Ghost Analytics: Built-In and Third-Party

What Ghost Tracks Natively

Ghost includes built-in analytics on the Publisher plan and above. These focus on what matters for publishers: member growth, email performance, and content engagement. No external tools required.

On the Starter plan, analytics are limited to basic post views. Advanced analytics — including email performance and member conversion tracking — require Publisher ($29/month) or higher.

Ghost’s Built-In Dashboard

The Dashboard in Ghost Admin shows a real-time overview of your publication:

Member Analytics

Total members: Free and paid counts with growth over time
Net new members: New signups minus cancellations per period
MRR (Monthly Recurring Revenue): Total predictable monthly income from paid subscribers
Paid conversion rate: Percentage of free members upgrading to paid
Top converting posts: Which articles drive the most paid signups

Email Analytics

Per-newsletter and per-post email metrics:

Open rate: Percentage of recipients who opened the email
Click rate: Percentage who clicked at least one link
Per-link clicks: Which specific links in the email received clicks
Delivery stats: Total sent, delivered, opened, clicked
Feedback: Positive and negative reactions (if enabled in your newsletter settings)

Industry benchmarks: 35-45% open rate is healthy for subscriber newsletters, 2-5% click rate is solid. Ghost publishers typically outperform these averages because subscribers opted in directly.

Post Performance

For each published post:

Total views: Page views over time
Member signups from post: How many readers signed up after reading
Paid conversions from post: How many free members upgraded after reading
Email performance: If the post was sent as a newsletter, open and click metrics

This per-post attribution is valuable for understanding which content drives business results. A post with 500 views but 20 signups is more valuable than a post with 5,000 views and 2 signups.

Adding External Analytics

Ghost’s built-in analytics focus on member and email metrics. For broader website analytics (traffic sources, user behavior, geographic data, page flows), add a third-party analytics tool via code injection.

Google Analytics 4

The most comprehensive (and free) option. Add the GA4 snippet in Settings → Code injection → Site Header:

<script async src="https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=G-XXXXXXXXXX"></script>
<script>
  window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || [];
  function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);}
  gtag('js', new Date());
  gtag('config', 'G-XXXXXXXXXX');
</script>

GA4 provides:

Traffic sources and referrers
User demographics and geography
Page-level engagement metrics
User flow and navigation paths
Conversion tracking
Real-time visitor data

The trade-off: GA4 uses cookies and requires GDPR consent banners for EU visitors. The interface has a steep learning curve.

Privacy-Focused Alternatives

If you prefer analytics that do not track individual users or require cookie consent:

Plausible Analytics ($9/month):

<script defer data-domain="yourdomain.com" src="https://plausible.io/js/script.js"></script>

Lightweight (under 1KB script)
No cookies, no personal data collection
GDPR, CCPA, and PECR compliant without consent banners
Simple, clean dashboard
Open-source (self-hostable)

Fathom Analytics ($14/month):

<script src="https://cdn.usefathom.com/script.js" data-site="XXXXXXXX" defer></script>

Cookie-free tracking
EU isolation option (data stays in EU)
Simple dashboard focused on essential metrics
Lifetime plan available

Simple Analytics ($9/month):

No cookies, no personal data
Open-source option available
Minimal dashboard

Umami (Free, self-hosted):

Open-source, self-hosted analytics
Privacy-focused, no cookies
Runs on your own server alongside Ghost

Which to Choose

Need	Recommendation
Maximum data, free	Google Analytics 4
Privacy-first, paid	Plausible or Fathom
Self-hosted, free	Umami
Simple + lightweight	Plausible
Enterprise compliance	Fathom (EU isolation)

For most Ghost publishers, Plausible or Fathom alongside Ghost’s built-in member analytics covers everything you need. GA4 is worth the complexity if you need detailed user behavior data or run advertising campaigns.

Tracking Member Conversions

The most important metric for Ghost publishers is not page views — it is member conversions. Ghost tracks this natively:

Signup attribution: Ghost records which post or page triggered each signup
Conversion tracking: For paid upgrades, Ghost tracks which content led to the upgrade
Revenue attribution: Connect member signups to MRR impact

To see this data:

Go to Posts in Ghost Admin
Sort by Signups or Conversions
Identify your top-performing content

Use this data to write more content like your best converters. If long-form comparison articles drive signups, write more comparisons. If tutorials drive paid upgrades, write more tutorials.

Email Analytics in Detail

Ghost’s email analytics are more detailed than most dedicated newsletter platforms provide:

Open Rate Tracking

Ghost tracks email opens via a tracking pixel. Open rates are approximate (some email clients block tracking pixels), but they provide relative comparison between posts.

Declining open rates suggest subject line fatigue or list quality issues
Suddenly low open rates may indicate deliverability problems
Consistently high open rates indicate strong subscriber engagement

Click Tracking

Ghost tracks every link in your email individually. The per-link report shows:

Which links were clicked most
Click-through rate per link
Total clicks vs unique clicks

Use this to understand what content and CTAs resonate. If readers consistently click article links but ignore product links, your audience prefers educational content over promotional content.

Subscriber Engagement

Ghost segments subscribers by engagement level. In the Members section, you can filter by:

Active: Opened or clicked in recent emails
Inactive: No engagement in recent emails
New: Recently subscribed

This helps identify subscribers who may need re-engagement or who are candidates for a targeted campaign.

Analytics and Ghost Themes

Your theme can affect analytics accuracy:

Single-page applications (SPAs): If your theme uses client-side routing, standard analytics scripts may not track page transitions. Most Ghost themes use standard page loads, so this is rarely an issue.
Caching: Aggressive caching can affect real-time analytics accuracy. Ghost(Pro) handles caching appropriately for analytics.
Content loading: Lazy-loaded content may not trigger scroll-depth tracking in external analytics tools.

Premium themes that follow Ghost’s standard architecture work correctly with all analytics tools. Our themes use standard page loads and do not interfere with analytics tracking.