How much does Ghost hosting cost? 👻

I have a disclamer for you: it does not costs me anything actually to have a Ghost instance. As I wrote in some previous posts, I use Ghost primarily for its editor and its Content API. Coupled with Eleventy, my website is generated from the ground up every time I write a new blog post.

Even if this solution does not cost me money, it costs me a more precious currency: time. The time to code how I want my website to be generated. If I want to do my other projects, maybe I should be more careful with my time. 🙈

So, I was wondering, how much would it cost me to use only a Ghost instance hosted somewhere? Let's find out!

Ghost.org

I now remember why I was looking to find a cheaper alternative to host my blogs... The first plan, named Basic, starts at 36 USD per month! 😱 It comes with all the features of Ghost, with a maximum of:

• 100k views per month
• 2 staff users
• and 1000 members.

When paying annually, Ghost team offers a 20% discount. So it would cost 29 USD per month for an annual cost of 345 USD. 🤢

For personal blogs, like mine, it is really not sustainable. For their defense; Ghost is marketed for professional bloggers. Since everybody has to start blogging before they become a professional, it would make sense to offer a smaller plan with fewer features for newcomers, right? 🤔

Lucky for me, I found a solution by hosting my blog on DigitalPress.

DigitalPress

DigitalPress offers a free plan, but it is supported by ads. If you want to remove them, you need to get their Starter plan, which costs around 20 CAD per month.

So if you want to know if Ghost is the right platform for you, I recommend starting here as you can easily get a blog up and running in a couple of minutes, and most importantly, for free. 💸

But, if you are an active blogger (or use a lot of images), you will quickly exceed their 1 GB data limit. You may need to decide quickly whether you want to upgrade or find a new hosting platform for your passion. ❤️‍🔥

Others hosting platforms

On their recently published article 7 Best Ghost Publishing Hosting Platforms for Your Business, Geekflare also lists five other alternatives that you could look up if you want.

Personally, I will add here two of these hosting platforms that I want to check someday:

• FastComet, a CPanel shared hosting for 10 USD per month
• DigitalOcean, the renowned company, offers a one-click droplet for 5 USD per month

As part of the DigitalOcean App Platform Hackathon challenge, I recently created an account on DigitalOcean for my What we are watching project. So there is a good chance that I will explore the platform more in the near futur and maybe, who knows, switch my hosting platform!

If you have use Ghost personally, where do you host it? 👻

Psst. I you want to try DigitalOcean products, you can use my _ referral link _ and get $100 in credits over 60 days. In return, I will get $25 once you have spent the same amount. It's a win-win situation. Thank you! 😉