Ghost(Pro) vs self-hosted Ghost: pricing and what you take on

From ghost.org/pricing, checked on 30 October 2026. Publisher climbs with your audience, to $105 a month or $1,056 a year at 10,000 members, which is when Business starts to deserve a look. The full table by audience size is in Ghost vs WordPress. The plan also includes email sending with no limit on sends, a CDN, backups, and updates.

Prices and stack from Ghost’s hosting comparison, plus its configuration docs for Mailgun. Remember these figures are published by the company selling Ghost(Pro), and they’re starting prices. Mailgun and CDN bills depend on your volume, so get current prices from each provider. Ghost itself sums it up this way: for heavy users, self-hosting generally costs more, and for lightweight blogs it can be cheaper.

On Ghost(Pro), Ghost handles installation, weekly updates, server maintenance, SSL and security, with email support. Self-hosting moves all of that to you, and support is the community forum. In exchange you get SSH and database access, and you can change the core.

So the sum you need is the parts plus someone’s time. Our developers start from $20/h, invoiced in USD, GBP, EUR or INR, which gives you one way to value it. Your own team’s hourly cost may be higher. A few hours of server work a month can outweigh the difference between the two routes, unless the person is already looking after similar servers.

• Web analytics. Ghost’s Ghost-CLI install isn’t compatible with Ghost’s web analytics. You need the Docker Compose method, which Ghost describes as a preview.
• Social web features. Self-hosters can use Ghost’s hosted ActivityPub service, within limits of 2,000 followers, 2,000 following and 100 interactions a day. Beyond that, you run it yourself with Docker Compose.
• Data location or custom core. Self-hosting is the only way to control the server and database directly.
• A site under a subdirectory. Example: example.com/blog. Ghost’s pricing page treats this on Ghost(Pro) as a $50 a month add-on available only on Business, with your own reverse proxy.
• Funding. Ghost says Ghost(Pro) revenue funds Ghost’s development, which matters to some publishers.

For most company blogs and newsletters, we would start on Ghost(Pro) Publisher, because the parts are all there and nobody on your team has to own a server. We would self-host if you already run Linux servers well, you have a specific reason such as data location, or your site is light and doesn’t send bulk email.

Our Ghost development service works with either, and we can talk through yours. We have no published Ghost case study. Most of our work is delivered under NDA, so many projects cannot be named.