WordPress powers a huge share of the web, and can be shaped into almost anything. Ghost is a focused, modern publishing platform built for blogs, newsletters and paid memberships. Both are open source and can be self-hosted on a VPS. Which one fits depends on what you publish, and how much you want to customise.
At a glance
| WordPress | Ghost | |
|---|---|---|
| Technology | PHP + MySQL | Node.js + MySQL |
| Focus | General-purpose CMS | Publishing, newsletters, memberships |
| Editor | Block editor (Gutenberg) | Clean, card-based editor |
| Extensibility | ~60,000 plugins, thousands of themes | Integrations and webhooks; fewer themes |
| Newsletters | Via plugins or external services | Built in (needs a bulk email provider, Mailgun by default) |
| Paid memberships | Via plugins (MemberPress, WooCommerce…) | Built in (Stripe) |
| SEO | Excellent with plugins (Yoast, Rank Math) | Good built-in defaults (meta, sitemaps, structured data) |
| Speed out of the box | Depends on theme and plugins; needs caching | Fast by default |
| Maintenance | Core + plugin + theme updates | Fewer moving parts |
| E-commerce | WooCommerce (full store) | Not a store (memberships only) |
Choose Ghost if…
- You publish articles and send them as newsletters, and maybe charge for subscriptions.
- You want a fast, clean site with minimal maintenance and few plugins to manage.
- Your design needs fit a Ghost theme (or you can edit Handlebars templates).
Ghost’s strength is the publishing + email + memberships loop with no extra plugins. Newsletter sending at scale needs a bulk email provider (Mailgun is natively supported), which brings its own costs.
Choose WordPress if…
- You need more than a blog: online store, booking, forums, LMS, directories, multilingual sites, custom post types.
- You rely on specific plugins, page builders, or a large theme ecosystem.
- Non-technical editors already know it.
WordPress can do newsletters and memberships too, but with plugins (and usually external email services), which adds setup and maintenance.
Performance
A default Ghost site is fast without tuning. WordPress can be just as fast on a well-configured VPS (page caching, PHP 8.x, Redis), but heavy themes and plugins can easily slow it down. See WordPress TTFB.
Self-hosting requirements
Ghost:
- Ubuntu LTS, Node.js (the supported LTS version), MySQL 8, Nginx, and Ghost-CLI.
- At least 1 GB RAM (2 GB recommended, especially during upgrades).
- Mail: SMTP for transactional emails (logins, signups), plus Mailgun for bulk newsletters.
- Install guide: install Ghost on a VPS.
WordPress:
- PHP 8.x with PHP-FPM, MySQL or MariaDB, and Nginx or Apache.
- 1–2 GB RAM for a small site, more with WooCommerce or memberships.
- Guide: WordPress server requirements.
Both run comfortably on a small VPS. See WordPress VPS hosting.
Migration between them
- WordPress → Ghost: the official Ghost WordPress migration plugin exports posts, pages, tags and images. Members can be imported via CSV. Redirect old URLs that change.
- Ghost → WordPress: export JSON from Ghost, and import with a converter or plugin. Expect manual cleanup of formatting and images.
Plan redirects for any changed URLs, to keep search rankings. See WordPress redirects.
Costs (self-hosted)
Both are free software. Running costs are the VPS, the domain, backups, and email sending:
- Ghost’s newsletter costs scale with the number of subscribers and emails sent (bulk email provider).
- WordPress costs scale with premium plugins and themes you choose (and the email service if you add newsletters).
Verdict
| Use case | Pick |
|---|---|
| Newsletter-first publication, paid subscriptions | Ghost |
| Personal blog, minimal maintenance | Ghost (or a lean WordPress) |
| Business site with many features | WordPress |
| Online store | WordPress + WooCommerce |
| Need a specific plugin ecosystem | WordPress |
Related: headless WordPress and static vs dynamic sites.