Luxe Themes
Why Bloggers Are Leaving WordPress for Ghost
WordPress costs more than you think once you add plugins for SEO, security, and email. Ghost includes everything bloggers need for $29/mo.
“WordPress Is Free” Is a $900/Year Lie
WordPress.org is free to download. That’s where the free part ends.
A blogger who wants what Ghost includes out of the box — hosting, SEO tools, email newsletters, paid memberships, security, backups, and a CDN — needs to assemble a stack of 8-10 plugins on top of WordPress. Each plugin costs money, requires updates, and introduces potential conflicts and security vulnerabilities.
Here’s what that stack actually costs for a mid-range WordPress.org blog in 2026:
| Component | Annual Cost |
|---|---|
| Managed hosting (SiteGround GrowBig) | ~$360 |
| Domain name | ~$18 |
| SEO plugin (Yoast Premium) | $99 |
| Security plugin (Wordfence Premium) | $119 |
| Backup plugin (UpdraftPlus Premium) | $70 |
| Caching plugin (WP Rocket) | $59 |
| Email newsletter (ConvertKit, 1K subs) | $300 |
| Total | ~$1,025/year |
Ghost Publisher costs $348/year (billed annually at $29/month) and includes every feature listed above. No plugins. No configuration. No annual renewals to track.
The gap widens every year as plugin prices increase and your subscriber list grows.
The Plugin Tax
WordPress has 60,000+ plugins. That sounds like a strength until you manage a production blog.
A typical WordPress blog requires plugins for SEO (Yoast or Rank Math), security (Wordfence), backups (UpdraftPlus), caching (WP Rocket), spam protection (Akismet), email delivery (WP Mail SMTP — because WordPress’s default PHP mail lands in spam folders), forms (WPForms), and database optimization (WP-Optimize). Want newsletters? Add Mailchimp or ConvertKit. Want paid memberships? Add MemberPress ($359/year at renewal).
That’s 10 plugins before you’ve written a single post. Every one of them:
- Needs regular updates (recommended every two weeks)
- Can conflict with other plugins or your theme
- Represents a potential security vulnerability
- May be abandoned by its developer at any time
In 2024, 1,614 plugins were removed from the WordPress repository for security reasons — roughly 4 per day. More than half of developers notified about vulnerabilities didn’t patch them before public disclosure.
Ghost takes a different approach: it has no plugin system. Every feature — newsletters, memberships, SEO, analytics — is built and maintained by the core team. No conflicts. No abandoned code. No update fatigue.
WordPress’s Security Problem Is Getting Worse
WordPress powers 43.4% of all websites. That makes it the largest attack surface on the internet.
The numbers from the 2025 Patchstack security report:
- 7,966 new vulnerabilities discovered in 2024 (34% increase over 2023)
- 96% of those vulnerabilities were in plugins, not WordPress core
- 43% could be exploited without authentication
- ~35% of vulnerabilities disclosed in 2024 remained unpatched in 2025
- 64% of WordPress site owners reported experiencing at least one security breach in 2025
In July 2025, WordPress dropped security support for versions 4.1 through 4.6 — the first time in its history. A Q4 2025 analysis showed a 45% increase in brute force attacks, largely driven by AI-enhanced botnets scanning for outdated plugins.
Breach cleanup costs start at $3,000 for minor incidents. Serious breaches run $120,000 to over $1 million.
Ghost(Pro) handles security automatically. The Ghost team manages all updates, SSL certificates, and server hardening. There’s no plugin ecosystem to create attack vectors, and the admin interface is architecturally separated from the public site.
The Gutenberg Problem
WordPress replaced its classic editor with Gutenberg (a block-based editor) in 2018. Seven years later, it has a 2-star rating on WordPress.org.
The Classic Editor plugin — whose only purpose is to undo the default WordPress editor — has 9 million active installs and a 4.5-star rating. When 9 million users install a plugin specifically to bypass your editor, the editor has a problem.
Ghost’s Koenig editor takes a different approach: a clean, Markdown-native writing environment with dynamic cards for rich content (images, video, embeds, code blocks, bookmarks). It’s designed for writers who want to write, not for developers who want to build page layouts.
When I tested both editors on the same 2,000-word article with images and embedded content, the Ghost editor felt like writing. Gutenberg felt like arranging furniture.
What Ghost Includes That WordPress Doesn’t
Built-In Newsletters
Ghost ships with a full email newsletter system. Write a post, choose your audience segment, and publish — it goes to your website and your subscribers’ inboxes simultaneously. Features include:
- Multiple newsletters per site with independent subscriptions
- Audience segmentation by free member, paid member, tier, or label
- Publish-only, email-only, or publish-and-email modes
- Open rate and click rate analytics per post
- Custom email design settings
On WordPress, you need an external newsletter service (Mailchimp starts at $13/month for 500 contacts, ConvertKit starts at $39/month for 1,000 subscribers) plus a plugin to connect it. Ghost includes unlimited email sends on every plan.
Paid Memberships with 0% Platform Fee
Ghost connects directly to your Stripe account. If a reader pays $10/month, you get $10 minus Stripe’s ~2.9% processing fee. Ghost takes nothing.
