# Ghost CMS

21 Hacker News commenters recommended Ghost CMS and 4 criticized it, November 2025 to November 2026. It was recommended in 7 of 13 months. It meets the Hacker Approved badge rule.

**Verdict:** People recommend Ghost as a good-value, open-source publishing platform that bundles a blog, newsletter and subscriptions. Common caveat: the newsletter feature has not worked well for some.

## Why people recommend it

- Balance of features and simplicity (2 comments): "used when a family or friend needs a simple site or blog" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46398487)) "hits a sweet spot of features and simplicity" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46489776))
- Blog, newsletter and subscriptions together (2 comments): "the Ghost platform in particular is a great value for small publishers, bundling together the blog, newsletter and subscriptions in one package" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46603611)) "Ghost blog includes newsletter for push." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49087381))
- Open source, can self-host (2 comments): "Open-source run by a non-profit headquartered in Singapore." ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46428637)) "Since it is open source, you can also host it on Hetzner" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49087148))

## What people warn about

- Newsletter feature has not worked well (1 comments): "Ghost newsletter never really worked well for me" ([source](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49088404))

## Alternatives hackers recommend

- [Substack](https://hackerapproved.com/p/substack.md): 87 recommend
- [Leaflet (leaflet.pub)](https://hackerapproved.com/p/leaflet.md): 22 recommend
- [Bear Blog](https://hackerapproved.com/p/bear-blog.md): 18 recommend
- [TextLog](https://hackerapproved.com/p/textlog.md): 16 recommend
- [Medium](https://hackerapproved.com/p/medium.md): 11 recommend

## Cite as

Hacker Approved, "Ghost CMS", https://hackerapproved.com/p/ghost/ (counts from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026).