55.2k stars · MIT · v6.62.0 (2026-09-01)
The buy-the-assembled-thing answer for 'publish, email, and take payment for it', from a decade of shipping only that.
▶Repo detailsthe review · specs · pros & cons · install
What it is
A Node.js CMS built around publishing plus paid membership and newsletters — MIT-licensed, hosted for money at ghost.org, freely self-hostable. Every post can become an email; paid tiers happen inside Ghost via Stripe.
Why it matters
This is a deliberate tension with the Astro + Starlight + Listmonk + remark42 stack Editions 3-5 assembled. That stack is more flexible; Ghost is finished. If the goal is "get one article a week out and a newsletter attached," an out-of-the-box product beats the assembly. A hosted ghost.org tier at $9/month is a legitimate answer too — the choice here is buy vs. build vs. assemble, and Ghost is the "assembled" answer.
- Weekly releases (v6.62.0 two days ago)
- MIT, self-hostable; hosted paid tier exists as fallback
- Newsletter, membership and payment work out of the box — Listmonk does not do payment; Astro does not send email
- Node.js + MySQL (or SQLite for small installs) — a third database on the box
- Ghost editor replaces the markdown-in-git workflow you already know from Starlight
- Choosing this contradicts the assembled Astro stack; do not run both
Substack, Beehiiv, and a separate CMS plus newsletter tool
Twenty, via a webhook on every new member
Docker Compose or Ghost-CLI on the VPS.