Breaking Up with WordPress: Why I Moved to Ghost
Ditching Plugins, Updates, and Drama for a Platform That Just Works
Switching from WordPress to Ghost might feel like leaving a long-term relationship. WordPress has been reliable (most of the time), familiar, and packed with possibilities—but it’s also cluttered, high-maintenance, and maybe a little too dependent on third-party “friends” (looking at you, plugins).
Moving to Ghost, on the other hand, feels like stepping into a sleek, minimalist space where everything just works. No plugin drama, no endless updates—just a clean, focused platform built for creators like us.
If your website revolves around subscriptions, memberships, or premium content, Ghost is a particularly strong solution. Its all-in-one approach includes built-in tools for managing members, processing payments with Stripe, and sending newsletters—no third-party website logins required. Plus, Ghost’s lightweight design ensures your site loads quickly, which is great for user experience and SEO. It’s designed for creators who want to focus on publishing and monetizing content, not troubleshooting plugins.
This week, I’m sharing my journey from WordPress to Ghost: why I made the leap, the surprises (both good and bad), and why I think Ghost is a game-changer for authors looking to simplify their subscription services. Whether you’re just curious or ready to pack your virtual bags, I’ve got tips to make your transition seamless.
The First Big Decision: Self-Hosting vs. Managed Hosting
When moving to Ghost, the first question is whether to self-host or use the managed platform from Ghost.org. This decision depends on your budget, technical skills, and the size of your team or audience. Let’s break it down:
Ghost.org Managed Hosting
Ghost’s managed hosting is perfect for those who want a hands-off experience. It includes automatic updates, enterprise-grade security, and built-in tools for newsletters, memberships, and payments—all with no server maintenance required.
Here’s the pricing for managed plans (billed yearly):
Starter Plan ($9/month): Supports up to 500 members with 1 staff user. Great for solo creators just starting out.
Creator Plan ($25/month): Allows up to 1,000 members and 2 staff users, plus access to custom themes and integrations.
Team Plan ($50/month): Designed for teams with 5 staff users and up to 1,000 members, with priority support.
Business Plan ($199/month): Unlimited staff users and support for up to 10,000 members, with advanced configuration options.
For solo authors with small subscriber bases, the Starter or Creator plans are affordable and take the hassle out of managing a website. But for larger teams or publications, the cost increases significantly as you grow your membership base or need more staff users.
Self-Hosting Ghost
If you’re comfortable with some technical setup (or have someone on your team who is), self-hosting can save you a lot of money. For example, I host Ghost on Amazon Lightsail, which costs just $18/month for unlimited staff users and full control of the platform.
While self-hosting requires setting up a server and managing updates, once it’s running, it’s low-maintenance. For Indie Author Magazine, this approach was a no-brainer—our multi-author team and growing subscriber base made the managed plans too costly for what we needed. Self-hosting gave us the flexibility and scalability we were looking for without the steep price tag.
Why I Chose to Self-Host
Both options have their merits, but for me and Indie Author Magazine, the choice was clear. Self-hosting Ghost on Amazon Lightsail was about more than just cost savings.
It came down to my core ethos: don’t build on rented land.
When you self-host, you own your platform. You control the updates, the data, and the integrations. No one else’s business decisions or terms of service can dictate how you run your site. While self-hosting gives you control over your platform, it’s important to note that some restrictions still apply, particularly when it comes to payment processing.
For example, Ghost relies on Stripe for its built-in payment system. Stripe’s terms of service may pose challenges for authors who write “spicy” or adult-themed content, so it’s worth considering whether this will impact your ability to use Ghost out of the box. If Stripe isn’t an option for you, there are workarounds to integrate other payment providers—but they’re not as seamless as the native integration.
For me, Stripe works perfectly, and the overall autonomy of self-hosting remains a non-negotiable—especially for a growing publication like Indie Author Magazine.
Zapier Still Plays a Role
While Ghost comes with fantastic built-in features, like newsletters and Stripe integration for managing payments, we still rely on Zapier for a few key workflows:
Welcome Sequences: When a new subscriber joins, Zapier triggers a tailored welcome email series to help them get started.
Membership Backups: Our membership data is regularly backed up to Airtable via Zapier, giving us a failsafe in case of any platform issues.
Zapier gives us the ability to build on our self-hosted foundation with tailored automations that we own and control. Whether it’s syncing membership data to Airtable or creating a personalized welcome sequence, Zapier ensures our workflows stay flexible and adaptable—on our terms.
Out-of-the-Box Features That Shine
One of the reasons Ghost is such a powerful platform—whether self-hosted or managed—is its clean, built-in tools for publishing and monetization:
Newsletters: Send beautifully designed newsletters directly from your admin dashboard, track engagement, and eliminate the need for a full-featured separate ESP (like MailerLite or Mailchimp) for newsletters. However, you’ll still need an account to send newsletter emails with Mailgun. And you’ll need something for transactional emails like password resets or confirmations.
