Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Formspark VS Ghost

Compare Formspark VS Ghost and see what are their differences

Note: These products don't have any matching categories. If you think this is a mistake, please edit the details of one of the products and suggest appropriate categories.

Formspark logo Formspark

A reliable backend for your HTML forms.

Ghost logo Ghost

Ghost is a fully open source, adaptable platform for building and running a modern online publication. We power blogs, magazines and journalists from Zappos to Sky News.
  • Formspark Landing page
    Landing page //
    2021-11-05
  • Ghost Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-10-10

Formspark

$ Details
freemium $25.0 / One-off (50,000 submissions)
Release Date
2019 January

Ghost

Website
ghost.org
$ Details
paid Free Trial $36.0 / Monthly (100k views/month, 2 users)
Release Date
-
Startup details
Country
United Kingdom

Formspark features and specs

  • Ease of Use
    Formspark is designed to be user-friendly, requiring minimal setup and coding knowledge. Users can quickly create forms and collect submissions without needing a backend server.
  • Customizable
    Offers a high degree of customization, allowing users to tailor the appearance and functionality of forms to match their needs and branding.
  • Integrations
    Supports integration with popular tools and services, enabling automation and ease of data management. This includes services like Slack, Zapier, and email notifications.
  • Security
    Provides a secure way to handle form submissions with features like spam protection and SSL encryption, ensuring data privacy.
  • No Backend Required
    Eliminates the need for a backend server to handle form submissions, as all data is managed by Formspark, reducing development complexity.

Possible disadvantages of Formspark

  • Cost
    While there is a free tier, advanced features and higher usage limits require a paid subscription, which may not be ideal for all budgets.
  • Limited Offline Functionality
    As a cloud-based solution, Formspark requires an internet connection to function, which may be a limitation for users needing offline access.
  • Dependency on a Third Party
    Relying on an external service means that any downtime or service issues with Formspark can affect form availability and data collection.
  • Privacy Concerns
    Since data is routed through and stored by Formspark, some users may have concerns about where their data is stored and how it is used.
  • Feature Limitations
    Compared to building a custom solution, Formspark may lack certain advanced features or specific customizations some developers might seek.

Ghost features and specs

  • User-Friendly Interface
    Ghost offers a clean and intuitive interface that makes content management straightforward, even for those without technical expertise.
  • Speed and Performance
    Ghost is built on modern technology like Node.js which makes it faster and more efficient compared to some traditional CMS platforms.
  • SEO Optimized
    Ghost comes built-in with SEO features like clean URLs, meta tags, and sitemaps which help in improving search engine rankings.
  • Customizable Themes
    Ghost supports a variety of themes that can be easily customized to fit the branding and functionality needs of a website.
  • Markdown Support
    Content creation in Ghost is made easy with Markdown support, allowing writers to focus on text rather than formatting.

Possible disadvantages of Ghost

  • Limited Plugin Ecosystem
    Compared to WordPress, Ghost has a more limited selection of plugins, which might restrict some functionalities users are looking for.
  • Higher Hosting Costs
    Ghost's official hosting is relatively expensive, making it less suitable for users on a tight budget.
  • Technical Knowledge Requirement
    While Ghost is user-friendly, setting it up on a custom server can require a higher level of technical knowledge compared to some other platforms.
  • Less Community Support
    The user community for Ghost is smaller compared to more established platforms like WordPress, which can make it harder to find support and resources.
  • Limited Ecommerce Capabilities
    Ghost is primarily a publishing platform and lacks the more advanced eCommerce functionalities that other CMS platforms might offer out of the box.

Analysis of Ghost

Overall verdict

  • Ghost is a highly regarded platform for serious bloggers and publishers who want a minimalistic yet powerful content management system. It is especially beneficial for those who prefer a distraction-free writing environment with the capability to scale and customize as their needs grow.

Why this product is good

  • Ghost is a popular open-source platform designed for professional bloggers and publishers. It is known for its clean design, speed, and ease of use. Ghost offers robust features for content creation, management, and distribution while focusing on providing an optimal writing experience. Additionally, Ghost is built on modern technology stacks and offers flexibility through themes and integrations. It also supports membership and subscription models, making it ideal for those looking to monetize their content.

Recommended for

  • Professional bloggers
  • Content creators looking for a minimalist interface
  • Publishers seeking to monetize their content
  • Developers looking for an open-source platform
  • Organizations that require a fast and reliable CMS
  • Writers who value a focused writing experience

Formspark videos

No Formspark videos yet. You could help us improve this page by suggesting one.

