Software Alternatives, Accelerators & Startups

Ghost VS Cargo

Compare Ghost VS Cargo and see what are their differences

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.

Cargo logo Cargo

Cargo Collective is a web publishing platform that creates and offers accessible tools online.
  • Ghost Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-10-10
  • Cargo Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-10-23

Ghost

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

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.

Cargo features and specs

  • Design Flexibility
    Cargo offers a wide range of customizable templates, allowing users to create visually appealing and unique websites.
  • User-Friendly Interface
    The platform features an intuitive drag-and-drop interface, making it accessible for users with varying levels of technical expertise.
  • Integrated E-commerce
    Cargo provides tools for setting up online stores, including options for product management, payment processing, and more.
  • Responsive Design
    Websites built with Cargo are automatically optimized for mobile devices, ensuring a good user experience across all screen sizes.
  • Custom Domains
    Users can connect their own custom domain names to their Cargo websites, enhancing branding and professionalism.

Possible disadvantages of Cargo

  • Cost
    Cargo is a premium service with subscription fees, which may be a barrier for some users, especially those looking for a free solution.
  • Limited Blogging Tools
    Compared to other website builders, Cargo's blogging features are relatively basic and may not meet the needs of prolific bloggers.
  • Learning Curve
    While the interface is user-friendly, some advanced customization options can be complex, requiring time to learn and master.
  • Feature Limitations
    Some advanced features might be missing or limited compared to competitors, potentially requiring additional tools or plugins.
  • Customer Support
    While support is available, some users report slower response times or less comprehensive assistance compared to other services.

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

Analysis of Cargo

Overall verdict

  • Cargo is a good option for individuals and small businesses seeking a visually driven website builder that emphasizes design and customization. It may not be the best choice for those prioritizing e-commerce or complex backend functionalities, but for portfolio and creative sites, it stands out as a solid choice.

Why this product is good

  • Cargo is a website builder known for its aesthetically pleasing and minimalist design options, making it a popular choice among artists, designers, and other creatives. It offers a range of customizable templates and a user-friendly interface that caters to both beginners and professionals. The platform provides flexibility, allowing users to easily change the structure and design of their websites, and it supports various media types, enhancing its appeal for portfolios and visually oriented projects.

Recommended for

  • Artists
  • Designers
  • Photographers
  • Creative professionals looking to showcase portfolios
  • Individuals who value design and aesthetics in their web presence

Ghost videos

Why I Moved My Blog From WordPress to Ghost

More videos:

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

Cargo videos

CARGO (2018) Ending Explained + Virus Theory

More videos:

  • Review - Cargo Netflix Review
  • Review - Cargo - Let Me Explain

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Ghost and Cargo)
Blogging
96 96%
4% 4
CMS
88 88%
12% 12
Development
0 0%
100% 100
Blogging Platform
100 100%
0% 0

User comments

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Reviews

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

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

Cargo Reviews

We have no reviews of Cargo yet.
Be the first one to post

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Ghost should be more popular than Cargo. It has been mentiond 196 times since March 2021. 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.

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 / 6 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 / 6 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 / 10 months ago
  • Typepad Is Shutting Down
    They should provide an option to move to https://ghost.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 10 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 / 11 months ago
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Cargo mentions (37)

  • Do I really have to choose between a working mail and working SSL?
    I have a domain with a mail on strato.de (S) and a website on cargo.site (C). Source: over 2 years ago
  • How to point A-Record to an IP & NS-Record mail problem
    I had struggles adding my webmail to a mail service and according to my webhost that was because I had the NS-Records pointed to my external website-host (where I built my website: https://cargo.site/). So I pointed the NS-Records back to the webhost and was told to point the domain to my site via A-Records (IP-adress) instead. Then I tried to ping my website to find out the IP adress and pointed my domains... Source: over 2 years ago
  • Absolute noob here, Iโ€™m a spanish filmmaker and would like to know which type of software or coding system this webpage was most likely created with!
    As u/purpleornavy commented, you can use https://builtwith.com/ to find out what technologies were used to create a website. It appears the website you linked is created with cargo.site. If you look on their wesite in the templates section, you can actually find a template that is pretty similar to the website you linked. Source: about 3 years ago
  • Does anybody think web design is complete shit compared to what it used to be?
    I like Cargo for this reason. Their templates are unique and much more intended for a โ€œcreativesโ€ market. They offer discounts to students in the top design and art schools. My web developer professor this semester at Pratt talked a lot about this exact concept, though. He encouraged us to get creative and gave examples showing sites from the flash era. The websites a lot of people came up with in the class were... Source: about 3 years ago
  • DNS Lookup and Checker Tool - Test and Troubleshoot DNS Issues and Records
    Hey, loving your tool and have been using it a LOT recently. I'm a newbie to a lot of web management of DNS etc., so this might be an easy one: but when I look up my domain for example https://www.nslookup.io/domains/kristiankruse.com/dns-records/ it doesn't find any CNAME records, why is that? It's a cargo.site site so has to use their DNS Manager. Assuming that's why, but still wondered. Also, if you had... Source: over 3 years ago
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What are some alternatives?

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

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.

about.me - About.me lets you quickly build simple and visually elegant splash pages that points visitors to your content from around the web. Get started today.

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

VuePress - A static site generator by Vue.js ๐Ÿ› ๏ธ

Drupal - Drupal - the leading open-source CMS for ambitious digital experiences that reach your audience across multiple channels. Because we all have different needs, Drupal allows you to create a unique space in a world of cookie-cutter solutions.

DEV.to - Where software engineers connect, build their resumes, and grow.