Ghost

What it does

Publish a blog, send a newsletter, sell paid memberships - all from one self-hosted platform. Subscribers live in your database, not behind an API. No 10% cut of your revenue.

Why we like it

Substack takes 10% of your paid subscriptions plus Stripe's fees. ConvertKit starts at $25/month and scales to $100+ fast. Ghost takes 0% of your revenue. You pay for a VPS ($5/month) and Stripe handles payments. For a 1,000-subscriber paid newsletter, that's $50/year vs $1,200+.

What it replaces

Substack, ConvertKit, Beehiiv, Memberful

Setup guide

Here's the setup, step by step. Publish a blog, send a newsletter, sell paid memberships - all from one self-hosted platform. Subscribers live in your database, not behind an API. No 10% cut of your revenue.

The code

This is the actual configuration you'll use. Lines you need to edit are highlighted.

# Install the Ghost CLInpm install ghost-cli@latest -g# Create a directory and installmkdir -p /var/www/ghost && cd /var/www/ghostghost install  ← the CLI does the rest# It will ask for your domain and set up SSL

Resource cost

Runs on a $5/month VPS (1GB RAM). Ghost's official CLI handles everything.