Software Alternatives & Reviews

Ghost VS Discourse

Compare Ghost VS Discourse 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.

Discourse logo Discourse

Discourse is an open source discussion platform built for the next decade of the Internet.
  • Ghost Landing page
    Landing page //
    2022-10-10
  • Discourse Landing page
    Landing page //
    2023-06-13

Ghost

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

Ghost videos

Why I Moved My Blog From WordPress to Ghost

More videos:

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

Discourse videos

Why We Chose The Discourse Platform For Our Forums

More videos:

  • Review - Why Discourse is the Best Forum Software Out There (No, Really) | Location Rebel
  • Review - A Grammar Review for Discourse Analysis

Category Popularity

0-100% (relative to Ghost and Discourse)
Blogging
100 100%
0% 0
Forums
0 0%
100% 100
CMS
100 100%
0% 0
Forums And Forum Software

User comments

Share your experience with using Ghost and Discourse. For example, how are they different and which one is better?
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Reviews

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

Ghost Reviews

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
10 Best Medium Alternatives for Reading and Publishing
With Ghost, you’ll discover a dynamic space where you can even share newsletters and earn revenues. Plus, Ghost’s opеn-sourcе naturе providеs flеxibility and control ovеr your contеnt, making it a top choice for thosе looking to makе a mark in thе digital publishing world.
9 Best Medium Alternatives for Making Money With Your Writing in 2023
In this case, you’ll need to buy and set up a custom domain, purchase web hosting, remember to update the Ghost software, manage the content curation, and so on. You don’t need to know this right out of the gate, but you do need to be comfortable with learning.
13 Best Website Builders for Creators and Social Entrepreneurs(2023)
Ghost is a powerful app for new-media creators to publish, share, and grow a business around their content. It comes with modern tools to build a website, publish content, send newsletters & offer paid subscriptions to members.
Source: causeartist.com

Discourse Reviews

20 Telegram Alternatives to Chat With in 2024
Discourse is a basic forum function that could be an alternative to Telegram if you want to stick to text discussions. It's pretty analog, missing both video and livestreaming tools. Instead, Discourse is a basic community that lets you organize discussions--it feels a bit like having your own reddit or Quora.
18 Best Discord Alternatives 2020 | Expert Reviews
Discourse comes in a couple of flavours. You can self-host it yourself in which case the software is free, and you simply need to sign up for server space, or you can pay Discourse for a hosted-for-you option, though self-hosting is a lot cheaper the premium option takes care of the technical side.
IndieHackers: Best forum software
I used Flarum when trying to get a community set up for my product (ended up abandoning it to revisit when we have a larger customer base). It worked fairly well and I enjoyed it but it's definitely beta and unless you're fairly tech savvy it's not quite worth the setup / maintenance. Lots of config changes, crashes, huge issues with plugins, and some features missing. I'd...

Social recommendations and mentions

Based on our record, Ghost should be more popular than Discourse. It has been mentiond 173 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 (173)

  • Proton and Standard Notes are joining forces
    Diversifying a lot. Next acquisition will be Ghost(https://ghost.org/) I bet. Similar DNA, fits in the portfolio (If they are trying to match the feature set of Google) and have no VC backing. - Source: Hacker News / 30 days ago
  • Why I Care Deeply About Web Accessibility And You Should Too
    For example, if you are in a country where you can accept Stripe and are publishing a newsletter through, Substack or using the Ghost platform, enabling the ability to accept payments is a few clicks away. For those who cannot accept payment with Stripe, well, you are up the creek without a paddle. I do not know about you, but I see that as a barrier to access. - Source: dev.to / about 1 month ago
  • Faster Blogging: A Developer's Dream Setup
    Glee our dev friendly blogging setup has been undergoing a huge transformation for the last few weeks. For those who don't know, glee is a simple open source CLI tool that converts markdown posts into ghost blog posts. Check out the glee demo video when you have a moment! Glee: Dev-friendly Blogging Setup. - Source: dev.to / 3 months ago
  • Deploy Ghost with MySQL DB replication using helm chart
    Ghost is used by creators to run their own website to publish private content. - Source: dev.to / 4 months ago
  • Japan's Comfort Food: The Onigiri
    Not the OP but it looks to be https://ghost.org/ I use it as well for a small development blog and it's been an enjoyable experience. - Source: Hacker News / 4 months ago
View more

Discourse mentions (23)

  • Qilin: A Starter Project Template For Every Open Source Project
    GitHub Discussions can also be a great place for support as long as these are regularly monitored. Another option along the same lines is Discourse and the Open Source Matrix which is used by quite a few Open Source and community-based projects. - Source: dev.to / about 2 months ago
  • Ask HN: How to run an old-school mailing list?
    A lot of communities use [Discourse ](https://discourse.org). [LPSF](https://forum lpsf.org) migrated to it when Yahoo Groups was discontinued. Some of the advantages are that it's open source, self-hostable, and can be configured to work as both a traditional mailing list and modern forum. - Source: Hacker News / about 2 months ago
  • My Fediverse use – I'm hosting everything myself – PeerTube, Mastodon and Lemmy
    More like https://discourse.org/. You can run it yourself, but I can also just have them ding a credit card every month and not think about it again (I do this for a community). - Source: Hacker News / 5 months ago
  • Reddit faces content quality concerns after its Great Mod Purge
    Discourse perhaps? I've seen it in use in a few places; it has a modern look and feel to it at least. https://discourse.org/. - Source: Hacker News / 8 months ago
  • So Long, Twitter and Reddit
    I fully agree with you see my comment here[0] -- I think you may have misread my comment, it says "Discourse" (as in the forum software[1]), not Discord. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37245220. - Source: Hacker News / 9 months ago
View more

What are some alternatives?

When comparing Ghost and Discourse, 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.

Flarum - Flarum is the next-generation forum software that makes online discussion fun. It's simple, fast, and free.

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

phpBB - Raspberry Pi. The Raspberry Pi is a cheap, credit-card sized computer. The official website uses phpBB for their discussion forums. phpBB is not affiliated with nor responsible for any of the sites listed on the showcase.

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.

Vanilla Forums - Build an engaging community forum using Vanilla's modern cloud forum software.