Add video

Ghost videos

Why I Moved My Blog From WordPress to Ghost

More videos:

  • Review - Ghost review - CMS for creators to build a membership

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Formspark and Ghost)
Form Builder
100 100%
0% 0
Blogging
0 0%
100% 100
Forms And Surveys
100 100%
0% 0
CMS
0 0%
100% 100

User comments

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Reviews

These are some of the external sources and on-site user reviews we've used to compare Formspark and Ghost

Formspark Reviews

We have no reviews of Formspark yet.
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Ghost Reviews

Comparing 9 WordPress alternatives & competitors in 2024
Ghost specializes in creating a monetized blogging platform. Based on their subscription status, readers can create user profiles, sign up for newsletters, and browse your entire blogging calendar. The platformโ€™s singular focus on blogging makes it great for individuals and small teams, but it lacks features like real-time collaboration that are necessary for larger companies.
Source: webflow.com
19 Best WordPress Alternatives in 2025
Ghost is known for its simplicity and focus on content creation. It's a great option for writers and creators who want a clean and distraction-free environment to publish their work.
Source: www.pixpa.com
7 Best Buy Me a Coffee Alternatives
If you donโ€™t already have a website, Ghost may be an appealing option as a Patreon alternative. However, customizations are limited, and youโ€™ll need to choose a pre-built design from the theme library. There are a few themes available, but most are priced from around $80 to $150. The Ghost API also gives you a way to publish content you create on the platform to another...
Source: wpforms.com
Top 10 Web Content Management Systems
Ghost is here as one of the first entries that can be classified as a pure headless CMS. Ghost is not only one of the best headless CMS options, but it also does so while being focused primarily on the blogger community. So if you have or are thinking about starting a large blogging operation featuring many different presentation layers, then Ghost is definitely for you....
Source: cloudzy.com
25+ Medium Alternative Platforms for Publishing Articles
Ghost open-source blogging and the indirect medium alternative platform. Its interface makes blogging easy for users, but also offers SEO tools and other plugins that are built into the platform. This makes it simple for users to publish high-quality content without technical difficulties.
Source: forgefusion.io

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Ghost seems to be a lot more popular than Formspark. While we know about 196 links to Ghost, we've tracked only 5 mentions of Formspark. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.

Formspark mentions (5)

  • Self-Hostable Form Back End โ€“ OSS Alternative to Formspree
    In case others are looking for a cheaper alternative to Formspree, I've been using https://formspark.io/ for all my websites [1] [2] [3] I paid $25 a few years ago (can't even remember when) and I still have 47k out of the 50k submission credits I bought. But I love to see a self-hostable alternative available, especially one that's as easy to use as running a `docker-compose` command. Sometimes you just need that... - Source: Hacker News / over 1 year ago
  • How do I receive emails from users who want to contact me
    Formspark is a great service for this with a generous free tier. If you end up scaling up and need more and/or advanced transactional emails you may consider an email API like SendGrid, Amazon SES, or Waypoint. Source: almost 3 years ago
  • Email API other than Mailgun or SendGrid
    Try https://formspark.io/, works good for me ๐Ÿ‘. Source: over 3 years ago
  • free-for.dev
    Formspark.io - Form to Email service, free plan allows unlimited forms, 250 submissions per month, support by Customer assistance team. - Source: dev.to / over 3 years ago
  • where/how to find web dev help for -designing- and building forms?
    You don't necessarily need to hire a dev to build these things. Perhaps you could train an assistant to use typeform.com or formspark.io and embed those forms in the right places on your website? Source: over 4 years ago

Ghost mentions (196)

  • Local Journalism Is How Democracy Shows Up Close to Home
    Digital production has lowered the cost, and the Ghost platform in particular is a great value for small publishers, bundling together the blog, newsletter and subscriptions in one package, even now including ActivityPub federation. And Ghost themselves a non-profit org that doesn't mark up the Stripe transaction fees! One local news outlet recently switched to that, saving about %5 on Patreon fees and a second is... - Source: Hacker News / 7 months ago
  • Bye Bye Big Tech: How I Migrated to an Almost All-EU Stack (and Saved 500โ‚ฌ/Year)
    Https://ghost.org โ€” Open-source run by a non-profit headquartered in Singapore. - Source: Hacker News / 7 months ago
  • Ask HN: Looking for Headless CMS Recommendation
    If you're hell-bent on headless, I can personally recommend 11ty (https://www.11ty.dev/) and hugo (https://gohugo.io/). That said, for non-technical admins, you probably want a user interface. For that, Ghost (https://ghost.org/) and Grav (https://getgrav.org/). Or Wordpress! - Source: Hacker News / 11 months ago
  • Typepad Is Shutting Down
    They should provide an option to move to https://ghost.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 11 months ago
  • Build an analytics agent to analyze your Ghost blog traffic with the Vercel AI SDK and Tinybird
    In this post, I'll show you how to build an agent with sufficient contextual understanding of underlying analytics data - and the tools to query it - so that you can have a chat with your data (any data!). Specifically, I'll build a simple analytics agent for a blog - hosted on the open-source publishing platform Ghost. The agent will tell us which content is performing the best, and why. - Source: dev.to / 12 months ago
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What are some alternatives?

When comparing Formspark and Ghost, you can also consider the following products

Formspree.io - Just send your form to our URL and we'll forward it to your email.

WordPress - WordPress is web software you can use to create a beautiful website or blog. We like to say that WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.

Basin - Collect form submissions, filter spam, and automate workflows โ€” no backend required.

Medium - Welcome to Medium, a place to read, write, and interact with the stories that matter most to you.

Forminit - The complete headless backend API for your </form>

Blogger - Publish your passions, your way. Create a unique and beautiful blog. Itโ€™s easy and free.