Ghost

Ghost wants to be the anti-Substack¹, the platform for Serious Writers who wouldn't be caught dead using something as pedestrian as Medium, and you know what? They've actually pulled it off without making me want to throw my laptop into traffic. The pitch is refreshingly straightforward—turn your audience into a business—without the usual creator-economy horseshit about "building your personal brand" or "monetizing your passion."² This is software for people who already know they can write and just need the plumbing to work, which is both its greatest strength and most limiting factor. The open-source angle isn't just marketing wank either; it's a genuine philosophical stance that says "we're not going to hold your content hostage," which in 2024 feels almost quaint in its basic human decency.

What strikes me about Ghost's approach is how it sidesteps the typical creator-platform power dynamic where you're basically sharecropping on someone else's digital plantation³. You can self-host this thing, which means Ghost can't suddenly decide to nuke your account because you wrote something that made their advertisers nervous. The pricing model is transparent—none of that "contact us for enterprise pricing" bullshit that makes you feel like you're buying a used car—and the cuts they take from paid subscriptions (5% + payment processing) are reasonable enough that you don't feel like you're being actively robbed⁴. The templates actually look like places where humans might want to read things, rather than the usual creator-economy aesthetic of aggressive fonts and call-to-action buttons that scream at you like a carnival barker having a breakdown.

But here's where Ghost gets genuinely interesting: it doesn't pretend to be everything to everyone, which is basically a miracle in the current platform landscape⁵. If you're a YouTuber looking to diversify into newsletters, great. If you're a local news outlet trying not to die, perfect. If you're a professional blogger who needs to eat, Ghost has your back. The platform acknowledges that different creators have different needs without trying to force everyone into the same growth-hacking, funnel-optimizing template that makes most creator tools feel like digital pyramid schemes. The integration options are extensive without being overwhelming, and the fact that they actually link to case studies of publications like 404 Media and Platformer suggests they understand their user base isn't looking for another way to sell courses about selling courses.

The creator tools themselves are sophisticated enough for serious publishing without requiring a computer science degree to operate⁶. You can set up paid tiers, manage email lists, track analytics, and handle all the business-y stuff that usually makes creative people want to give up and become accountants. The mobile editing experience doesn't make you want to commit violence, which honestly puts Ghost ahead of about 90% of publishing platforms. Most importantly, the system seems designed around the assumption that creators are adults who can make their own decisions about monetization, rather than treating them like children who need to be guided through an elaborate digital allowance system.

Ghost's biggest limitation is also its greatest feature: it assumes you already know what you're doing⁷. This isn't a platform for someone who needs their hand held through the process of "finding their voice" or "building their audience from zero." If you're starting from nothing, Ghost will happily take your money and provide excellent tools, but it won't teach you how to write or magically generate an audience. It's a publishing platform, not a business coach, and that clarity of purpose is both refreshing and potentially alienating for creators who've been conditioned to expect their tools to also be their therapists, marketing departments, and life coaches.