Ghost Website Examples: Who Uses Ghost?

Ghost in Production

Ghost powers publications of all sizes — from individual writers to major organizations. Seeing real-world examples helps you understand what Ghost does well and what kinds of publications thrive on the platform.

Here are notable Ghost-powered websites across different categories.

Technology and Software

The Cloudflare Blog

Cloudflare, one of the internet’s largest infrastructure companies, runs its engineering blog on Ghost. Their blog covers technical deep-dives, product announcements, and internet security analysis. Choosing Ghost for a company blog of this scale signals confidence in Ghost’s performance and reliability at high traffic volumes.

FreeCodeCamp

FreeCodeCamp — the world’s largest coding education nonprofit with 583,000+ followers — migrated from Medium to self-hosted Ghost in 2019. The move was driven by Medium’s pressure to paywall their free educational content. On Ghost, FreeCodeCamp maintains full control over their content, design, and monetization (or deliberate lack of it).

OpenAI

OpenAI uses Ghost for its research blog. When the organization behind ChatGPT and GPT-4 chooses a publishing platform, it says something about Ghost’s technical credibility. The blog publishes research papers, safety updates, and product announcements.

Buffer

Buffer, the social media management platform, uses Ghost for its blog. Buffer’s content strategy relies heavily on SEO-driven traffic — their articles on social media marketing rank consistently well. Ghost’s built-in SEO tools support this strategy without plugin dependencies.

Media and Publishing

Platformer

Casey Newton’s Platformer is one of the most prominent Ghost-powered independent publications. Covering Silicon Valley and tech policy, Platformer migrated from Substack to Ghost in 2023. Newton cited wanting more control over his publication’s design, brand, and subscriber data. The publication runs on paid memberships through Ghost’s native Stripe integration.

The Browser

The Browser is a curation newsletter that recommends five outstanding articles daily. Running on Ghost, they use the membership system for paid subscribers while keeping the daily newsletter free. The publication demonstrates Ghost’s strength in the newsletter-first publishing model.

Nerd Fitness

Nerd Fitness, a health and fitness community with millions of readers, uses Ghost. Their content combines long-form guides with community membership, leveraging Ghost’s content gating and membership tiers for premium content.

Non-Profits and Education

Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)

The EFF uses Ghost to publish their digital rights news and analysis. As a nonprofit focused on internet civil liberties, they benefit from Ghost’s own nonprofit structure and commitment to open-source principles.

Stanford Internet Observatory

Stanford’s Internet Observatory uses Ghost for its research publications. Academic institutions often need reliable, fast publishing platforms that handle structured content well — Ghost’s clean editor and SEO tools serve this use case.

Independent Writers and Creators

iA (Information Architects)

iA, the company behind the popular iA Writer app, uses Ghost for their blog. Their posts on writing, technology, and design reflect Ghost’s strength as a platform for thoughtful, long-form content. The iA blog design demonstrates what a well-customized Ghost theme can achieve.

Matt Birchler

Matt Birchler runs BirchTree, a technology blog, on Ghost. As a one-person publication covering Apple, tech, and productivity, his site demonstrates Ghost’s suitability for independent publishers who want full control over their platform.

What These Examples Have in Common

Looking across these examples, patterns emerge:

Content is the product. Every Ghost site in this list exists primarily to publish content — not to sell physical products, book appointments, or showcase a portfolio. Ghost excels when publishing is the core activity.

SEO matters. Publications like Buffer, FreeCodeCamp, and Nerd Fitness rely on search traffic. Ghost’s automatic sitemaps, structured data, and clean HTML support content that ranks.

Independence is valued. Platformer leaving Substack, FreeCodeCamp leaving Medium — these migrations reflect a pattern of publications choosing ownership over convenience. Ghost’s open-source, nonprofit structure attracts publishers who want to control their platform permanently.

Memberships drive revenue. Publications like Platformer and The Browser monetize through Ghost’s native paid memberships at 0% platform fee. This direct revenue model is increasingly popular as publishers move away from advertising and algorithmic distribution.

What You Can Learn From These Sites

Design Variety

No two Ghost sites look alike. This is the opposite of Substack (where every publication shares the same template) or Medium (uniform design for everyone). Ghost’s theme system enables distinct visual identities.

Performance at Scale

Cloudflare, FreeCodeCamp, and OpenAI handle significant traffic. Ghost’s architecture — Node.js, aggressive caching, and clean HTML output — supports high-traffic publications without the performance issues that plague WordPress sites loaded with plugins.

Migration Path

Several of the most notable Ghost publications migrated from other platforms:

• From Medium: FreeCodeCamp, Signal v. Noise (Basecamp)
• From Substack: Platformer
• From WordPress: Multiple publications citing plugin fatigue and security concerns

Ghost provides migration tools for WordPress and Substack, making the transition practical.

Build Your Own

Ghost is available to everyone — from individual bloggers to major organizations. Ghost(Pro) starts at $15/month, or self-host for the cost of a VPS ($4-6/month).

The examples above share one thing: they all invested in their publication’s visual identity. A professional theme makes the difference between a site that looks like a template and a publication that looks like a brand.

Our themes are built for the same publishing goals: content-first design, membership support, dark mode, and multiple post layouts. Starting at $69.

Browse Ghost themes →