To replicate this on WordPress, you need MemberPress ($179.50 first year, $359/year renewal) plus a payment integration, plus a newsletter plugin to handle subscriber-only content. The WordPress stack costs more and does less.
Ghost supports multiple membership tiers — free, paid monthly, paid annually, and custom premium tiers — all configurable without code.
SEO Without Plugins
Ghost generates XML sitemaps, canonical URLs, structured data, Open Graph tags, and Twitter Cards automatically. Every post gets a clean URL structure and semantic HTML that search engines understand. You can customize meta titles, descriptions, and canonical URLs per post.
WordPress requires Yoast SEO ($99/year for Premium) or Rank Math to achieve the same functionality. Without an SEO plugin, WordPress generates none of this.
Performance Without Configuration
Ghost is built on Node.js and delivers strong performance without any caching plugins or CDN configuration. Independent benchmarks put Ghost at up to 1,900% faster than a comparable WordPress setup.
WordPress, built on PHP, needs WP Rocket or W3 Total Cache, plus a separate CDN, plus image optimization plugins to approach competitive load times. As of 2025, only 43-50% of WordPress sites pass Google’s Core Web Vitals.
Ghost(Pro) includes worldwide CDN, automatic SSL, and optimized caching on every plan.
Feature Comparison
| Feature | Ghost | WordPress (.org) |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting included | Yes (all Ghost(Pro) plans) | No — buy separately ($8-40+/mo) |
| Newsletter | Built-in, unlimited sends | Plugin required ($13-100+/mo) |
| Paid memberships | Built-in, 0% platform fee | MemberPress ($179-359/yr) |
| SEO tools | Built-in (sitemaps, meta, schema) | Yoast/Rank Math plugin ($0-99/yr) |
| Security | Managed, automatic updates | Your responsibility (plugins needed) |
| CDN | Included | Separate setup required |
| Backups | Automatic, included | Plugin required ($0-79/yr) |
| Caching | Built-in | Plugin required ($0-59/yr) |
| Plugin conflicts | None (no plugin system) | Common (60,000+ plugins) |
| Self-hosting | Yes (open-source, MIT) | Yes (open-source, GPL) |
Who Uses Ghost
Ghost powers publications for Apple, OpenAI, Cloudflare, Kickstarter, FreeCodeCamp, Duolingo, DuckDuckGo, Mozilla, and Sky News — organizations that chose it specifically for its focused publishing capabilities.
Pricing Reality
Ghost(Pro) (as of February 2026)
| Plan | Monthly (billed annually) | Members | Staff | Paid Memberships |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Starter | $15/mo | 1,000 | 1 | No |
| Publisher | $29/mo | 1,000 | 3 | Yes |
| Business | $199/mo | 10,000 | 15 | Yes |
All plans include hosting, SSL, CDN, backups, unlimited email sends, and a free custom domain.
Self-Hosted Ghost
Ghost is open-source under the MIT license. A $6-12/month VPS gives you full control with zero platform fees. You manage your own server and Mailgun account for email delivery.
The Math
For a blogger who wants hosting, newsletters, memberships, SEO, security, and backups:
- WordPress full stack: ~$85/month ($1,025/year)
- Ghost Publisher: $29/month ($348/year)
- Annual savings with Ghost: ~$677
The savings compound as your subscriber list grows, since email services like Mailchimp and ConvertKit charge by list size while Ghost includes unlimited sends.
When WordPress Still Makes Sense
WordPress is the right choice if you need:
- E-commerce with WooCommerce (Ghost doesn’t do online stores)
- Complex web applications beyond publishing
- A massive plugin ecosystem for specialized functionality
- Maximum design flexibility via page builders like Elementor or Divi
This article isn’t about WordPress being bad — it’s about WordPress being overkill for bloggers. If your primary goal is writing, building an audience, and monetizing through subscriptions, Ghost does it with less complexity and lower cost.
When Ghost Is the Better Choice
Ghost makes more sense if:
- You’re a blogger or newsletter writer, not building an e-commerce site
- You want newsletters and memberships without a plugin stack
- Security and maintenance overhead concerns you
- You’d rather write than manage a website
- You want predictable costs instead of annual plugin renewals
Making the Switch
Ghost can import WordPress content. The process:
- Export your WordPress posts via the built-in WordPress exporter
- Import into Ghost using the Ghost Admin panel
- Set up your custom domain
- Install a theme that matches your brand
- Configure your newsletter and membership settings
- Connect your Stripe account for paid subscriptions
The migration takes an afternoon. The ongoing time savings — no plugin updates, no security patches, no caching configuration — add up to hours every month.
Start with the Right Theme
When you move to Ghost, a premium theme transforms your publication from a default template into something that reflects your brand. Ghost’s theme system gives you what WordPress page builders promise but with far less complexity.
Our Shiro theme, for example, includes 7 color schemes, 9 post layouts, custom search, and membership pages — all without installing a single plugin.
Every Luxe theme includes dark mode, 46 language translations, and multiple post layouts, starting at $69.
For a detailed feature-by-feature comparison, see our Ghost vs WordPress breakdown.
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