Contributors can write posts but cannot publish. Authors can create and publish posts and tags. Editors manage authors and contributors, administrators can edit all data and settings, and the Owner is an administrator who cannot be deleted and holds billing access. That works for a small desk. The documentation pages we read describe no custom roles or per-section permissions, so treat the model as fixed.

Craft is built differently. Everything is an element: entries, assets, categories, tags, users and more, with custom fields attached through field layouts. Drafts fork changes from the canonical version, and applying a draft copies the previous version into a revision. Permissions cover things like control-panel access and editing in particular sections, and permissions granted by several groups add together.

Edition matters for headcount. Craft’s documentation says Solo allows a single admin user, Team up to five users and one user group, and Pro no limit. A desk of eight needs Pro on that basis alone. Ghost documents no user cap in the pages we read, but its role model is simpler.

On scheduling, Ghost’s Admin API documentation says a scheduled post is published at its set time, newsletters are sent if applicable, and its status then changes to published. We did not confirm a scheduling feature for Craft in the pages we opened.

Search, structured data and feeds

Ghost’s SEO help page says each post and page has its own metadata, an XML sitemap is created and updated automatically, structured data is included in all posts and pages, and canonical tags are added. For the technical basics, a Ghost news site needs no add-on. The page does not cover feeds or redirect management, so check those before you rely on them.

Craft’s documentation pages we opened do not describe built-in meta fields or sitemaps. The plugin store lists an SEO plugin by Ether Creative (MIT licence, version 5.0.0, compatible with Craft 3, 4 and 5) that provides an SEO field type, a sitemap manager and a redirect manager. Structured data and feeds are normally written in Twig by a developer, which gives control and costs hours.

For Google News and article structured data, follow Google’s own documentation rather than either vendor’s claims. See the feature checklist for what to test.

Hosting, performance and security

Ghost’s supported production stack is Ubuntu 22.04, 24.04 or 26.04 LTS, Node.js 22 LTS, MySQL 8.0 or 8.4 and NGINX, on a server with at least 1 GB of memory. Self-hosted newsletters add one more dependency: the documentation says Mailgun is currently the only supported bulk email provider. Ghost(Pro) is its official managed service.

Craft 5 needs PHP 8.2 or later, Composer 2.0+ and MySQL, MariaDB or PostgreSQL, with at least 256 MB of PHP memory and 512 MB recommended. The documentation no longer recommends MariaDB for sites with many users or lots of content. Craft Cloud is the vendor’s hosted option, and Team and Pro licences are free on it.

We have no performance or security figures for either, and we make no claims about them. The practical difference is the runtime: a team that knows PHP hosting will be at home with Craft, while Ghost expects comfort with Node.js services. Our self-hosted guide covers what running your own server involves.

Cost of ownership

Ghost’s software is free under MIT. Self-hosting costs a server, backups, a Mailgun account and a person to maintain it. Ghost(Pro) on 2026-10-10 listed Starter at US$15 a month billed yearly, Publisher at US$29, Business at US$199 and a Custom plan. The page builds its prices in the browser, so confirm them live. Ghost’s documentation states it takes 0% of publication revenue; Stripe’s fees are separate.

Craft’s pricing page lists Solo free, Team at $279 per project, Pro at $399 per project and Enterprise by quote. Team and Pro include a year of updates, then $99 a year. The licence allows a licensed copy in one production environment at a time, so each production site needs its own. Non-profits get 15% off Team and Pro licences, excluding renewals.

Both budgets are dominated by people. Craft’s build is the larger job because nothing is prescriptive. Ghost’s build is a theme. See the cost guide for the other lines.

Migrating between them

We did not find an official Ghost-to-Craft or Craft-to-Ghost migration tool in either vendor’s documentation. Ghost documents member import by CSV, Zapier or API, and says the members list can be exported at any time. Its Content API is read-only and returns JSON, which is a way to pull posts out.

Getting that content into Craft means building an importer against Craft’s own model. Plan it as a small development project and test redirects carefully. The other direction is the same in reverse.

Which should you choose?

• Solo journalist, collective or niche newsletter with paid tiers: Ghost.
• Small local outlet with a few staff and no developer: Ghost, ideally on Ghost(Pro).
• Magazine with series, events, sponsors and several content types: Craft.
• Desk of more than five editors with group permissions: Craft Pro.
• Team that only knows PHP hosting: Craft. Team that already runs Node.js: Ghost.
• Lowest possible licence cost, self-hosted: Ghost.

For another developer-led comparison, see Craft CMS vs Statamic. The wider list is on the comparison hub and in the CMS directory. Prices and licences are in the pricing guide and licensing guide; you can also try before you commit with the demo page.