Why I chose Ghost over WordPress for this blog

I've been working with WordPress professionally for years. I've built sites on it, optimised sites on it, fixed sites on it, and spent more hours than I care to admit staring at plugin conflicts, bloated page builders, and security updates that break things they weren't supposed to touch. So when it came to setting up my own blog, the answer was never going to be WordPress.

That probably sounds harsh. WordPress powers a huge chunk of the internet and there are genuinely good reasons for that. But when you work with it day in, day out for clients, you develop a clear-eyed view of its strengths and its baggage. For a personal blog, the baggage wasn't worth it.

What I considered first

I looked at Substack. It's the obvious choice if you want zero friction — sign up, start writing, done. The problem is you're entirely on their platform, on their terms, with their branding, and their URL. That might be fine for a newsletter-first publication, but for a personal site where I want full control over how it looks and how it's found, it felt like the wrong trade-off. Substack is also increasingly newsletter-centric in a way that didn't match what I was trying to build.

I also considered Astro, which sits at the opposite end of the spectrum. It's a static site generator — fast, flexible, and beloved by developers. I can see the appeal. But setting up and maintaining a custom Astro site requires a level of ongoing technical investment I didn't want to give to a personal blog. I spend enough time in the technical weeds professionally. The last thing I wanted was to be configuring build pipelines on a Sunday evening instead of writing.

Ghost ended up being the obvious middle ground.

Why Ghost

The headline reason is that Ghost is built specifically for publishing. Not for building ecommerce stores, not for running membership sites, not for powering enterprise intranets — for writing and publishing content. That focus shows everywhere. The editor is clean and fast. The admin is straightforward. There's no plugin library to get lost in, no page builder to wrestle with, no theme marketplace full of bloated options that slow your site to a crawl.

Speed is a big one for me. Coming from an SEO background, I'm acutely aware of how much page speed matters — both for search rankings and for the experience of the person actually reading your content. Ghost is fast out of the box in a way that WordPress, with its typical stack of plugins and a heavyweight theme, rarely is without significant optimisation work.

Cost is also worth mentioning. Self-hosting Ghost on a VPS is remarkably affordable compared to a fully loaded WordPress setup where you're paying for hosting, premium plugins, a theme, potentially a CDN, and a security plugin — the costs add up quickly and the value isn't always there.

The other thing I genuinely appreciate is what Ghost doesn't have. No plugins means no plugin conflicts. No sprawling admin means no time wasted clicking through menus to find the thing you actually need. No bloat means the site stays fast as it grows. For someone who knows exactly what WordPress looks like under the bonnet, the absence of all that is genuinely refreshing.

What Ghost isn't

It's worth being honest about the trade-offs. Ghost has a smaller ecosystem than WordPress, which means fewer themes and fewer integrations. If you need very specific functionality — complex membership tiers, advanced ecommerce, highly custom layouts — you'll hit limits faster than you would with WordPress.

It's also not the right choice if you need a website rather than a blog. Ghost is a publishing platform first. If your primary need is a services page, a portfolio, or a complex multi-purpose site, WordPress or a dedicated website builder is probably a better fit.

For a personal blog where the content is the point? Ghost is excellent. It gets out of the way and lets you write, which is exactly what I needed.

Would I recommend it?

If you're setting up a personal blog or a content-led publication and you've got even a basic comfort level with web tools, yes. If you're a WordPress developer who's fed up with the overhead of maintaining sites for clients and wants something cleaner for your own writing — absolutely yes.

If you're a complete beginner who wants maximum hand-holding and the largest possible community for support, WordPress or Substack might still be the easier starting point. But if you know what you're doing and you want a platform that respects your time, Ghost is well worth a look.

How I'm running it

One thing worth noting — I'm self-hosting Ghost on a VPS rather than using Ghost Pro, their managed hosting service. I initially looked at DigitalOcean but ran into their email sending restrictions, which is a known issue for self-hosted Ghost installs that need to send transactional emails. I ended up going with Hetzner instead — better value, no email restrictions, and the specs I'm running (2 vCPU, 4GB RAM, 40GB local disk) are more than enough for a personal blog at a fraction of the cost of Ghost Pro.

I'm using the Dawn theme and so far, no complaints.