In my case, I opted for Amazon SES for transactional emails, which keeps costs low and performance high. That said, this was the one area where the setup gave me some trouble. Ghost’s documentation was helpful, but if you’re not used to dealing with DNS records or email authentication protocols, this step might require a bit of patience. Once it’s configured, though, it works seamlessly, and the built-in newsletter tool saves me countless hours by letting me manage everything in one place.
Stripe Integration: Easily manage memberships and paid subscriptions without relying on clunky plugins or external tools.
The key difference with self-hosting isn’t about missing out on these features (they’re all included in Ghost.org’s managed plans). It’s about ownership, control, and the freedom to build your platform on your terms.
Setup and Design: Getting Ghost Online
One of the things I appreciated about self-hosting Ghost on Amazon Lightsail was how straightforward the setup was. Lightsail comes with an installation package and step-by-step instructions for creating your database and admin account, so you can literally be online in under 20 minutes.
From there, you’ll go through the initial setup to configure your site name, contact information, and social media links. Once that’s complete, the next step is to point your domain name to your new Ghost site. This involves updating your DNS settings and making a few adjustments in Lightsail to ensure the domain resolves correctly.
Pro Tip:
Don’t set up Stripe connections, email integrations, or subscription packages until your domain name is live. If you connect these too early, you may end up having to reconnect them later to match your domain name—save yourself the hassle.
Once these foundational steps are complete (it took me about 1–2 hours), you’ll move on to designing your site.
Designing Your Ghost Site
Unlike WordPress, Ghost doesn’t have a drag-and-drop design builder, but it offers a variety of streamlined, professional themes to get you started. Ghost’s default theme is clean and functional, but if you’re looking for something more tailored, you can explore premium themes from places like Envato or Themeforest.
While there’s less design flexibility compared to WordPress (especially if you’re used to Elementor), Ghost themes are built for speed and simplicity, which means you’ll spend less time tinkering and more time focusing on your content. But you can still have some pretty impressive designs:
The Migration: Subscribers and Content
Once your site is set up, it’s time for the big task: migration. For me, this meant tackling two main challenges—migrating thousands of paid subscribers and hundreds of blog posts.
Migrating Subscribers
Since we had thousands of paid subscribers on WordPress Subscriptions, moving them to Stripe Subscriptions (which Ghost syncs and manages moving forward) required careful planning. I initially tried working with CSV files to import them into Stripe, but after DAYS of frustration, I realized there had to be a better way.
And then it hit me: automate it.
Here’s what I did:
I added the subscribers to Airtable to organize and clean up the data.
Once the new site was ready, I created a make.com scenario to automatically create the subscribers and connect them to Stripe.
This approach worked beautifully. Not only was it faster and more efficient, but it also created a backup in Airtable that I now update monthly for peace of mind.
Migrating Content
Migrating blog posts turned out to be more complicated than I expected. Since I used Elementor on WordPress, the exported content was full of messy, unnecessary code that Ghost wouldn’t accept. Ghost only supports HTML or Markdown, so hundreds of posts needed cleaning.
Enter make.com and an automation (linked below for paid subscribers) that saved the day:
I used WP All Export Pro to export the blog posts into Airtable.
I connected Airtable to ChatGPT via make.com to clean up the WordPress markup and strip out Elementor code.
While I was at it, I used ChatGPT to update the article titles to be more SEO-friendly—something I’d been meaning to do for a while.
Finally, I used make.com to standardize the featured images, tags, and meta data before importing the posts into Ghost.
This process wasn’t fast, but it was thorough. The end result? Clean, SEO-friendly posts ready for the new platform, and an automation I can now use for future migrations.
Wrapping It Up: Is Ghost Right for You?
Switching platforms is never an easy decision, but for me, Ghost has been a breath of fresh air. It’s fast, intuitive, and built for creators who want to focus on their content—not their tech stack. While there are some things I miss about WordPress (plugins, I’ll never forget you), the simplicity and efficiency of Ghost far outweigh the trade-offs.
Whether you’re managing a personal blog, building a subscription-based website, or running a multi-author publication like Indie Author Magazine, Ghost is a fantastic choice for cutting through the noise and getting back to what matters most: writing.
Have you tried Ghost? Have questions about your own site? Ask away in the comments or in a note!
Next Week: Managing Your ARC Team with Automation
Keeping track of ARC readers can be overwhelming—who’s received the book, who’s sent feedback, and who still needs a gentle nudge to leave their review? Next week, we’re diving into how automation can transform your ARC process.
From collecting signups to sending follow-ups and organizing reviews, I’ll show you how to set up a system that works for you—so you can spend less time chasing emails and more time celebrating those glowing reviews.