Host Ghost without installing anything
A publishing platform built for things people read: an editor that stays out of the way, paid subscriptions through Stripe, and the newsletter sent from your own site.
Starting at €8.99/month
Introduction
Ghost installed, updated and backed up by us, on a machine in France. A modern publishing platform for a blog, a magazine or a newsletter. You install nothing and configure no server: the application is online a few minutes after you order, under your own name.
The plan that suits it is App Confort at €8.99/month incl. VAT — 4 GB of memory. Ghost runs a Node.js process in front of a MySQL database, and it does most of its work at publishing time: every uploaded image is re-cut into several sizes so the page stays light on a phone, and sending a newsletter to a few thousand subscribers occupies the machine for as long as it takes. Four gigabytes is what stops an illustrated article from slowing the site down while it goes live.
Nothing locks your writing in: Ghost exports the whole content set as a JSON file, images included, and its content API can serve the same articles elsewhere should you ever change the front end. In the other direction, official bridges exist from WordPress, Substack and Medium — that is usually where migrations start.
What Ghost can do
The Koenig editor
A blank page and a slash key to insert whatever you need: gallery, quote, link preview, toggle block, callout, call-to-action button, source code, raw HTML. It all happens from the keyboard, without looking away from the text.
Paid subscriptions through Stripe
You define tiers — free, monthly, yearly — and reserve certain posts for certain tiers. Payment goes through your own Stripe account, and the subscriber list stays in your database rather than a platform's.
The newsletter leaves from where the article lives
A post can go on the site, out to the list, or both. There are even email-only sends that never appear on the site. No more copy-pasting into a separate mailing tool.
Pages rendered on the server
The theme is written in Handlebars and rendered server-side, images are produced in several widths on upload, and the sitemap and metadata are generated as a matter of course. There is no stack of plugins to assemble in order to get a fast page.
What people actually use it for
Launching a paid newsletter
An independent journalist publishes twice a week, one piece for subscribers only. They collect through their own Stripe account and know every reader's address: if they move on one day, they leave with the list.
Sending an analysis note to clients
A consultancy reserves its monthly briefing for one subscription tier. Prospects read the first two paragraphs, clients read the rest, and nobody has a portal to administer.
Replacing a blog and a mailing tool with one
A charity used to keep a website on one side and a mailing list on the other, with two subscriptions and two interfaces. The post, written once, goes to both.
Keeping subscribers in your own database
A local news outlet refuses to let its readers belong to a platform that takes a cut and sets the rules. Here the member list is a table in your own database.
Publishing a product's release notes
A software team announces what shipped on a public site, with a newsletter for the users who ask for one and tags that make changes findable by module.
Hosted in France
In our own datacentre in Nouvelle-Aquitaine, which we operate ourselves. Your articles and your subscriber list stay in the country.
Frequently asked questions
Nothing. You choose the application, fill in the fields it asks for — often an email address and a name — and it goes online. Access arrives by email with the address and the credentials.
Yes. The official plugin installed on the WordPress side produces a file Ghost reads back: posts, pages, tags, authors and images come across. What does not come across are plugins, shortcodes and custom fields, because Ghost has no equivalent — those have to be rebuilt with editor blocks. Bridges also exist from Substack and Medium.
Two things need separating. Service emails — sign-in links, subscription confirmations — go through an ordinary SMTP server. Bulk delivery to your list goes through Mailgun: it is the only bulk provider Ghost supports. So plan for a Mailgun account the day you want to write to your subscribers; the site, the members and the payments work without one.
It depends what the site does. Ghost is excellent at things people read: blog, magazine, newsletter, subscriber base. What it does not have is custom content types, a plugin ecosystem, a shop, or native multilingual support. For a structured site with forms, a directory or business modules, WordPress or Joomla remain the better fit.
Yes, they are part of the service. A self-hosted application left un-updated is a security risk, not a saving.