Ghost vs Micro.blog

Ghost is an open-source blog and newsletter platform for professional publishers, with tools for publishing, memberships, analytics, and editorial workflows. It runs on the web and supports custom domains, theme customization, SEO tools, multilingual content, and CSV export. Publishers can send multiple email newsletters and offer free or paid memberships with monthly or yearly billing. The editor supports galleries, GIFs, video, audio, products, files, and bookmarks. Integrations include Stripe, Zapier, Slack, YouTube, Google Analytics, and GitHub. Paid plans start at $18/mo (annual), with a 14-day trial and no permanent free plan. Starter costs $18 a month, billed yearly, and includes 1,000 members, one staff user, and a 5 MB file upload limit. Ghost charges a 0% fee on publication revenue; payment processor fees still apply. Ghost(Pro) includes security protections, while all plans include device verification and email-based two-factor authentication.

Micro.blog combines blog hosting with a social timeline and community for publishing short posts, essays, photos, podcasts, reading updates and links. Its chronological timeline omits trends, ads, boosts, like counts and follower counts. Posts can be scheduled, and blog posts can automatically cross-post to services including Mastodon, Bluesky and Threads. Publishing tools include video, podcasts, custom pages, themes and custom domains; theme customization can use custom code. Micro.blog lists APIs including JSON, Micropub, Webmention, IndieAuth, Microsub and ActivityPub, available to third-party developers at no charge. Native companion apps are listed for macOS, iOS and Android, alongside web and API access. The service says it has no ads and does not sell user data. Its privacy policy says hosted blog visitor logs include IP address, browser version and requested path, retained for up to two months. A free plan and a seven-day trial for new users are listed; paid plans start at $5 per month. Analytics are not offered.